When was the last time you re-stacked your professional building blocks?
When was the last time you re-stacked your professional building blocks?
Well, regardless of your answer, this live episode of The Energy Detox will use yet another headline about the escalating cost of energy in Europe to help you revisit the most fundamental elements needed for you and your stakeholders to sustain professional momentum heading into the winter.
The headline: 𝐁𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐬: 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐭 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞'𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐲 𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 (Reuters)
The goal: to (𝐆)𝐫𝐨𝐰, (𝐏)𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 (𝐒)𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 success by pondering these 3 questions throughout your day:
💡 What are the critical building blocks for continued growth?
💡 Who are the people you are tasked with protecting?
💡 How can you mitigate the effects of professional and personal volatility?
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Hello and welcome to 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 will continue doing on these morning versions of the daily detox, we're going to take one headline from around the world related to the energy industry and tied in to some specific leadership challenges and opportunities that you are likely facing and that I faced when I work with leaders like you each and every day. And that headline today comes from France, where energy costs are going up. That's the case, of course, around the world, particularly in Europe. And your article today from Reuters focuses on one specific family and the fact that, hey, the leader of this family, who has five children is continuing to struggle to pay his bills. Again, not a very unusual story. But it begs the question, well, what is it that is so critical that is causing him to spend the limited money he has on utility bills. And of course, the fact is that, well, energy is critical, keeping the lights on keeping the house warm, especially as most of the world moves into winter here. And so today, we're going to take this headline, this opportunity to talk about some of the most basic things that you are tasked with doing, maybe figuratively, keeping the lights on, if you will, keeping your career moving forward, keeping your team moving forward, or again, in the case of this family, keeping food on the table, keeping a warm house, paying for fuel to get from A to B unless you're taking public transportation, whatever the case might be. Inflation is real. Energy costs are real. And at the end of the day, there's some very basic things that you need to continue doing. And again, for a family, those basic things are straightforward food, medicine, heat, clothing. But for you and your career, the question is, what are those basic things? And are you continuing to focus on them? So the theme today is really identifying those building blocks that you might need to revisit, and perhaps re stack to ensure that you're focused on all of those things that are non negotiable. And so the first question today is, what are those critical building blocks for continued growth for you. And again, from a physical standpoint, with wellness coaches, and certainly with a focus on maintaining some, some physical health, those building blocks could be as simple as good food, and sleep. And, you know, maybe some quiet time once in a while to clear your thoughts, whatever those might be. But moving to you, as you lead teams, and you lead companies, what are those building blocks? Well, some of them might be the figurative building blocks of integrity and honesty and openness. And empathy is, of course, a popular one today. But beyond that, what are the building blocks that you need to ensure are in place each and every day, especially when you're leading a team who's looking to you? Because just as that family and friends and families around the world, have children looking up to parents who kind of expect to be fed and clothed and have the heat on etc? What are the people that you're working with? And what are the people who are working for you? And who were the people you're working for? What are they looking to you to get? What are the basic things that they need to move forward? And again, that's a question you need to ask yourself, it's a very common question that I asked and that folks that I work with answer, so that we're not just focused on some of the distractions that are out there. And some of the well meaning downstream things that we want to be doing and need to be doing in the stresses of our jobs. Now we need to pull it back to what are the basic building blocks? And so again, I'm not gonna answer that question for you. Ask yourself, what are the most basic things that your team is looking for from you? Is it time? Is it attention? Is it clarity? And are you giving those things to them? And if not, why not? You have excuses? Is it because you feel like just you know, like the rising cost of energy, it's, it's unaffordable, or we're gonna have to turn the thermostat sat down? I can't, I can't figure tively give you the energy. I can't give you that time. I can't give that attention because of all of these other things, all these other excuses, or do you have an opportunity to make time to increase Attention that you're giving to your stakeholders. And again, this applies equally well, not just in the workplace, but also at home. If you have children, it can be very difficult to give them time and attention. But those are the building blocks that you need to find a way to give to them. So again, ask yourself, what are those building blocks? are you prioritizing them in the right order? Are you re stacking them?
