Do you really catch more flies with honey than vinegar?
While there have been some undeniable shifts in leadership styles within the energy industry, your vision of a "stereotypical" oil and gas leader probably still leans more towards vinegar than honey when it comes to communication and motivation styles. And in some cases, a bit of vinegar is absolutely necessary to generate a sense of urgency and momentum.
However, as several observers of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference have pointed out, all of the vinegar pouring out of the mouths of world leaders this week may be undermining their climate goals...especially when such toxic language isn't met with the innovation and forward-thinking that their stakeholders are clamoring for.
That being said, this live episode of The Energy Detox will take some lessons learned from those world leaders to help you uncover ways that your communication styleโbe it flavored with honey, vinegar, or some carcinogenic artificial sweetenerโis hindering your desire for long-term, sustainable success.
The headline: ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐จ๐ฆ ๐๐ง๐ ๐ ๐ฅ๐จ๐จ๐ฆ ๐จ๐ ๐๐๐26 ๐ฆ๐๐ค๐๐ฌ ๐ข๐ญ ๐๐๐ฌ๐ฒ ๐ญ๐จ ๐ฌ๐ฐ๐ข๐ญ๐๐ก ๐จ๐๐ โ ๐ฐ๐ ๐ง๐๐๐ ๐ก๐จ๐ฉ๐ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ง๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ๐๐ ๐๐ฆ๐๐ง๐ญ (by Simon Kelner of i News UK)
The goal: to (๐)๐ซ๐จ๐ฐ, (๐)๐ซ๐จ๐ญ๐๐๐ญ, ๐๐ง๐ (๐)๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐ข๐ง success by pondering these 3 questions throughout your day:
๐ก Are you leading yourself and others toward something positive or away from something negative?
๐ก Are you protecting an intermediate goal at the expense of your ultimate objective?
๐ก How long will your current messaging keep your stakeholders interested and motivated...and awake?
For an expanded discussion on how you can avoid over-simplifying your leadership approach and undermining your long-term goals, check out this "Keep it Sustainable, Stupid" episode of The Energy Detox.
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Hello, and welcome to another live edition of the energy detox a petroleum based blend of leadership conversations guaranteed to boost your professional and personal output by flushing away the hidden and often toxic barriers to peak performance. I'm your host, Joe Sinnott, a chemical engineer, executive coach and 16 year energy industry veteran helping you tap into the same resources, fueling today's most successful and sustainable leaders. And as we begin today's conversation here on November 3 2021, in the United States, we have a new world series champion, we have a new governor, Governor elect in the state of Virginia, we have several new mayors elect in New York City in Pittsburgh and other cities around the country. But what we don't necessarily have on the global stage, his new messaging around climate change and the solutions to what many leaders are calling an existential threat. And so today, we turn to a headline related to the ongoing cop 26 conference in Scotland. And this headline focuses on the relatively toxic messaging, if you will, that leaders have been using a cop 26 to talk about the doom and gloom that is facing our world if action isn't taken regarding the climate. And as always, we're going to use this headline not to opine on the merits of what's in the actual article, but more to help you make more conscious better decisions about your leadership styles, the way that you're communicating the way that you might be injecting toxic language and toxic motivation styles and toxic approaches to leadership that are undoing some of the progress that you've made thus far in your career, and that are unwittingly hurting the progress that you hope to continue making for yourself, for your teams, for your organization, and even for your family. So with that being said, we're going to use today's headline to, as we've been doing, ask three questions, all of which are aimed to help you grow, protect and sustain success. And while this GPS analogy, this GPS framework that I use, and all the coaching that I do is, is ubiquitous. Again, if you've worked with me, and you've seen my material, today, it's especially important because we are going to focus exclusively on the need to move towards some ultimate objective. Which brings us to the first question today, which
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is, are you leading yourself and others towards something positive or away from something negative? What is your ultimate objective, I would hope that it is something positive, it is something that you can get people excited about. I've had two conversations already this week with people who are either building a business and somebody else who already has a business, and it's somewhat stagnant, and they're looking to build motivation and excitement among their folks. And they recognize Well, the best way to do that, of course, is to have some high level objective that is exciting, that can engender, you know, a sense of excitement, and a willingness to go the extra mile because you're moving towards something positive. So the question for you is, are you moving towards something positive? Or are you so focused on as some of the leaders were this week in Scotland, the negative aspects of, of what's out there and the negative realities of what's out there. And again, we can look at some of the specific language that was used, you can talk about Boris Johnson saying, hey, you know, we're what, one minute to midnight, in terms of the doomsday clock, you had Archbishop over there who was making, you know, Nazi and Holocaust parallels, which obviously, he very quickly and strongly backed away