Training, How To Transfer Knowledge? Dr. Randy Flemmer, Fleet Safety International

Dr. Randy can be reached or followed here:
Fleet Safety International

https://www.fleetsafetyinternational.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fleetsafetyintl

Twitter: https://twitter.com/fleet_safety

Teach Your Teen to Drive (Program Release Date: January 15, 2021)

https://www.teachyourteentodrive.ca

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeachYourTeenCA

Twitter: https://twitter.com/teach_teen

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachyourteenca/

Transcript

0:01

Welcome everybody to another episode of the Dawg On-It Trucking Pawedcast. What's got me so excited this week, Dr. Randy Flemmer is on the show. And if you were a trainer or anybody who is interested in motivating other people in the way that you need the motivated, you've got to listen to this week's show. Dr. Randy Flemmer is a specialist in driver training. All right, with that, let's get on with the podcast. It wasn't until I was cruising your website that I realized I was dealing with a doctor today, can you explain to our viewers and listeners what you are a doctor? I have a doctorate in educational technology with an emphasis in mentorship and coaching And emphasis in mentorship and coaching. That is cool. Cause obviously in trucking, we do a, hopefully at least our new drivers. When they come on board, they get mentored and coached. Once they get their class in your province, a class one during the rest of camp or in my province, what's called a class a how do you go about what skills can you give to an experienced driver so that he can better mentor a new person? Well, I think it, it starts with understanding what your own skill set is. When I developed our programs, I had had a lot of experience working with professional drivers of all types. And through that, I discovered that professional drivers, the real professionals have certain skills and attributes that maybe the average driver doesn't have. And so the question became, how, how do I take that information and then make it available to the people that are taking my courses. And so what I really tried to look at when, how, why are professional drivers, progressional? What makes them professional? What attitudes, what skillsets, what strategies do we use? And then how can I make it applicable to the people taking my courses? And so a lot I've learned from, from professional drivers over decades of working directly hand-drawn hands with them. And some of the best drivers I found were, were really some of the motorcoach operators that had a set standard that would, I think, above most others. And I think mostly because they always have the lives of many people in their hands. And so I spent a lot of time with many of those drivers and understanding, and, and from my point of view, my own skill sets and my own background in that testing that again, ugly things. And so I came up with what we do in our courses based on that. So it starts with the idea of what, what, what do professional drivers do and do well that we can learn from Why did you pick the transportation industry as your focus? Well, I think that it's come down to is the average driver drives about like 15 to 20,000 kilometers per year. And professional drivers can go a hundred thousand kilometers a year more. Now on average, the average driver has a collision once every 10,000 player or once, you know, once every X amount of kilometers, professional drivers, the real ones have significantly less. Well, why, why is that? Well it's because of, of the things that they do that make them professionals. And so those are the things that, that we can learn. That's really cool. I mean, professional drivers, I am in agreement with you are professional and they crash far fewer than other drivers that are not as professional are, there's some specific attributes to a professional driver that makes them crash less. Do you think? Well, I, I have a number of ones that I chose, but I, if I, if I was to choose two or three, I mean, it starts with a professional attitude that the idea that they, they, they are a professional that they take pride in doing the right thing at the right time and, and take pride in how they do. One. One of the interesting stories I have is I, I was talking with one of, one of the best motor coach operators. I'd met even a driving motor coach operator for 35 years and had no collisions at all. And so I sat, I said, what's your secret? What is it that makes you that much better? And he said, I closed my door. Okay, nice. I'm not sure what that means though. Could you go further? He goes, yeah. I knew that when I get up to close my door, I looked back and I looked at the faces and everybody on that bus and I make a mental commitment to get them to their destination safely and that's motivation for me. And so I thought that says something, and it's a, it's a very good thing about taking your attitude and doing it and taking pride in what you do and doing it the right way every time. And that that's a that's attitude is one of the important aspects of driving. So that says it all right there in terms of that. I think the second you're going to say something, Go ahead. What's number two. I think that the second one is how professional drivers deal with vision. Like most professional drivers have a natural scanning, what I call a scanning pattern and that they are scanning on a 360 degree basis. And they do it as a habit. It's natural. So they're just automatically doing it all the time. Well, most average drivers don't really have a pattern. They don't really have any habitual way of visually looking around, making sure that they're safe. And so the, the visual scanning pattern is something that, that I advocate. They're all new drivers, all existing drivers should think about and develop their own. Something like, you know, looking long and wide tracking your instrumentation check, you know, going through your