Finding and Fixing the Fossil Fuel Fear Factors Fracturing Your Organization

"HARMFUL FOSSIL FUELS"

If you discovered those words strung together in your child's news magazine, what would you do to address this apparent instance of fossil fuel fear-mongering that could limit a child's ability to think critically?

Similarly, what steps would you take if you found evidence that a fear-based culture is hindering your team's ability to grow, develop, and innovate?

To help you answer those questions, this Halloween episode of The Energy Detox leverages both today's fear-fueled holiday and recent fossil fuel news to guide you through a 3-step leadership approach:

1 - IDENTIFY signs of fear by "flipping through your company's (figurative) magazines"

2 - ADDRESS fear-inducing leadership behaviors by communicating directly with your stakeholders

3 - CORRECT past issues and establish a future plan that minimizes the risk of fear undermining your organization

editorialize - verb: to make comments or express opinions rather than just report the news

“What's more toxic: fossil fuels or C-SPAN?” (The Energy Detox, Episode 26)

Transcript

(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)

Happy Halloween and welcome to the energy detox coming to you today from the scariest spookiest setting that I can imagine that being right next to a natural gas stove. And now if you happen to be watching this and not just listening to the podcast, you might be saying to yourself, Well, Joe, this seems to be a children's play kitchen. And surely that stove behind you isn't actually powered by natural gas. Unless, of course, you were crazy enough to hook natural gas up to your children's play kitchen, which again, I am crazy. I'm not that crazy, though. So you are correct. This is a play kitchen. And there is not actual natural gas coming here. But what you might not be able to see is that there are flames right next to these dials here. So clearly, this imaginary play kitchen is fueled by imaginary natural gas. And that still means that our children should be scared, they should be worried because as we all know, natural gas, especially in our home, is worthy of fear. And so with that being said, we're going to build on those fears, we're going to take those fears. And we're gonna talk about fears in your day to day life as a leader in the oil and gas industry. And we're going to talk about some practical ways for you to identify when fear is dictating and permeating your culture. And we'll talk about ways of course, once you identify those fears to address them. But before doing that, and this being Halloween, again, I want to start things off with two scary stories, two scary stories that prompted me as a father and as a part of the energy industry to do just what I said we're gonna help you do and that is to identify fear, to address those fears, and then to take some sort of corrective action to minimize the chances that those fears take hold. And so what I'm gonna do here is I'm going to read two short stories from a publication. This is a news publication that is directed at children, it's a printed publication, it comes out once a week, we've had it coming into our home here in the city household for the last couple of months. And by and large, it's been really good, we're really happy with it. And our oldest child especially likes to consume it, it's great way for him to know what's going on in the world and a great way to spur conversations with us his parents about global affairs, but two recent blurbs gave us some pause, and they are related to energy. And again, they're a perfect setup for today's conversation about the ways that you can better identify and address fear in the workplace. And so I'm gonna read both of these blurbs here. Without any changes here on it, you'd have the full context. What I'm not going to do though, is I'm not going to give the actual name of the publication because that's not the point and happy to talk offline with any viewers here about the publication. As I said, it's, I still recommend it. But again, the point of this is not to attack yet another in this case, subtle attack, if you will, on our industry or subtle attempt at fear mongering. But