05:22
If you will? And if not, how might you go about obtaining them? Because we turn to this article again from Reuters. Obviously, the government is looking at ways to inject money to help people pay for their bills that, at least according to the article, in some cases are three times higher, from an energy standpoint, what they were before COVID. So again, compounding the fact that subject of the article is also happens to be unemployed, which which makes matters even worse. But you know, there are still mechanisms out there, for him to cut down on his costs. They talked about lowering the thermostat, when the kids are at school, they talk about other ways that obviously you can save money to help pay for those needs. So again, what are you doing in your own career in your own life as a leader, to identify those building blocks, re stack them and ensure that what you're stacking is, of course, somewhat sustainable and isn't going to crumble the next time, there's some some excuse that comes along. That being said, we've talked about the people that you're trying to move forward and work with, again, whether that's a team at work, or whether that's your family. So the next question here is, from a protection standpoint, who are the people that you're tasked with protecting? Again, in the case of this article, we're talking about a father who is focused on his children, it's pretty straightforward. And if you are a manager and you have a team, again, it's typically fairly straightforward. Your job isn't necessarily protect them. But your job is to help them get the tools that they need, so that they can continue moving forward in a sustainable manner. And maybe that's some basic form of protection, if you will. But what is protection? Protection, again, is having those basic things in place that ensure that outside hazards are less likely to throw you off course and injure you in some way, figuratively or literally. But the question is, Who are you trying to protect? Who is it that is relying upon you? And go beyond the obvious answer of again, your teammates are those who might be working for you? Who is it that you are tasked with impacting? And when you start to think about the second, third, fourth degree impacts, at the end of the day, if you happen to be, say, in government, or even an energy, you start to think about that father in France with his family? Yes, it's easy to say when you go through your day to day and you're, you know, if you happen to be in the energy industry, and you're making decisions, and you're you're helping introduce energy into the world and make it hopefully affordable and accessible. And all those things. Well, in some ways, again, downstream, you are in some ways, helping to protect the integrity of that family and the health of that family. And so to for government officials who make all kinds of proclamations and decisions and rules. Obviously, they have constituents, and very often it's the second, third fourth degree impacts that they're impacting. So. And the question for you is, think beyond just your immediate team? Are you helping your team protect their reputation with, say, their customers or their other stakeholders, internally, your ex, apparently, and in turn, are you helping your customers move forward and flourish with their stakeholders. And while again, it might not feel like it's your job to do so it's very important to have a vision of all of those impacts and how they roll from person to person to person, so that you have a better picture of the decisions that you're making and the fundamentals that you're focused on. Because again, when you're able to work backwards and reverse engineer things, and understand who your downstream customers are, for lack of a better term, if you can, becomes a heck of a lot easier to avoid being distracted by things that can throw you off track. And the final question for you today is how can you mitigate the effects of professional and personal volatility? Because in many ways, what are we talking about whether it's the cost of home heating bills that are going up and down? And obviously from a seasonal standpoint, that will be going up? For everyone here in the northern northern hemisphere, as we head into winter? How do you mitigate those feelings of volatility, the impacts of volatility? No one answer, of course, but are you asking yourself different ways to do it? Are you throwing up your hands and saying, Well,
09:27
I work in energy, it's a volatile industry, I'm just going to deal with it. There's something to be said for that. But are you least asking the question of how to mitigate that how to sustain things. So to again, when you're leading a team, and you're faced with the demands of quarterly earnings calls and annual performance reviews and mergers and acquisitions and all of the things that can cause gyrations? Well, are you asking about ways that you might be able to mitigate that volatility, not eliminate it? Because again, a lot of leaders, they want to jump to a solution and try to solve the problem. Try to try to solve the issue. Don't make it go away. Again. And even if you don't think you're one of those people, I guarantee that in the conversation that I have with people, it comes out, there's this this sense sometimes that either they can do something about it, they're gonna try to solve it and push the problems away, or on the flip side, they're gonna, they're, they're basically just gonna try to deal with it. And I don't say ignore the problem, but plow through, are you asking perhaps, up to mitigate it, how to live with the realities of volatility, while also perhaps shaving off the peaks and the valleys that come with, again, an industry like ours, and quite frankly, a world that we live in, where things are going to continue going up and down? And, you know, and, you know, causing us to face challenges? So again, that final question today, how might you mitigate the impacts of volatility, not eliminate, not just deal with, but how to make it more sustainable so that the people around you, the people that you're tasked with protecting, can continue moving forward. And so that as you identify those building blocks, and you re stack them, you re stack them in a way that is less likely to cause them to crumble down. So with all that being said, again, I continue to thank you for enjoying, or at least listening to or tolerating yet another edition of the Daily energy detox, where we continue to take one energy focused headline from from the morning news and tie it into some of the leadership challenges and questions that I deal with on a daily basis when working with leaders like you in the energy industry. So with that, I hope you have an excellent day. I encourage you as always to send me any headlines or news that you might have before 6am, Eastern Time or 12 noon, France time, if you will, for consideration for this morning conversation. So again, thank you very much. Have a great day and take care