mirrors, but a pattern that they repeat and it's habitual. Japan's all the time. Do you have a third? Those are the big ones. The other one is, is what I call is driving with an intention of space. See, I think professional drivers have a really good spatial awareness around themselves. And, and we, you can talk all about, all about following distance and appropriate following distance and what are the rules and the regulations, but it's different than what I call driving with an intention of space. In other words, you're driving with, with the amount of space, 360 degrees around you, giving yourself a pocket of safety, adding some additional seconds of following distance, to make sure that you have that. And better yet we use of follow up of driving with an intention in space, is that all, all drivers and, and I guess this could even be a fourth. One is drivers need to stay in the moment of driving. I have a philosophy that underlines everything that we do in our organization. And I call it our core belief. It's that regardless of anyone's knowledge, skill, experience, or training, there are some days that we are better drivers than we are on other games. It's just, I don't care what you are there just some days you are. And there are moments in time at any given time we can drift from your mentally active center where you're in the moment of driving you drift. Well, the best drivers, the professional drivers recognize the hints hints. Like they've drive, driving them for two or three K and don't remember them. They got caught by surprise at a subtle light. They missed the pedestrian crossing the road. They have to, they have to do something quite like they have to hit their brakes hard more than once. These are hints that they'd see that at this moment, right in time, right now, they're not focused. They they've lost, they've moved to a, a kind of a distraction level. And so they have strategies and skills to move them back for the rest of that particular trip and deriving with intention of space is one of those things. So for the reps of that trip, a lot of them will now focus on where is the space around me? How do I utilize that space? What's in that space? And it gives them an ongoing, internal, mental commentary for the rest of that trip to stay in the moment of driving. Does that make sense? It absolutely makes sense to me. I'm a safety guy and I love what you're saying, because you know, it's my belief that speed and following distance, or just speed is the number one culprit. When a driver's going too fast, he doesn't allow himself to have the right space around the truck. And so what you've done is taken that one step further, and you're talking about space around 360 degrees of the truck, which is absolutely correct. If you were able to speak to drivers and thankfully, thank you, drivers for watching and listening. How would you convince a driver to keep, you know, the professional driver, the vision, the space that you were talking about, the right attitude. Do you have words or I'm not sure how to say it, but how do you convince the driver to adjust their attitude? Well, I think if you're talking to a professional driver, you you'll approach them from that perspective. You've just, you've, you've chosen to be a professional. This is what you're doing for your career. You're spending many hours of your day of your life doing this job. Is it worth doing right? Or is it not? Do you want to be known as somebody who does it right? All the time, like 30 years from now, how do you love people? Want people to look you and look at you and your career? And if that's what you're doing, you're making yourself a career person. You're doing professional driving as a career. How much effort does it take to do it right every time and find yourself where it is you hope to take and make it a sense of pride. Something that you can look back and talk to your kids about and say, this is who I was. This is who I am. I'm a professional driver. And so applying that to them really works. And if you look at change theory, how do you convince people to change? How do you convince them to do things differently? Well, it starts off with convincing them that the change might be necessary, but let me give you an example and you take your hands like this and put them together. Once I'm over a month off, I'll take them apart from back together with your thumb underneath. Now, the other way, the opposite way. How's that feel awkward? If does it feel wrong? Yes. Awkward, but is it wrong or is it just different? Oh, it's not wrong. It's just different. Different people feel uncomfortable when they're doing something different. And the trick is to show them, first of all, give them, give them some, some, some of their own personal choice in making change and let help them understand that change is not, not bad. It's just different. And change will make you feel uncomfortable. So it takes some time to, to, to get changes impacted. And so you have to make a commitment for at least a month on a new habit, a new strategy and whatever, to let it integrate into your personality and let it break your habits. And it starts with you choosing to make that change because you think it's the right team. And then physically and mentally having to take the time to do it all the time until it becomes while as, as, as we, as we know in research and unconscious competence, you would just do it because that's what you do. And that's your goal is over time. So many things to professional drivers do the really good ones are unconscious competence. They just do it because they just do it naturally habitually. And that's what we, as an average drivers, the average drivers has to look at it and say, that's a good goal to be and where to go. Yeah, I do a fair melt or a lot of driver training, and I'm going to use a lot of what you're saying right now. I'll be honest because it's goals. And I thank you for that. The, so you've started a business. How old, let's say the name of the