Hey thanks for watching this video, this is going to be different than any video. I've ever done. I'll often do podcasts like this, but the reason i'm doing this as a video is i'm getting more and more comments that are along this line on youtube, and i think this has come as the youtube audience has grown and a lot of you maybe don't know. My take on some of this stuff.

Some of you may not be a member of the facebook group and so um. I wanted to share quickly what i think is a toxic mindset of superior inclination. That's the title of this video which i know sounds maybe a little fancy a little highbrow, but i couldn't think of a better way of saying it, because this is this is what i see all the time and i'm gon na see. If this sounds familiar to you, um you'll get a senior technician.

Somebody who's done it for a while who will criticize somebody's practices that are uh not up to their standards and they'll, say some version of you. Don't belong in this trade or you should be fired, or you should have learned that in the first day of school or whatever the case may be - and i get those comments - a lot topics that people find to be very important very wildly. It could be anything from somebody's practices in fabricating sheet, metal, duct work or brazing practices or how they set up a van or how they clean a van or how they wire something up or whatever the case may be, how they pull a vacuum. Here's the first thing that is very important to me, because i think it's universally true people either know something or they don't know it not knowing something is not something that somebody should be blamed for.

What somebody has to be responsible for is what happens once they are made aware of something or once they are given the opportunity to know something, and even then none of us learn something one time i mean there may be the rare savant out there who hears Something one time and they just memorize it, but most of us me included - and i think most of the senior techs out there, who are hyper critical, had to get a lot of practice on something before it became second nature to you. So a lot of what we call common sense, especially as it relates to things related to mechanical aptitude, how machines work all that are things that were instilled into us by our grandfathers or our fathers or our mothers, because we did a lot of work with our Hands it's true of a lot of trades people that we grew up doing things, and so we counted as second nature when a lot of other people don't have that. Second nature, specifically in the trade, though, a lot of people believe that if you go through a traditional trade, education and you're told something that then because you're told it you should apply it. But the reality is is that unless we take the time - and we do it over and over again and develop those habits, then it's going to be challenging to remember or fully understand what it is that we're doing, and so, let's give an example of something that We all know we should do, which is wear safety glasses when we're working in most of the hazardous situations that we work in, which is the majority of things we do so, for example, cleaning a coil or wiring something up.

You know where we're near wires. That could potentially focus in the eye or when we're cutting or grinding or when we're brazing. Those are all cases where wearing proper eye protection is pretty much undisputed. But if you're like me and you came up through the trade and you didn't wear proper eye protection as a standard, you know standard practice, you weren't taught that way it wasn't enforced with you.

Then, even though, when you were in trade school, you went through the module. That said, that you should do it, nobody, you knew, did it, you didn't do it, and so it didn't become a habit, and so, in order, so to expect that to begin to happen requires habits and habits are take time, habits take reiteration, and so there's certainly No excuse for having a culture that doesn't wear safety glasses. I'm not saying that to recognize that if you have lived your entire life, not wearing them, you are going to be much more likely to forget to wear them, and so what is the right response? So if somebody sees me in a video and i'm not wearing safety glasses doing something that i should be wearing safety glasses, it's happened. You can see it in the archives.

Somebody points that out to me hey. I should take that feedback and say hey good catch. I need to make sure i do that i'm going to work on that, but on the other hand, should i well there are some people who would argue that i should okay, fair enough, i'm not going to get into that argument, but i think it's much better. If we own our mistakes and are clear about the path that we're taking in order to build proper habits, then we are to pretend: like mistakes, don't happen, because that's something that i see happen.

A lot is that people aren't transparent about what they actually do, because they're afraid that somebody's going to criticize them. And so then there isn't the dialogue, because it's all i shouldn't say all, but a lot of it is based on ego rather than wanting to move forward so i'll give another example. We recently put up this video of bert cleaning. His van and bert did a great job of being very clear that keeping a clean and organized vehicle is important, and it is something that he wants to get better at and it's something that he's not good at.

