How Do Frac Fears, Election Ads, and Haunted Houses Fuel Sustainable Leaders?
Are oil & gas workers "fearless" or simply desensitized by constant employer & industry surprises?
Are fear-focused campaign ads (and fear-focused management styles) a sign of desperation?
Are Marcellus-based external affairs teams the ideal model of how industry leaders can proactively address fears and division among their internal stakeholders?
Find out in this Halloween episode of The Energy Detox.
RELATED EPISODES
“Finding and Fixing the Fossil Fuel Fear Factors Fracturing Your Organization” (The Energy Detox, Episode 86)
"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 2023 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
“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.
Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Happy Halloween, and welcome to episode 99 of The Energy Detox, where you and I, Joe Sinnott, will dive into three distinct types of fear that you face as a leader in the energy industry.
And to drive today's conversation, we're going to lean on three timely topics that all are connected in some way to fear. One of those, of course, is Halloween, a holiday that is driven in many ways by fear.
The second of those is the election, again, something that demonstrates how people use fear to motivate others, in this case, to vote for or against certain candidates.
And the third item that we're going to lean on is the ongoing fears associated with natural gas development, particularly here in western Pennsylvania.
00:49
And we're going to start with that third one and expand again upon the fears associated with our industry and the fears that you face as a leader in our industry, if for no other reason, than it gives me a chance to explain why I'm standing where I'm standing, and that is at a park about 2000 feet off the edge of a Range Resources Marcellus pad. And this park is significant, and that pad is significant to me, at least because, well, that pad is the closest Marcellus pad to where I live, and this park is one that my family and I make extensive use out of; and in fact, I think all four of my children have participated in some sort of sports here.
01:26
And in fact, the baseball field I'm standing on is one that I have coached many a T-ball game on. And heck, 20 yards in front of me is a section of the Rachel Carson trail that I've hiked with my family on many occasions. And right next to that is a stream that my family and I have splashed in and walked through and flipped rocks in and thrown rocks into again on many occasions. But what's the point? What's the significance again, of this location?
01:50
Well, the point is, when a company like Range Resources comes to an area like this, they need to proactively address the fears of the community, and they did just that several years ago, of course, when they decided to come into this area and drill and ultimately complete the wells that are in close proximity, again, to where I'm standing right now. In fact, again, if my triangulation worked out correctly with the publicly available data, there is a well bore, at least from a bird's eye view, about 300 feet from home plate where I'm standing, albeit it's also about six or 7000 feet below, so it's not really 300 feet away. But again, I digress. What's the point today? Well, it's not to get into the details of the particular operations of range.
02:30
It's to talk about how the way in which companies like Range have responded to the fears of communities over the last 20 years, since Range frac’ed that Renz #1 well in Washington County, kicking off the Marcellus boom, the way in which those companies respond should inspire you as a leader, to respond to the fears of your stakeholders that you have to deal with on a daily basis. Because while range and again, ranges, peer companies will hold town halls and obviously attend township meetings and address the individual concerns of neighbors when it comes to traffic or noise or light or whatever, you are likely missing opportunities to do the same thing when it comes to your employees or your colleagues or your bosses. You're likely missing opportunities to proactively share information that you know they're going to want eventually. So instead of waiting for them to come to you and then defensively having to respond, what are the things that you can do? What are the things that you can share to boost transparency?
03:31
And now transparency, again, is one of those many buzz words that are thrown around that again, I'm not so sure your average leader actually deploys. So let me ask you this, why not take a page from CNX Resources, again, a peer company of Range Resources, because CNX about, oh, I don't know, over a year ago, they kicked off this Radical Transparency campaign where they went above and beyond the basic requirements that companies have been doing again for well over a decade. That of course, being filing for permits and putting public information out there that allowed me to again calculate how far the well bore is, or at least one of the well bores from home plate, gives me a chance to again go pull this FracFocus report and see the chemicals that Range Resources actually pump down whole from their well pad. That's 2000 feet from where I'm standing. Well CNX resources said, You know what? We're going to go above and beyond that. We're going to put air monitors on some of our monitors on some of our locations, and we're going to make that information available in real time to anybody.