business. Go ahead. History. History started as I, I, I got into the business actually to get my way through school. I became a driving instructor to pay for my school. And then over time I bought half a driving school. And that time it was called a driving school in Calgary driving test or rentals. And then over time bought off my partner and my wife and I ran it. And then I went and finished my doctorate and she ran the school and I took a couple of years off to finish my doctorate and get everything underway. And, and after I finished that, my wife said to me, and so what was it like to take a couple of years and just do whatever you wanted to just explore. And I said, that was the best time in my life. It was just wonderful. Do that to cause great. I start today, you'll get the bridge. So I said, okay, well, if I'm doing that, then I'm going to date, make some major changes. And that's when I started focus on, on, we changed our name to fleet safe from international. We really focused on our corporate work. And I started our, all our online training because that's where my doctorate was really started to build online courses and think about that and systems and techniques. And, and so we, we've had a few decades here of really root growth and doing things a little differently than other people we can. I think it all starts with the core philosophy, like as part of what I've done over the past 40 years, I traveled all around the world and visited with driver education professionals everywhere. And I looked at their systems and what they were doing, and some are just really good and some are not as good. Some that I, what I call some systems, which I call our health fire bent systems, which you must do this. You have to do that. They never sat well with me. It doesn't because people just tend to rebel against that. And that's how I eventually came up with this, this core philosophy that, you know, what we are all human, that regardless of whatever, you've done, knowledge, skill, experience, your training, you're always going to be there. So if we recognize that in training, if we don't understand that that's a natural part of who we are and then build strategies, habits, and techniques to work within that framework, we're not doing our jobs as trained as, as real trainers and when we're not really making an impact. And so everything we do is we'll go around the idea that we're human, that we're going to make mistakes. So what's that mean? And how do we first well recognized when we're not at a best and what can we do when we find that, but also what habits can we do that even when we're not our best, just simply kick in like our, our, our, our patterns of our scanning patterns that if you do habitually, you may not be at your best that way, that day, but because that is a natural habit, you're doing it takes in and probably saves you a few times. So from that point of view, that's what we do. And I would suggest that, and habitual habit when you are doing it, even when you're not at your best, you're still better than 95% of the other people that you're occupying the roads with. I would agree with that. Building those habitual strong driving habits is, is really, really important. And certainly any up and coming professional driver, they want to set themselves up for success and to do that, they need to be under need to understand from the best people in the industry, what it is, what is what it is and what it means to be a professional driver, and then take it upon themselves to take the pride and effort to do what it needs they need to do to reach that standard. Well, one of the things you said there is that they have to want to be a professional driver. Exactly. You know, I think you and I can both work with those who you want to be a professional. Those who don't give a damn, unfortunately they shouldn't be a truck driver That that's correct. And you could say that of many people in many industries. Yeah. But not every industry has other people's lives in their hands as a truck driver or a motor coach driver. Anybody who shares the public highways. I mean, doctors and nurses and other first responders all have our lives in our hands as well. We're not the professional drivers, aren't the only ones, but we can have a big impact when we make a mistake. Unfortunately, it can be a big, big mistake. Yes. Now, one of the things that I love about your system is it's different than some of the other online training systems. Can you tell us why you made the choice to not have a subscription model, but to have a I'll call it a purchase training model? I'm not the right word probably, but you can buy one-off training as lawyer I'm trying to get to, why did you choose to go down that road? Well, we, we actually have some, you know, if you're a large corporate company, then we have some companies that will sometimes say, okay, we want to buy a group package and we make that available, but we want this really to be available to individual people, individual drivers, they don't want to take a subscription. And, and, and do I think over and over and over, or, or, or have to be locked into things. And I want, so we have the ability to do which one is a company, but I also wanted to attract the individual truck drivers to say this core, there's a course here that you can take and it take one course. And if you'd like it, then take a second course on a different topic or re come back in some time and get a refresher for us. And we try and update our courses on a regular basis. So that there's some new content or new information that comes in every few years. So new truth that it's up-to-date and standardized, Oh, what are the courses I saw on the website? And I will have links in the show notes below to your website is an hours of service course. And I noticed that talks about the federal hours of service here in Canada, but also about trucking. Yes. How is a course like that? And it was, if I remember a three hour program, roughly Somewhere around