again, the point is to help you as a leader within your organization, attack fear that you might be contributing to so without further ado, the first of these comes from Norway. This is a part of an around the world section. The headline is wind farm stirs controversy and the full blurb here is equinor, an energy company launched the world's largest floating wind, farm and parentheses group of turbines that produce power as they spin. Unlike fossil fuels, in parentheses, oil and gas, wind farms don't emit pollutants that lead to global warming. Climate activists criticize that when we're however, because the farm will bring electricity to sites that extract the harmful fuels. And the last few words, I read their harmful fuels, that is not in quotes, that is not attributing harmful or the word harmful to the climate activists. No, it is presented here as if it's a matter of fact that the fuels are harmful. And upon seeing that, because again, my wife and I will flip through this publication as it comes into our house before handing it off to our son, or even if he has started to read, it will still flip through it. If for no other reason, then if there's something in there that hey, we can address or we can talk about with him. That's great. That's the whole point of this. But occasionally we'll see something like this that really makes us sort of scratch our heads. And in this case, it was well wait a second, how could you castigate fuels, oil and gas as harmful? I mean, you could argue and should argue, because it's true that these fuels have had an undeniable net positive impact on humanity. Are there trade offs? Absolutely. But calling them harmful? seem quite right. And so in addition to talking about this with our son, who again was very quick, once we read this, to point out much of what I just shared with you 30 seconds ago, then took the extra step of reaching out to the editors and the publication and saying, Hey, I noticed this. Again, we love this publication. Just want to make sure that this isn't some on Winning inadvertent attempt at editorializing because again, that could discredit what is otherwise great publication. So sent that message out there. Again, if you know me, you've worked with me. I'm not afraid of nice, long, detailed emails. And I thought this is warranted some extra time and attention and so sent that along to the publication. And before I got a response, we got another issue in the mail. And I'm going to read another blurb. Now again, from this back to back issue. And this comes from Nairobi, Kenya. The headline is Global Carbon Tax proposed at Summit. And it says leaders at Africa's first climate summit have called for a global carbon tax proposed at the three day African climate summit, the tax would force the world's biggest producers of harmful fossil fuels, like oil and gas companies to commit money to the developing nations most affected by their actions, the money would develop green energy like wind farms to combat climate change. And now again, my issue with this is not the discussion of green energy or climate change, or any of the facts that are here. And that's a conversation for another day, the issue I have is that, once again, it is here not in quotes, saying harmful fossil fuels those three words right next to each other harmful fossil fuels, as if fossil fuels are, again, a net negative or warrant being painted as harmful. When again, from an objective standpoint, there is no question that fossil fuels have had a net positive impact on humanity. So again, as you would imagine, I follow it up to my prior email again, once again, pointing out another instance of potential editorializing asking for some clarification. And of course, ask him for a plan going forward to make sure that, you know, this isn't out there, because unfortunately, the parents of the other 100,000 kids who get this publication every single week, may not be as on guard when it comes to energy matters, and may not unfortunately, be flipping through this even quickly, to make sure that they can, you know, have a conversation with their children to provide some extra context that isn't possible, again, in fairness to this publication, in such a