04:29
Well, what can you do to mirror that same approach? Because I run into a lot of leaders who know that they have information that would be valuable to share, but they're scared to do it. They feel like they can't share it, maybe it's seen as secret or proprietary, or maybe their audience won't be able to handle it, or they'll misconstrue it, to which I say, Well, what are all the ways to address their fears without sharing proprietary information? What are all the ways to at least acknowledge their fears and then point them to certain things that are in the public? Domain, again, much like Frac Focus and all kinds of other information that's out there, from an industry standpoint, even in people's personal lives. Again, when you're talking about children, hey, what fears and concerns do they have? Because certainly there are some topics that, yeah, maybe you don't want to address with your children, but this isn't some black or white thing. It takes a little bit of innovation to say, hey, look what are all the ways I can address their fears without having to dive into a topic that's maybe a little heavy for a young child.
05:27
So again, ask yourself, what can you do to channel the stuff that our industry has been doing for two decades, to boost transparency, to proactively address the fears of the community? What can you do to proactively address the fears of your community in the workplace.
05:45
That being said, let's move on to the other topic, or one of the other two topics we talked about, and that, of course, is the election, which, again, we're only five days away from election day. I think that's most people could agree. That's probably a good thing, if for no other reason than you've been inundated, especially if you live here in western Pennsylvania, with lots of fear based advertising, whether it's mailers, whether it's radio advertisements, television advertisements, again, in this home stretch, we seem to see an Increase in fear based political ads. And why? Well, at its root, again, fear is being used to try to motivate people to take some sort of action, that is to vote for or against a certain candidate. But the other side of the equation is that this increase in fear based advertising could be seen by some political commentators as a sign of desperation. And again, regardless of your political leanings and regardless of your assessment of whether fear based ads are a signal of desperation, the reality is that in the workplace, using fear or overusing fear Absolutely, can be a sign of desperation. If you're seen as somebody who doesn't have any positive tricks in your in your toolbox, if you will, mixing analogies and bags of tricks and tool boxes.
07:05
But regardless, if you don't have anything that's positive, you don't have anything that's joyful, and if all you can do is basically instill fear in others to try to get them to take some sort of action. Again, not action without regarding voting, but action regarding maybe completing a project or meeting some sort of deadline, or going above and beyond for a client, if all you have is fear to motivate people Well, again, it's very easy for people to draw a conclusion that you are desperate. You've got nothing left. And again, whether that's fair or not, you need to ask yourself, in what ways you're over using fear in, what ways are you being seen as desperate and not again, having something that's positive and so again, what do you do with that information? Well, it starts by leaning on the positives. It starts by flipping the message and saying, Well, no, look, here's what happens if we meet this deadline. Here's what happens if you go above and beyond in this project.
07:57
Here's what happens if you kind of shape up, so to speak. So don't allow this narrative to come to fruition that all you've got is fear, because in many cases, there's a good chance that you're not doing it consciously. You might not realize that you're doing it, because, hey, there's a time and a place for fear, right? Sometimes lighting a fire under somebody's rear end is the best motivator and the most appropriate motivator. But it's also important to keep in mind that typically, that's just a short term motivator, right? When it comes to the election, you know what? I don't think a lot of people that are putting out those ads really care what happens after November 5. They just have to get to November 5 and then that's it. But if you care at all about being a sustainable leader and having perhaps even some sort of legacy, well then you need to expand your bag of tricks a bit and ask yourself in what ways you might be over using fear.
08:46
That being said, let's move on to the third and final tie in between fears in the in the news and in the headlines and in current events and the fears that you face and have to navigate on a daily basis. And that is, of course, the fact that today is Halloween, and when it comes to Halloween, one thing that's interesting about fear is that most of the fear associated with Halloween is desired. People are asking for it. Heck, people pay to be scared, right? People pay to go to a haunted house or go on a haunted walk or a haunted hay ride. People want to be surprised, and many cases, people are willing to pay more and more to seek out those thrills.
09:26
Why? Because, while we've become desensitized in many ways, to fear, whether it's scary movies or whatever, again, especially this time of year, it's kind of par for the course, which kind of flips things over to you to say, All right, well, in what ways are you having to deal with the desensitization that the people around you have when it comes to fear? Have people become so used to surprises at every turn that again, their expectations are such that you know what I'm going to show up today, and I wouldn't be surprised if anything happened. Is that really the mindset that you want your people approaching each day with? No, of course not.