there, three hours, and we just updated that one within some of the more, the new us code, it just came true. Yeah. And that's where I was going. I was going to ask, have you updated that one to the new us rigs? Yes. Yeah. There was a section on the U S and then in there I've emphasized it right in the, in the course itself. So we just actually updated that within the last month or so. Well, there, you see, so all of our listeners and viewers, they now have another resource that they can go to. I would encourage our listeners and viewers to check out the table of contents because you've got an awful lot of information there. It's taken a few years to build the content up and, and, and, and to do it in a way that I felt that it, that it really was of a quality that I was, I could be proud of and, and, and send out to other people and say, you know, here it is, this is, this is some great information for you. And I hope it helps you become a professional or more professional or do things differently. We're add to your content knowledge. And so that it's been very good. So there's a lot of things that I want to get to one in particular training video in a second, but there's a lot on here for the professional truck driver. The one that I thought was amazing, and I wish I had seen I'm now 65. So my kids are, have been driving for years and years. But one of the things I wish I'd seen when I was teaching my kids to drive is in the title is teaching your team to drive. So tell me a little bit about that, even though I'm thinking that we're probably talking to a lot of truck drivers that have children that are of that age group, that they will be teaching them to drive. What's included in that course. Well, you know, I'm, I'm actually glad you, you just asked that because that's a brand new course for us. And I actually fully launch until this Friday, we were launching at Canada wide, just, just, just finished it. And, and the, the concept behind that is with COVID and everything else, parents. And it's more than that as, as I realized that that driving schools are great. But if you really want to create lifelong driving skills with your teenager, you need to be part of the process. And so this site is all about the process and what you can do, and it takes it. What I like about when I developed this course. And so I wanted complete flexibility for both the parent and the team. And so it's self inclusive that, that you have freedom of the entire menu. We can skip screens, you can stay on screens. There are hands-on activities that you can evaluate yourself, KPIs, key performance indicators, you know, it's right. And it takes it from things like, you know, dry, like it's the first opening. One talks all about how to be a mentor, how to, how to things to think about as a parent, when you're teaching your team, how to talk to them, how to, how to evaluate them, all of that. It talks about risks and, and how risks and teen driving are influenced in that way. And then it goes into topics like driving for the first time, driving residential, driving, parking, and backing up, moving into major roads, freeways, and high rates driving into winter time, driving a manual standard transmission vehicle. And it goes through a number of topics. And then you can choose, like, if you've got somebody you've already you, your team, if they're doing well, maybe there's a few things they're not so good at, but, but you don't know how to do it. You can look at it and go, Oh, there's a section there. I can hop right to that, skip through there's content that you can go through and understand so that you know what you're supposed to be contained, and you can do it right beside your teen, or have both of you do it. And then there are activities specifically to help you with those things, and you can have it on your phone. So it's all mobile. So you can track it online and make notes on online, go back later. Or you can look at your phone and look at the activities and noise there. So we're really think that this is a great program for parents. That's awesome. Because as I say, I sincerely wish great was available or known about it, but I had to teach. So I had the privilege of teaching my two children, but also my girlfriend's two children. And I think they turned out pretty good drivers. However, new skills are always, especially with teenagers, it's difficult. It's not easy. I've been teaching teenagers for a long time. So a lot of what's in there is based on my experience on teaching teenagers. That's how I started my career. So No, is there, even in that program of teaching the teenagers, would a professional driver pick up some tips in that as well? Everything I talk about what it means to be a lifelong safe driver is in there, including the information about a professional driver. We want to start teenagers out the right way. And so getting them thinking correctly right from day one is really important to us. And so we start with those kinds of concepts and, and why you should be doing the criminals that you do. Perfect. I think that Randy is a great way to wrap up the show. The name of your company is fleet safety international. And of course, we've got a link to that in the show notes below. And we've got your contact info. If people want to reach out Dr. Randy slimmer. I thank you so much for your time for coming on the show today. And thank you for listening to me. It was perfect. I found you through the Hamilton spectator when they quoted you. So I thought that was awesome. I hadn't heard of you before and I reached out and I appreciate your time and sincere. Thank you for coming on Molly. I appreciate you giving me time just to talk. I enjoy what I do, and I enjoy talking about what I do. Perfect. Dr. Randy flamer. Thank you. Thank you. I hope you love the show as much as I did. Please leave us a, like a thumbs up a review, a comment, a rating. Thank you so much. And I do really appreciate your time and join us again next week for another exciting interview.