Are You Unwittingly Choosing Propaganda Over Purpose?
Are you unwittingly choosing propaganda over purpose?
To help you answer that question, this live episode of The Energy Detox will use some climate news out of China to reframe the way that you are approaching your professional and personal commitments.
The headline: China says it must consider food and energy security when curbing emissions
The source: Reuters (David Stanway and Dominique Patton)
The takeaway: Just as China says that it needs to “manage the relationship between pollution reduction and carbon reduction and energy security, industrial supply chain security, food security and normal life of the people,” you, too, should be asking how well you're balancing your core principles against potentially conflicting stakeholder demands.
The goal: to (G)row, (P)rotect, and (S)ustain success by pondering these 3 questions throughout your day:
💡 How might your short-term focus be hindering long-term growth?
💡 What are the hidden costs of protecting a flimsy narrative?
💡 What tools are you using to better connect your purpose to your people?
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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 help you 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 have access to the same leadership tools that today's most successful and sustainable leaders are using to fuel their careers to fuel their teams and to fuel their success. And today, we're kicking off the first of a morning daily detox, if you will, where we will take one relevant energy headline and tie it in to some of the same questions that you should be asking as you go through your day. And all of those questions will help you grow, protect and sustain success for yourself. And so today's headline that we're going to use is a relatively quiet announcement yesterday that China made regarding its climate goals, if you will. And it announced that it will be considering the energy security and the food security of its people as it looks to curb emissions, certainly a relatively non controversial statement, if you will, but one that begs the question of what is their ultimate purpose? And what is your ultimate purpose? Is it merely some intermediate goal like curbing emissions so that the world can be cooler and less susceptible to whatever hazards might be brought on by climate change? Or is it something greater than that? Is it to help its people grow and develop and to push forward towards some long term success, which undoubtedly, China is looking to achieve? And so the question today for you the the overarching question is, are you choosing propaganda, over some ultimate purpose, and of course, to talk about China is is something that could lead you to the question, well, whatever they say, could be propaganda in some way, shape, or form, should we believe what they're saying, when they talk about putting people ahead of some short term climate goals? Can we really take that at face value, given some of the questions about some of their their human rights abuses and some of the other things floating out there? Now, we're not going to tackle that question. Because in these daily detoxes, if you will, we're not going to dive into all of the details on the individual headline, but again, we're gonna bring it back to you. And we're going to ask you, what are some of the propaganda esque items that are coming out of your mouth on a daily basis that are reflecting something that's not entirely true, and perhaps masking the ultimate purpose that you should be striving towards? And so to help you do that, again, the structure for this live episode that we'll continue doing each morning, taking one headline is to then in turn, ask three questions. And each of those three questions will cover the theme of helping you one grow, to protect and three sustained momentum towards whatever measure of success you're ultimately looking for. And so that first question this morning, is, how might your short term focus be hindering long term growth? And of course, coming back to the announcement, if you will, from China, it says, Hey, we're going to, we're going to balance some of our climate goals and some of our vision and some of our thinking with the short term needs to actually ensure energy for our people and ensure food security for our people. It gets to be very interesting, right? Because it's tough to think about short term goals, short term approaches when we're talking about, in China's case, a commitment to be, I believe, net zero by 2060 2060, almost 40 years out certainly seems to be anything but a short term goal. But the reality is, the focus right now for China, for many other countries is certainly a short term use of energy towards communicating how they are going to move forward with these goals. So again, the question for you is, are your short term focus and energy? And yes,
04:27