from, you had other language here, as I look at the article about, you know, digging their own graves and Jeff Besos, talking about, you know, we need to stand together to protect our world, again, against all of this, this doom and gloom, this negativity, which might be necessary to help build a sense of urgency. But is that really what people need to want to continue hearing right? What is the ultimate objective? Is it merely to put an end to this doom and gloom? Is it merely to stop whatever hazards are out there? Or is it actually to lift people towards something more positive? And as we pointed out earlier this week, fortunately, there are people who are questioning in relatively polite and uplifting way but questioning some of the approaches that have been taken at COP 26. The biggest of those, of course, is Alex Epstein. He continues to focus on human flourishing that has been his, you know, his, his primary, his his guiding light, his ultimate positive objective. But when you hear the language of those leaders, you don't hear too much about human flourishing. You don't hear much about lifting people out of poverty. Yes, you hear about the impacts that climate might be having on people and the costs, the tangible costs that it might be, you know, causing in terms of GDP and countries that need to invest more in mitigation measures regarding the climate. But again, they tend to focus on the negatives. Very rarely do you hear an emphasis, let alone an overemphasis on the positives, which is lifting people up moving people towards a state of flourishing and prosperity and moving forward? And so again, ask yourself, are you helping people move forward toward some ultimate objective that everybody can rally around that you can then work backwards from? Or are you so focused on some intermediate goals, and this intermediate doom and gloom that you lose the ability to innovate and think clearly, and again, almost reverse engineer what your ultimate objectives are? Which brings us to the next question, which is, are you protecting an intermediate goal at the expense of your ultimate objective? So as we just said, in the climate world, is your goal merely to reduce carbon emissions and carbon content in the atmosphere? Or as they agreed to yesterday, reduce the amount of methane in the atmosphere? If so, that might have positive results. But more importantly, is it shifting your focus away from the ultimate goal, which as we've said multiple times already today, and as we've talked about, repeatedly, on the energy detox, the ultimate goal should not be this intermediate objective. It should be helping people moving people forward, you as a leader, what is your job, it's to help move people forward towards some ultimate objective. That's the idea. That's the idea of this GPS mentality, you're moving people towards some ultimate objective. And to do that, at each step along the way, you need to help them grow, protect, and sustain success, but you need to protect the things that actually matter that matter in the long term, not put all of your time and energy and money protecting an intermediate step. Instead, focus on that ultimate objective, and then work backwards. And when you do so, you are more likely to put energy and money towards innovative solutions, innovative energy solutions, putting your money towards some new real green technology that will far surpass the existing technology that exists when it comes to wind and solar and other avenues that are out there investing in long term solutions when it comes to nuclear energy, and shifting towards small scale nuclear projects that, you know, might look very different from what we've done in the past regarding nuclear, but that could have long term, sustainable benefits for humanity. So again, ask yourself as you go through today, what are you protecting? Are you protecting the things that really matter? Or are you protecting the long term objectives that you can actually rally people around? And the final question today for you, is how long will your current messaging keep your stakeholders interested and motivated and awake? And yes, that might be a subtle dig at President Biden, who was caught snoozing a little bit during cop 26. Although in fairness, if you listen to whatever was going on in the background, and whatever talk or speech or presentation was being given, I In fairness, I don't know that I could blame him for nodding off, you know, five hours removed from his timezone in the midst of what again, continue to be pretty uneventful, and non different for lack of a better term messaging. And that's what we're talking about today, if you were sitting in a room, and you heard the same messages over and over, and over and over again, and they didn't seem to be moving you towards anything new and innovative and progressive, I would imagine you would start to fall asleep to in fact, Greta Thunberg, who again, we talked about on Monday, she led off the conference, by talking about her, her quote that has been repeated quite often is blah, blah, blah, that's what she was expecting from this was blah, blah, blah, much of the same, no action. And again, regardless of what you think the action should be, or whether you agree with Greta Thunberg or not, she made a very good point, which is a lot of this is blah, blah, blah. A lot of this is sleep inducing. And again, because it often lacks a focus on the bigger picture, the ultimate picture, which is helping people helping the billions of people who would love who would love access to reliable, affordable, sustainable, plentiful energy, who do not have it right now. That is an ultimate objective objective that you can rally people around. And if you're not coming back