100 Episodes, 20 Years, and 2 Energy (and Election) Detox Tools

Celebrate Election Detoxification Day with Episode 100 of The Energy Detox podcast, which lays out two tools that can help you better manage the toxicity faced by oil & gas leaders (...or pretty much anyone subjected to the last several months of election-related toxicity).

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Podcasts Listen on Spotify RSS Feed

RELATED EPISODES

“20 Marcellus-Inspired Ways to Be a Question-Able Leader” (The Energy Detox, Episode 97)

This company pioneered the Marcellus with its frac of the Renz #1 well in October 2004.

What is Range Resources?

To honor 20 years of shale development that helped save Western PA from economic jeopardy, this Jeopardy!-inspired episode of The Energy Detox asks 20 questions that 1) highlight the story of the first Marcellus frac, and 2) provide practical ways to unleash the full potential of your stakeholders.

“Securing Sustainable Transitions of Power” (The Energy Detox, Episode 17)

While the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 were inexcusable, indefensible, and counter-productive, it remains important for you as a leader to ask whether you might be settling for “peaceful” transitions in your own life when what you and your stakeholders actually need is a little bit of (lawful and non-violent) disruption.

And in this Season 1 finale of The Energy Detox (recorded November 2020), you’ll be encouraged to ask:

1) "In what ways am I unwittingly sabotaging my chances of long-term success because of short-term (and misguided) pressure from my stakeholders?" and

2) “How are the hundreds of discrete ‘transitions of power’ I make each day unwittingly draining my precious time and energy?”

To help you answer those questions, we’ll weave together examples from sports, parenting, the global “energy transition,” corporate mergers & acquisitions, and—of course—from the Trump/Biden presidential transition.

Transcript

(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)

Happy election detoxification day, and welcome to the energy detox, where today we're not just celebrating the end of all the election related advertisements and phone calls and text messages and flyers, but today we're also celebrating the 100th episode of the energy detox. And if you're wondering why I, Joe Sinnott would choose to record and release an episode of this podcast the morning after the election, when you and me and a lot of other people probably already ingested enough media over the last couple of hours, you're already working on probably a lot less sleep than you need. And again, the last thing you'd probably want to check out is some sort of leadership podcast. Well, if you are curious what that question is, or even if you're not, I'm gonna tell you why I'm doing that here this morning, and it's because one of the two main tools that we've talked about here on the energy detox over the last four and a half years has been timeliness.

00:57

In fact, about a third of the episodes of the energy detox have been recorded live first thing in the morning, connecting headlines from the energy industry with relevant leadership tools that you can deploy right away, because that timeliness piece, that freshness piece, is one of the things that can help differentiate you as a leader. Because there's enough stale tactics that you can use. There's enough scripted, teleprompter esque things that you can deploy to help become a more effective leader. But nothing is more impactful than being that leader who can take timely, decisive action. And what do I mean by that? Well, as an executive coach, I see plenty of leaders who are very good, especially in this industry, at making quick decisions and acting in fighting fires. You know, 24/7 they have no problem working in a timely manner, but when it comes to getting feedback, when it comes to maybe making some of those more difficult decisions regarding the makeup of their team, or something about the strategic direction of their team, they struggle.

02:00

And so today, I want you to ask yourself, what are some of the things that you may have been unconsciously unwittingly kicking, you know, sort of down the road and waiting on when you could act right away? What are some of the feedback items that you say, you know? What? Let me think about this a little bit more, you know. And let me give it a couple days, or maybe even a couple weeks before I revisit this with this person, because, again, you might have the very best of intentions to say, I want more data. I want to form a better picture. I want to choose my words. But as you know, if you have any sort of toxicity that needs to be addressed between you and perhaps an employee or a customer or a colleague, the longer you allow it to sit, what happens? It festers, it grows, it becomes toxic. And the antidote to that is being as timely as possible, as fresh as possible, acting on your intentions as quickly as possible. And again, that concept, of course, is not unique to me. It's not unique to the energy detox. There's a concept out there called the law of diminishing intent. Lodi. This was something that was developed several years ago by a guy named Jim Rohn and then picked up by John Maxwell. I learned about it first from a business coach that I was working with. But this concept, Lodi, the law of diminishing intent, it suggests that the longer you go between having some decent idea, knowing that you should do something, and then actually acting upon it. Well, the less likely it is to happen, in some cases, the less impact that it might have. And so ask yourself, in what ways are you violating this Lodi principle, especially when it comes to providing feedback and timely messages that your stakeholders desperately want from you, and when it comes to the election, which, again, I think, like a lot of you, I'm relieved in many ways that it's over, but the election, again, gave me an opportunity over the last several months to answer questions that my children had in a very timely manner. I didn't have any excuse to say, well, you know what? Maybe we'll talk about some of these heavy topics later. When your child asks a pointed question after being exposed to one of many advertisements or billboards or whatever, it's that opportunity to give feedback in the moment, fresh, honest and impactful. So take that same idea from this election and apply it in your day to day activities. As a leader in this industry. And moving on from the timeliness piece, what's that second tool? What's that second tactic that I wanted to focus on today, of all the different tools that we can draw on from the prior 99 episodes of the energy detox and from my 20 years in this industry, well, what is that one tool or second tool to focus on?