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relatively summarized part of this magazine. Anyway, setting aside potential excuses for the magazine, I did get a nice response back from the editor in chief, again, happy to share a little bit more about her response. But the moral of the story is, when I stepped through, I didn't realize it at the time, mirrored a very simple process that you can step through as a leader to identify to address and to correct matters of fear within your organization. Because that's exactly what happened, right? The first step identifying my wife and I had a non official old system of no one, we grabbed this from the mailbox, flipping through seeing if there's anything we need to address. And again, in this particular instance, seeing something that caught our attention. So we had a system in place to make sure that we could address these. And then from there, again, we didn't address them. After the identification process. We sat down with our son, we talked through it again, very casually. When the next one came again, he's laughing about oh, there it goes again. Right. So again, this isn't a matter of indoctrination. This is a matter of sticking to the facts. That's why we liked this publication, they stuck to the facts. They didn't have editorializing. And so how do you address that? What kind of conversation can you have once you identify an issue? And then third, of course, what kind of corrective action can you take? What steps can you take to make sure that the odds of unnecessary potentially harmful fear take hold. And again, in this instance, it was reaching out to and then following up with the editors of this publication to make sure that again, they have a process in place to make sure this type of thing doesn't happen? Again, if for no other reason, then their ultimate goal shouldn't be to drive, you know, back and forth talking points. No, their ultimate goal should be to help children to think critically, right. And if you're putting in place, something that you feel is, is even if you feel that fossil fuel should be, should warrant, the label of harmful, that still doesn't help children think critically, which is, I think, the end goal of this publication so that they are aware so that they can be creative and innovative and not told what to think. So that being said, what's the moral of the story? What's the message for you as a leader? Well, it's to ask yourself, What are you doing to identify instances of fear within your organization? What are you doing to figuratively flip through the pages of this magazine? What are you doing to see instances where perhaps your language or the language of other people within your organization might be causing confusion or might be sending a message out that you did not intend to send? And again, that's an open question for you to answer because if you're not doing anything to identify where the fears exist, well, then you're opening yourself up to a culture where people are holding back and as we said earlier, Are aren't being innovative aren't being open and are leaving value on the table. So what's one of the best ways you could do this? Well take a page from, again, I'm not I'm not a salesperson, but you know, take a page from what I believe to be one of the most cliche but effective sales approaches out there. And that is to say, hey, what keeps you up at night? Right? What are you afraid of? Basically, asking people point blank, it's not a yes or no question. Are you afraid? Are you Oh, no, no, I'm good. Everything's good. But, you know, if something were to keep you up at night, if there is something that's eating away at you, what is it, asking that open question and and again, figuratively, flipping through the pages of a magazine by strolling through your organization, again, if you happen to be in person taking full advantage of that opportunity, and asking that question, you're gonna get some data, you're gonna get some things that are valuable, and quite frankly, you know, and sometimes just directly, many cases indirectly, what I see is, you're going to see some things that you could change from a behavioral standpoint that is unwittingly instilling fear within your organization. So do it, do it, have those conversations. And once you get that data, the next step is, of course, to ask yourself, how you're going to address it. How are you going to address these fears? Once you've identified them? Once you realize that, you know, you may be like, many organizations out there, where information is not flowing up, as it should because of fear. The question is, well, how you address it? And of course, the answer is, head on directly, bluntly, one, because at least there's a chance of nipping that in the bud. And to because it's a great way to build trust, especially if you can identify things that you have done, even if you didn't mean to do it, that have led to fear. Or maybe there's times where you knew you were pushing people, because fear can be very motivating. Fear can be very powerful times if you can be positive. And maybe there's times where you were happy to instill a little bit of fear, a little bit of good healthy stress, but didn't realize that that continued in a way that you didn't intend. So how are you going to address these fears once you realize they exist? And then the third piece is to ensure corrective action moving forward, what is the plan to sustain a culture where people are open, where they're not afraid, where they're not afraid to hold back to share their ideas? What is that plan? What does that look like? And by and large, one of the best ways that I've seen this happen is to redirect to change that message so that it's not bickering back and forth about the pros and cons of fossil fuels and the trade offs that are involved in extracting fossil fuels and burning fossil fuels so that you can get all the benefits. Well, that's all true. At the end of the day, we should be focusing on what again, should be our common goal or common vision just as I again, I hope your organization has a common goal or vision, and in the case of fossil fuels is to better human lives, to steal the the title of Liberty Oilfield Services’ ESG, or sustainability report, bettering human lives. And when measured against the ability to better human lives, to allow people to flourish, to allow people to realize their full potential. Now the conversation is healthy. And if you're pushing forward, healthy conversations like that, that is action. That is correcting, not just the facts, because we spent a lot of time with our talking points trying to correct facts in our industry. And that's not a bad thing. But we need to move beyond that and make sure that the narrative is at least at least I don't know, to make up percentages here. 50%, about go positive. And let that other noise kind of, you know, be dealt with separately. And again, as we close here, I think I'll give a good example here, jotted down from last week of a leader who did just that, who exemplified the whole Hey, identify when there's fear out there that's unnecessary, address it and then take corrective action. And for this, we're going to give a nod to Mike worth the CEO of Chevron. And on the heels of last week's announced acquisition of Hess by Chevron, Mike, in an interview said, and I quote here, we're not selling a product that is evil. We're selling a product. That's good. That's good. So what is he doing there? He's addressing the fear mongering that's out there. And you could argue he took clear action, clear action to support his words, that is having his company make a $60 billion acquisition that is going to allow them to continue bettering human lives and promote human flourishing. So on that note, one Thank you to Mike worth for that. Thank you to you for listening. And of course as you find yourself out and about perhaps tonight trick or treating, be mindful of the fears that are out there that might be contrived, that might not be real, and that might derail you from having an enjoyable evening. So with that, take care and thanks again.

Leadership, Management, Coaching, Energy, Envronment, ESG, SustainabilityJoe SinnottLeadership, CoachingComment