to that, and if you're overly focused on the doom and gloom Well, again, it's not sustainable. And so to ask yourself, you might not have anything to do with climate or climate change. Although assuming that you are indeed in the energy industry, there's a very good chance that you are directly related to helping improve the climate, including improve the world and reduce pollution because you are part of an industry that takes all of this very seriously. You know, isn't the the doom and gloom bad guy that, again, many leaders this week are making the oil and gas industry out to be? All of that being said, regardless of what industry you're in what role you have, take a look at your messaging, listen to what's coming out of your mouth. Do you have a balanced approach between some of the doom and gloom that's necessary to get people's attention and pull them forward? And are you balancing that with the positive messaging that is necessary to bring people on board to whatever it is that you're trying to achieve? Because if you lose sight of that long term focus, as cliched as it might be, it is not sustainable. So again, I encourage you go back one, get clarity on what your ultimate objective is to ask yourself if you are protecting some intermediate steps that might be necessary, but aren't an end in and of themselves. And then finally, ask yourself how you're conveying this to your stakeholders. And so with all that being said, I appreciate you taking the time this morning, or afternoon or wherever you happen to be in the world to listen to this. And hopefully, my messaging is not as repetitive as some of the messaging that's out there that caused Greta Thunberg to sum up the the cop 26 In terms of blah, blah, blah. But regardless, I appreciate the time and effort that you've put into listening to me on this episode of the energy detox. And I encourage you to listen to future episodes here as we continue going live at 630. Eastern, each morning or again, depending on your timezone maybe one minute to midnight, on the doomsday clock, according to Boris Johnson. And if you're looking for some older episodes, I encourage you to go to the link that's in the show description to an episode of the energy detox from last year where we expand upon this topic of focus on focusing on the long term ultimate objectives when it comes to the often vague term sustainability and not over simplifying your messages not over simplifying your approach. So again, I encourage you to listen to that episode. I
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certainly welcome your feedback on that and all of these episodes. And as always, if you have any questions or comments or feedback while we're live, I welcome those two. And in fact, I'm happy to see that we do have some some engagement today this morning from Andreas who says In summary populism, again, populism, what is it? Well, it's it's, it's motivating the people, your stakeholders, and in some cases, telling them not just what they want to hear, again, we can you know, on the heels of Election Day, we can look back five years ago to Donald Trump's election, why was somebody with a populist message resonating so much that he pulled a big upset? Why, in some ways, did the Virginia race wind up in an upset where the heavy favorite from just a couple months ago last? Well, in many ways it's populism. It's not just telling people what they want to hear, but it's, it's hitting them with what ultimately matters. And there'll be plenty of post mortems on the Virginia race, just as there were years of post mortems on the 2016 presidential race, and what is it likely to come down to well, the governor elect youngling, he was able to motivate in large part, residential, suburban women, because he hit them where their focus which is on their children, he focused heavily on social issues. He didn't just talk about, you know, the talking points he didn't take, you know, some of the standard, stale neoconservative Republican talking points that may not work anymore, he certainly separated himself from his counterpart. And he hit them with stuff that isn't just, you know, trendy and sexy. He hit them with popular with his constituents, which is the children. And again, coming back to climate change. It's easy to say, Oh, we're gonna focus on the children by, you know, cooling the earth? Well, no, we're focused on the children by giving them the Putin the opportunities that at least us here in the developed world have had to have education and grow and develop. And so too, you want to talk to the billions of people around the world who don't have access to education, and to clean air and drinking water and all of those things, again, hit them with what's popular in their hearts, which is their children, the long term growth and development, you're not just going to win them over by saying we're going to prevent, you know, flooding, and we're going to prevent drought or we're gonna prevent XYZ. That might be a piece of things. But if you're not balancing up that bouncing out that message with the long term approach, well, again, you're asking for trouble. So again, Andrea say I appreciate the the feedback. They're here this morning. And then again, Jace, Jace appreciates me this morning. Well, thank you, Jason. I appreciate you watching. I appreciate Andreas is his feedback as well. And again, I appreciate all of you for listening, watching, reading the transcript after the fact whatever the case might be, and certainly I hope that you have a great day, a positive day and I hope that these questions that you can ask throughout your day will truly help you continue to grow, protect and sustain success for yourself and for your stakeholders.