I'm sure you can do multiple things at one time, but is it detracting against or from the long term vision that you have? And when I work with people in various different scenarios, the first step in all of this is always is always to get clarity on what that long term purpose that long term vision is. And as cliched as that might sound, it's necessary so that you don't get caught up in short term propaganda. And again, I'm not claiming that having climate goals and Net Zero commitments emissions is propaganda, but the words that are being used and the energy in producing those words and the focus on those can, and does many cases come at the expense of a much bigger long term purpose. And in the case of China, that long term purpose, of course, is energy security, and food security, as they quietly announced yesterday. So again, the question for you is, as you go through your day, as you find yourself communicating what it is your purpose may or may not be from a macro standpoint, or even something as simple as, as what you're going to know, after lunch, or the commitment you're going to make or the phone calls you're going to decide to pick up or the emails you're going to send. Is your energy that you're putting towards those somehow supporting some long term vision, or do you feel like you're checking the boxes on something that you're expected to do or expected to say, because it sounds nice, even though it might be masking some ultimate purpose that you should be driving towards? The next question today, stemming from this article out of China is what are the hidden costs of protecting a flimsy narrative. And again, that's not to say that climate commitments that are being made are flimsy, but in the case of what China basically conceded yesterday, well, it's not a very strong narrative, it's not very strong argument, if all of your efforts in the short term are seemingly at odds with very basic human needs of food, and energy security, and clearly the actions that China has been taking to help reduce the impacts of rolling blackouts throughout the country. And again, similar in other countries and other parts of the world, even here in the United States, at times, when push comes to shove, when things become a necessity, in terms of energy, and it's necessary to pull back on your commitment is simply to have people be able to heat their homes and, and have access to food and be able to travel while you're going to do what you need to do. And and we see that with China. So again, the question for you is what flimsy narratives are out there that you're going to have to backtrack on as soon as someone presses you on? That's the question. And then in turn, what are the costs of trying to protect that facade, and one of these areas that comes up is in people in career hunts, trying to reserve some sort of narrative as they look for a new job regarding what their former career was, and maybe making it out to be something it wasn't, or maybe having in their minds what their future career looks like, when it's only surface level, it's only based on again, title or the company that they want to work with, or some specific, and maybe I should say, overly specific view of what salary will be or what the the perks will be, instead of that long term vision, that long term story, if you will, that they should be building up, because as soon as you start chipping away at well, do you really need that title, you really need to work in a specific location, you really need to be in this specific industry to fuel whatever your ultimate purpose is, well, once you start backtracking on that can be very difficult to recover, which is why China's concession yesterday that we're gonna continue considering our people as we move forward, because that's the ultimate purpose. You know, as long as you can keep that ultimate purpose in your mind, as you move forward, it's going to be a heck of a lot easier. And in reality, it's going to cost you a lot less energy is going to cost you a lot less time and gyrations and quite frankly, it's going to preserve, it's going to protect what is worth protecting, not your story, not your narrative, not some short term focus, but it's going to protect your ability to command the respect of others command the attention of others, to be consistent, and to be viewed as someone who has that long term vision. So again, as you go through your day, as you make decisions, as you communicate, as the words are coming out of your mouth, ask whether they might be conveying a story that is not going to hold up in the long run. And whether you need to be upfront about the fact that there are certain core things that you're not going to negotiate on. And again, much like China, they are not they are not going to continue moving forward and growing at the expense of their people. At least. That's what they're saying. And finally, the question of sustainability.