So that's why i had no problem putting that out there. If he was joking around saying hey, it's no big deal. It's no problem, then i wouldn't put that out there, but that's not what he's doing he's saying this is something i struggle with and i think a lot of us struggle with that. Some of you don't some of you have that superior inclination.

So you naturally because of habits, you've, developed or because the way you're wired you don't have that vice and that's great, that's excellent. That is a value to you, but for somebody to watch bert because he's not good at keeping his van clean and then say that he's not a good technician or he's not valuable or he shouldn't be in the trade. That's extremely unfair and i'm going to give you an example of what i think it's just as unfair as and warning warning. This is going to trigger a lot of technicians.

It's going to make some of you angry, but i'm going to give this as an example. There are a lot of us in this trade who struggle with keeping our weight under control. I do but there's a lot of us who do and especially as you go into service, maybe you were younger. You had a better metabolism.

Maybe you did install you. Did a lot more, you know crawling around attics and whatever and as you age you're riding around the truck you're eating hamburgers, you you, don't you don't stay as healthy right, and so we struggle with our weight. Is that a problem does that affect our health? The answer is yes, of course, we know it does. Does that affect our ability to do our job? Well, sure it does.

You don't have the energy that you once had it's not as easy to climb ladders. It's not as easy to be safe. So is it a safety issue to be significantly overweight, overweight enough that you know that you you're definitely overweight. Is that a safety issue? Well, the answer is yes, it certainly is.

Should someone use that as an excuse not to do proper practices not to clean their vans, not to wear their safety glasses, not whatever, because well hey at least i'm in good shape? Well, of course, not that's ridiculous. We all know that's ridiculous right. So what is the proper response to somebody pointing out hey? You should wear your safety, glasses, hey! You should flow nitrogen while brazing, you know. Whatever the k, you should have a fire extinguisher present when you braise.

The response should be. Thank you. I'm working on that and and then that person should work on it right because it's appropriate to work on it. It's not something you should give up on.

We should never give up on things that, if impact our jobs impact, our health make us unsafe right. Using this as an example, what if somebody came up to one of us who struggles with our weight and said hey, you should lose some weight. Is that true? I want you to think about it honestly. Is that true, it's just as true now it's also very rude right and we know that we know that so our knee-jerk reaction.

If somebody comes up and says hey, you know you put on a few extra pounds there tubby, who isn't somebody who's our friend. You know our knee-jerk reaction is not to want to be better. Our knee-jerk reaction is to want, to you, know, use a inappropriate gesture for the workplace right, not safe, for work and again. The reason is because it's rude, and so it's just as rude when you talk about somebody who struggles with organization and you tell them that they're inadequate as a technician, because they have that struggle because they make that mistake or a new technician who struggles with understanding Electrical or who struggles with remembering certain parts of the process that they need to follow.

Now, if that person comes back at you with a hey, this is my way screw you well, that's not an appropriate response either right, but again, when you remember what, if somebody criticizes something that you struggle with something that you know, you have an inadequacy, you have A challenge: it's not something that you're the best at and they call that out in you. What is your natural response going to be to that going to be knee-jerk and so give other people that same grace, which is to say that there are much better ways to talk about these things than to nitpick people's faults? What's much better is to talk specifically about ways that we can do better, and so i'm not saying that you don't point out a perfect example. Somebody saw a video with a regulator left on inside the van nitrogen regulator left on. Aren't you supposed to pull that regulator off perfectly appropriate good catch? Yes, we do need to make sure we do that.

We've got a bad habit right. The bad habit is leaving the regulator on now. Somebody could get all up in arms. Oh my goodness.

I can't even believe you're still in business, you should all be fired. You should be run out on a rail blah, blah blah, and these are the sorts of things that happen all the time on social media youtube, facebook, it's costing it's gross, because it's not how we talk to people, it's not how we get better. What we should look for in ourselves is a desire to consistently improve and grow and get better at what we do not to be resistant to change, but also not to be so self-loathing that we can never put anything out on the internet right. We can ever share because if we always had to be perfect before we could teach anybody well, then we could never teach anybody.