04:40

Well, it's antifragility. Again, anti fragile not being a word that I came up with. In fact, it comes from this book here, anti fragile from Nassim Talib, a great book, a great concept, again, that builds on not just this idea of finding silver linings. You know, if the candidate and whatever races you are you were rooting for didn't come. Through last night. Well, again, you know, some might say, well, you can find some silver linings. But it's more than that. It's saying, hey, what do I like about this fact that, again, my candidate lost? What do I like about the fact that, you know, things didn't go my way? How? How does I wind up stronger? Because, again, there were some disappointment last night. And certainly for I don't know, as the votes come in here, you know, 80, 90 million people that voted for Kamala Harris, who will not be the next president united states, certainly there's some disappointment there. But for those people, again, it's not just a matter of looking for silver linings. It's a matter of saying, all right, how do I how do I emerge in an anti fragile manner? How do I emerge stronger and so too, again, going back on the election and maybe drawing on my own experience with my children, you know, thinking about the fact that this election all the all the again, the negativity and the toxicity gave me an opportunity to say, Hey, let me not just shield my kids from this, of course. But again, look at this as an opportunity to have conversations, as I said before, that I might not normally have with them. That's the ability to say, hey, what I like about this. I keep saying what I like about this, because, again, I think that's an offshoot of anti fragility to force yourself to say, hey in this environment. Well, sure you might be disappointed. Well, what takeaways Can you have that help you emerge stronger? And this is very different. And again, if you're familiar with this book, if you're familiar with the author, you know that he draws a distinction between anti fragility and resiliency, because it's more than just resiliency. Again, if you listen to the coverage last night of Donald Trump, as he again became clear and clear that he would be the President of United States, and if you stayed up like me, stayed up like me until three o'clock to hear what he had to say, you certainly get that sense that he has been resilient, clearly. But is it more than that, or the fact that again, he was shot and dragged through the mud and all of these various attacks on him is just not a matter of making it through all of those things and surviving. But some might argue it's a matter of being anti fragile, emerging stronger than he would have been otherwise, even if he had just eked out a victory. Was his victory? Stronger, more powerful because of all of those attacks and that negativity and again, bringing it back to you in the energy industry, as the energy industry is attacked, and certainly will continue to be attacked, how do those attacks help make our industry stronger, not just survive and advance, but stronger? So kind of building on that. Again, the question for you is, as you go through today, as you go through the rest of your career, how do you make sure that you're not just settling for resiliency and getting back up when you fall down, figuratively or again literally, in the case of Donald Trump after being shot a couple months ago? But how do you actually emerge stronger? That's one of the many differences between sustainable leaders in our industry and those who are happy to just make it to another day.

08:02

So with those two tools in mind, and again, this being a milestone episode, I would be remiss not to take a couple more minutes here and again, not violate the, perhaps the timeliness of things, and spend a little bit of time talking about the last, well, not just the last five years of my coaching experience here the last four and a half years of the energy detox podcast, but really draw upon the last 20 years of my time in the industry for no other reason then my time in the industry arguably started the day after Election Day, 20 years ago, in 2004

