People & leadership · UPDATED 2026-10-15

You can love your drivers and still lead them.

Caring, accountability, and the part of dispatch you carry home.

I love my drivers. That is part of how I approach dispatch, not something I need to set aside to do the job. I want them to succeed, understand the work, feel supported, and get home. I also have to hold expectations, have difficult conversations, and keep the operation moving.

The hard part is seeing it coming There is a particular frustration in seeing a problem a long way off and not having the authority, staffing, equipment, or time to prevent it. You can point to a difficult area. You can ask for more preparation. You can write the letter and build the reference. The next day still arrives.

That can bring stress and anxiety to the desk. When a driver is struggling, it does not feel like an abstract number changing on a screen. It feels like a person who needs a useful answer, while several other people need one too.

Caring has to become something useful Listening matters. So does knowing what to do with what you hear. Is the obstacle access, parking, training, equipment, or a choice the driver can change? What information is missing? Who needs to know now?

I try to turn that concern into a next action: a clearer area reference, an involved trainer, a documented blocker, or a conversation that explains the expectation without stripping away the context. A driver’s frustration deserves to be heard. The operation also needs enough detail to act.

Accountability can be humane Supporting someone does not require calling every outcome unavoidable. If there is a behavior to correct, talk about it specifically. If the route has a constraint, document that specifically too. The two can be true at the same time.

Attendance, quality, safety, and pace tell different parts of the story. A driver should understand the concern and have a chance to explain what happened. A coaching conversation should end with something clearer than the feeling that they have disappointed everybody.

The good part deserves space too There is happiness in watching someone learn. There is pride in making a difficult process easier to follow. There is humor in delivery that people outside the job may never quite understand. Those things belong beside the stress. They are part of why I keep caring.

I have built training, quality workflows, attendance automation work, and route-feasibility analysis because I want a better way to support the team. Some of that work is still being refined. I do not need to call it perfect to know why it matters.

A question for the next shift Before you ask someone to do better, can you explain what better looks like—and what support is actually available to help them get there?

That is the kind of accountability I want at my desk. Caring about the person and caring about the work can strengthen each other.