Just because you have a particular strength doesn't mean that that's the only thing that you can teach because trust me. If you were to ride with me, you could find a hundred things that i did imperfect 100 ways. I organized that weren't the best and, if i rode with you, i could do the exact same thing. But what's much better is for us to find common ground where we can begin to work to improve our habits.

Working to improve our habits can bring up the entire trade consistently over time and when somebody points out something that could be a better way of doing something or something that we do, that isn't the best. Then our response to that needs to be. Thank you. I'm gon na work on that, because that's all we can do right.

We can't change. You can't change from being a disorganized person to an organized person any more than you can lose 30 pounds overnight. It does not happen. It's not that's not how life works.

Everything we do is habits, everything we do is practice and if you've worked in a shop that has required you to have really extreme safety practices for the last, however long you've been in the trade. Well then, yes, you will likely have really good safety practices, and that is excellent. I i really, i really mean that i'm not being sarcastic, but if you have not had those habits you're not going to change like that, it's not going to happen. It's not that simple, even if you're forced to then you're going to be very inefficient while you're doing what you do and that may be worth it in certain cases.

Again, everything is a risk assessment. Everything is the basis of what is most important, but if we keep our eyes on the goal on the mission, the mission is to serve our customers to work safely, to work efficiently, to treat people with kindness and respect. Frankly, right, that's a big part of it and we're all doing things that are unsafe to some degree again, not an excuse at all for bad practices, but just saying that everything is a risk assessment. Every part of the industry is going to be a slightly different.

It's all a cost benefit analysis. It really is, however, we have to keep our eyes focused on the most important things and continue to grow and get better and better at them. Real talk for a minute. How many of you know people i'm not going to say it's you, but how many of you know, people who have not been fully epa compliant their entire career old-timers, who tell stories of things that they used to do and maybe sometimes you've seen them.

Do those things one thing: if you're making a joke of it because you're continuing to practice it that's not acceptable. It's another thing: if you're saying look, how far we've come, because that look, how far we've come conversation that is a positive conversation, it is a conversation of progress and growth and habit improvement. We can change, it just doesn't happen overnight. Never does happens over time.

It's something that we have to dedicate ourselves to over time. So if you come on one of my channels and you leave a super negative comment that says something to the effect of, i can't believe this person even works in our trade. They should already know that i'm gon na block you i'm not we're not gon na, have that type of conversation, because it's not productive. If you come in and you point out something that could be better, then not only am i not going to block you i'm going to thank you because there is always room for improvement and, frankly, look all of our egos get into this.

Sometimes people always criticize how fast i speak in the videos and after a while it gets really irritating, because it's just how i talk. I've been trying specifically to reduce my speed of speaking even in this video. But you know. Sometimes we all react in ways that we shouldn't, but we have to do a little.

We have to check ourselves, sometimes we're all strong at certain things, we're all weak at certain things and if we go around criticizing one another, it's the same way of criticizing some. You know somebody's weight, it's not how you do it, it's not how they get better people get better by being given a path of habits that over time, get them to a place where they want to go where they already know. They want to go right but being critical of people in a way that if it makes them feel attacked or that's just stroking, your own ego saying i'm good you're bad, i'm smart, you're, dumb, doesn't help our trade. It's a really bad habit in our trade and we shouldn't we shouldn't continue to do it.

It's a habit of being more constructive in our communication that i think we could work on together. So that's what i want to encourage you in today is a habit of using more constructive communication. A lot of people will say: well, i'm just being honest. Well, you can be honest without being critical without being a jerk.

You can be honest in a way that helps people develop better habits rather than telling them strictly that they're inadequate, because they're not good at what you're good at, because trust me for those people who have criticized technicians like bert or other ones. In my my text, who i work with, who have some weak weaknesses, they also have some strong strengths and you would probably learn a lot from them if you had a chance to work with them all right, that's it thanks for watching we'll catch you in the Next one you.