09:06
And the question is, what tools are you using to better connect your purpose to your people? And similar to the last question, a lot of it comes down to what's coming out of your mouth? What are the words that you're using? Or if you're running a company, of course, what are the you know, external communications and internal communications that are connecting your people, your stakeholders to your ultimate purpose? How are you doing that? Because if all you're doing is using fluffy communications and 70 or 80, page ESG reports or sustainability reports, and everything sounds good, everything sounds fluffy and rosy, like you're moving forward, feel closer to things or you're really building a connection between the people that need to help you move forward, whether they're employees, whether their co workers, whether they're investors, whether it's the general public, at some point, are they going to start to question whether any of that stuff has has any meaning? Or if they are paying attention, or they can then continue paying attention. Is it sustainable? Is it enough to just continue pushing all this stuff out there and continuing to tweak it? So it continues to grab their attention? Or do you need to take a step back and almost do what China says and say, hey, look, all of this stuff is necessary. All of this stuff is deemed a prerequisite for investors or for the public. And we're going to continue pumping out the 1780, page ESG reports and sustainability reports. And again, all of those things are fine, they're good. But is it enough? Is it sustainable? Or do you take a step back once in a while, as China didn't say, Hey, here's the reality. At the end of the day, the ultimate purpose is to help our people grow, and move forward and have the very most basic things, if you will, that there are required to continue to do that. And again, this seems somewhat silly, taking China and their words at face value, given their history and, and given, you know, some of their attempts to obviously balance propaganda with what their ultimate purposes might be. And, again, the purpose of the daily detox, if you will, is to not dive into that there's no shortage of talking heads, you can do that, you know, far better than I can, but to bring it back to you, and are there times again, where your approach, particularly around communication is not sustainable. And so the question for you is, what tools are you using to ensure that the way that you're communicating and the way that you're approaching your long term purpose is sustainable, and continues to keep people connected? And, of course, one of the most effective ways, certainly a self serving promotion, if you will, that I find that to happen, and a third of fortune 500, you know, companies have found ways to continue being connected between your people and your purpose is through coaching, or some variation of coaching. And the reason for that is because two things, one, you have somebody to challenge you and ask you, when it seems like, you know, maybe you're getting off path, and to challenge you and ask you the questions that other people might not be asking as they again, get caught up in the propaganda and and they get swept up in these, you know, what have become almost trite and cliched approaches whether again, they're ESG reports or whether they're fluffy press releases or things that that people start to, you know, their their eyes start to gloss over. So who's challenging, asking questions about that? And then the second element of a coaching mindset, if you will, if not a specific coach, is to be there as a sounding board? Who are you asking questions about when you feel like you're making these decisions, even if you are at the very top if you're the CEO of a company, or you're the chairman of the board, and you still don't feel like you have somebody that you can candidly and honestly say, Hey, I, I don't know if this is really what we need to be saying, I don't know if this is fueling our purpose. I don't know if this is consistent with what should be expected of us, you know, at least from our internal stakeholders who actually need to be driving things forward, even though it might sound good to our external stakeholders, who is your sounding board?
12:55
So answer those two questions and ask yourself, what are the resources that you're using to have a sounding board and to have somebody who's challenged you each and every day? And if you're not leading a company, if you're not leading a business or a team, even in your personal life? Again, who is it that's asking you questions about the things that you're doing and whether or not it's a sustainable approach? And in turn, who are you using as a sounding board to say, hey, I don't know if this is right. I don't know if we need to, you know, have a heart to heart either with ourselves or our stakeholders to say, we have our goals as, as China does, in terms of their their various steps towards curbing carbon emissions over the next several decades, who's going to counter that and say, but, but those things are not going to come at the expense of food security and energy security for our people right now. And so hopefully, you're able to answer some of those questions. As you watch or listen to this live, you're welcome to chime in with your own answers to those immediate questions with additional questions you might have or with headlines that are related to today's topic and today's headline that is plucked from from the energy airwaves, if you will. And as we move forward with iterations of the daily detox, please feel free to share headlines. If you shoot it over by 6am. Eastern time in the morning, be happy to consider it and use that as the one headline that in turn will generate the three questions that are aimed to help you grow, protect and sustain success for you, for your team, for your company, for your family and for whoever your stakeholders are. And as you head into the day, I encourage you again, to continue asking questions to recognize who you can ask questions of to give you good feedback and to challenge you. And above all, I thank you for committing to a couple minutes here this morning as I kick off again, the first iteration of this live experiment regarding the daily energy detox, and I welcome you to tune in for future episodes at 630. Eastern each weekday morning where again, we will take one headline ask you three questions to help you move throughout the day. So with that happen Good day. Have a good week. Thank you again for tuning in, and for listening to, to the energy detox