10:00
So, the question for you is, well, how do you address that desensitization? And I would argue it starts with the fact that, well, again, most people that you deal with, they don't want fear. It's not like on Halloween, where people are seeking out fear and paying money. No, the people that you deal with, what do they want? They don't want to be surprised. They want some measure of certainty. And so the question for you is, well, how do you give them some measure of certainty?
10:23
As we said in that first example, you know, you can't necessarily share everything with everybody. You know, there's a point where, yeah, being radically transparent makes a whole lot of sense, but there's always going to be something proprietary, something that you can't share, something that, again, you know, might be surprising to your audience. I get that, but it comes back to this idea of asking yourself, right? Well, what are all the things you can share that can give some measure of certainty? How can you positively and proactively emphasize the things that aren't changing? How can you go ahead and alleviate concerns that aren't warranted so that it doesn't snowball into this just generalized, hey, let's throw everything in there. Anything can change at any given time when that couldn't be further from the truth. Again, it's all under this umbrella of, how do you overcome the desensitization that has occurred in your organization?
11:13
And again, this is from an industry standpoint. This is what we're used to, right the ups and downs of the industry, the constant fears of layoffs, I get it, but just because it's there doesn't mean you should be using it as a crutch. Just because you're a leader in an industry and perhaps in an organization that has become desensitized to surprises and to fear at every turn, that doesn't mean you can't take steps to overcome that, to decrease fear. You can be that differentiated leader if you start by again, being inspired by Halloween, if you will, and recognizing that day to day in the office. Well, maybe today in the office, but most days again, people aren't looking to be surprised.
11:55
So that being said, how do we wrap all this up together? Well, a couple different themes. So in the three different ones, you could argue that the three different examples that we talked about three different inspirations. We started with the energy industry and shining a light proactively. Well, what is that? When we do that, well, it addresses division, right? It addresses what can be a false divide between people who have information and people who don't have information. How do you bridge that gap? How do you not just give them all the data from a radically transparent standpoint, but also help them understand it, to proactively address their fears? So again, division. The second thing that we talked about was, what desperation? How do you avoid becoming desperate or being seen as desperate because of your overuse of fear as a motivator? And the third item we talked about was, what desensitization? How do you overcome desensitization? And how do you avoid allowing yourself or others around you to use it as an excuse, to allow this whole idea that, hey, what's next? There's a surprise at every corner. How do you use those three things?
12:55
So again, division, desperation and desensitization, those are all three, things that you can overcome by asking yourself the right questions, the types of questions that we asked here on the energy detox That being said, it's not enough to just overcome those three negatives. Clearly, from a detox standpoint, we want to focus on the positive. So how do we do that here? Well, today we're going to wrap up by emphasizing the positive, at least when it comes to something that October is known for, not just for the again, the anniversary of the wrens frack by Range Resources, not just because it's the month of Halloween, not just because it's the last full month before the election.
13:36
No, let's start with something else, and that is the fact that October is healthy lung month, and it's a reminder of the importance, of course, of having healthy lungs, and in particular, those growing lungs of your children. Because when it comes to natural gas development and members in this community, what's one thing that they're concerned about? Well, again, it's what's in the air, right? What are your children breathing in? And so we're going to leave today with something positive, something uplifting, and that is the fact that a study was done that showed that up to $1 trillion of health benefits for people in Pennsylvania have been realized over the last 20 years because of natural gas development.
[See “Pennsylvanians Realize $500+ Billion in Natural Gas-Generated Public Health Benefits” from the Marcellus Shale Coalition]
In particular, our shift to natural gas from coal when it comes to power generation, and in particular, the reduction in particular matter and in perch in particular, the reduction in NOx and SOx right nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides that have increased the health of our lungs here. So again, don't just start by trying to address people's fears and say "it's okay." No.
14:38
Find those opportunities to go above and beyond, to tout the positives, to tout the reduction in respiratory ailments because of an industry like natural gas and so on that positive note again, thank you, as always, for tuning into the energy detox. I hope you join me for Episode 100 next week. And until then, have a safe and happy Halloween.