08:40

shortly after it was announced and declared that George W Bush would be repeating his stint as president there after defeating John Kerry. Well, a couple hours after that, I found myself headed off to a wireline location down in Texas, because I was down there for a multi day interview, which ultimately led to my first job in the oil field. Again, I knew nothing about the oil field heading down to Houston, there 20 years ago, and it was that first morning right about now, where, again, we had a load up on a bus with all a couple, I don't know, dozen or so other interview candidates, and head off to a wire line location. And that was my first true taste of the oil and gas industry. Again, 20 years ago, the day after election day, 2004 and again, why? Why do I bring that up? Well, a couple different reasons. First and foremost, of course, here in western Pennsylvania, the center of the political universe for the last couple of months, and again, even last night. Of course, as the returns came in, we are celebrating 20 years of the Marcellus Shale. In fact, later on today, assuming I still have enough energy to make it through the day, operating on about an hour and a half of sleep, I will be at an event along with other people in our industry that is focused on the 20 year anniversary of Range Resources, fracking. Renz, number one well in Washington County, Pennsylvania, about 10 days before the election in 2004 so unbeknownst to me, while I was in Texas trying to figure out what the oil and gas industry was 10 days before that moment, something happened here in western Pennsylvania that would ultimately color my career, spending 11 years up here with EQT, watching as EQT went from a ho hum producer up here to what was, for some period of time, the largest producer of natural gas the United States. I was privileged to watch as again, that spark, that range resources created there, turned into the Marcellus boom that I had a front row seat for, again, completely unbeknownst to me, 20 years ago. And I share this story again, that sort of that unique timing and the timeliness for another reason. That's because, as I sat on that mini bus there, shuttle bus bringing us to location from the hotel that we were staying at, I remember one line in particular that really sums up how a lot of us are feeling today on this again, day after the election day. And that is this feeling that, Hey, you, if you made the conscious decision to stay up last night, you still got to get up. You still got to move forward, especially if you're in the oil and gas industry, there's really no excuse. And one of the interviewers that was on that trip speaking to a bunch of very, very tired college students who made the again mistake, you might argue, of staying up very late consuming several beverages in the hotel as the election returns came in, and then again, having to be out the door at six o'clock to get this shuttle bus.

11:42

And unfortunately, one of those interview candidates didn't even make it, because, again, it was a very long night. But I digress, what was this line that has stuck with me ever since? Well, it's if you want to go out with the boys, you got to wake up with the men. And again, I remember him saying that multiple times on this trip where, again, a lot of us were not feeling too great that day, and we're on this bumpy bus ride off to a wireline location somewhere in Texas. And this guy's saying, again, if you want to go out with the boys, you got to wake up with the men, and ignoring the gendered language there that he used, if that doesn't speak to the importance of timeliness and being there at the ready, which is important for anybody in our industry, but especially for leaders. Well, I don't know what does, and if it doesn't, speak to again, the anti fragility, to say, hey, look, you know, this experience of being super tired, this is what we're looking for. You know, in some ways, that experience of, again, you know, staying out with the boys, and then having to get up with the men, although there were females involved in the interview process there as well. You know, that is one of those things that has colored my experience over the last 20 years of my career, and it's one of the things that, again, I've seen set apart sustainable leaders in our industry from those who maybe don't exude this measure of timeliness and anti fragility. So ask yourself today again, as you try to make your way through the next however many hours, you need to stay conscious. You know, in what ways are you helping other people move forward and act in a timely manner? Move away from the teleprompters, move away from the scripts, move away from the excuses to kick the can down the road. How are you helping them move forward?

13:21

What are you doing to give them the tools to sustain the momentum that, again, especially here in western Pennsylvania, the Marcellus, has been able to sustain for the last two decades. And so with that, again, couple things. First of all, if you're heading to that event tonight, you know, put on by the Washington County Chamber of Commerce, sponsored in part by the Marcellus Shale coalition and Range Resources. Again, love to have a conversation about the importance of bringing in timely headlines, like I'm sure tonight we'll bring in the timeliness of the Cecil Township setback requirements that were passed. That's essentially a frack ban in that Township. But again, we'll save that for another episode of the energy detox. But the question is, again, how do you take those headlines and make sure that they're not disconnected, that they're very much connected to the same types of challenges, the same types of you know, discord and toxicity, that post threats, but also give you an opportunity to stand out and differentiate yourself as an individual leader in this company, in this industry, or certainly as a company in this industry.

14:26

And so with that, thank you. Thank you, as always, for tuning in to the energy talks, especially again, if you've already consumed plenty of election related media and you've chosen to actively listen or watch this 100th episode of the energy talks, I sincerely thank you for making that time. I welcome your feedback as we kick off the next 100 episodes of the energy detox. And I hope you have an excellent rest of this election detoxification day.