Fueling Sustainable Leaders One ShaleRock Shake™ at a Time

As you raise a ShaleRock Shake™ to the GREEN energy that we’re LUCKY to have below our feet, take a moment to ask how many industry leaders you know who are...

🤢Full of malarkey

🍀Over-dependent on luck; and

🐍Unwilling to drive the snakes out of their organizations.

☘️To help you answer that question and honor the March 17 blending of Shale & Shamrocks, check out this World Shale Energy Day & St. Patrick's Day episode of The Energy Detox.

…and to register to win the 2024 World Shale Energy Day Sweepstakes, visit ShaleShamrock.com before March 17 at 11:59 PM.

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Transcript

(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)

Happy #WorldShaleEnergyDay , Happy St. Patrick's Day, and welcome to the energy detox. As always, I'm your host Joe Sinnott, but not as always, I'm coming to you today from outside of an American institution known as McDonald's. And why would I choose this setting for today's episode? Well, of course, because today being St. Patrick's Day is the best day to drive thru and get one of these, a shamrock shake. But of course, with his also being world shale energy day, we're going to spend a couple minutes referring to this guy as a shale rock shake. Instead, if you can forgive the puns that of course we're not bashful about here on the energy detox. But other than some bad puns, what else can you expect on today's episode? Well, as always, we'll weave together current events, current headlines, current holidays, into the idea of sustainable leadership and help you gain some practical tools that you can use to become a more sustainable leader. And in particular, today, we're going to draw upon the life and the lessons of St. Patrick, who used a very simple mechanism to help the people of Ireland 1500 years ago, understand and grasp a pretty complicated concept that of course, being the Holy Trinity. And what did he do? Well, he used the Shamrock, as something that can explain the idea of having three persons in one God God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit, by using the three leaves of the Shamrock that of course, are all in one tiny little plant. And that being said, Of course, I want to lay out several disclaimers here that in no way do we mean to be sacrilegious or disrespectful. In fact, I will honor my Irish Catholic roots and my current Irish Catholic pride and an emphasize the fact that I have here at least had here a fillet of fish on this Friday and lens. So again, there is no disrespect to fact, if anything, I want to share how effective St. Patrick's approach was, and share with you how simple and effective your approach to being a leader in a very challenging industry can be. And for that, we're going to lean on the Shamrock and we're going to draw upon the concept of the GPS mindset that we've talked about many times here on the energy detox and that drives all of my coaching with the G, the P and the S standing for growth, protection and sustainability. And so kicking things off with the G the first leaf in our sustainability, sustainable leadership, Shamrock, if you will, G growth and growth, at least for today, I think it'd be represented by shamrock which really brings to mind the idea of regenerative growth, regenerative growth, this this plant is ubiquitous plant that can grow you know, you have a brown lawn and next thing you know, a year later, what do you have you have, you know, Clover shamrocks popping up regenerative growth, and in an age in an industry and with ups and downs and commodity prices. And certainly we're in that down phase right now, it seems there's a lot of negativity, there's a lot of death, if you will, figurative death that leaders need to overcome, they need to deal with, and they need to deal with effectively, because far too many leaders respond very poorly to those troughs, those negative periods of of time of history, in their business and in their industry. And part of the inspiration for this concept for this emphasis on the regenerative nature of growth is a talk that I'll be giving next week in Ohio at the Ohio Valley Energy Association. And they invited me to speak at their meeting that is focused on positive energy. That's their theme. Not my theme, my job next week is to come up with something different from what we're talking about today to tie in the concept of positive energy. But at least for today's conversation, we'll talk about the Shamrock. We'll talk about growth. And we'll talk about some practical things that leaders can do to emphasize that positive growth, that regenerative growth. So what do you do? What do you do if you're a leader and you got a lot of negativity, there's fears of layoffs, there's fears of a reduction in activity that everybody is used to by now, if you've been in the industry for more than just a handful of years. Now, the first thing you need to do is recognize what the best fertilizer is for your team. And of course, this being rolled shale energy day, we need to acknowledge that shale gas, of course, is a big contributor to fertilizer around the world, feeding people, which is all positive thing. But moving away from those talking points, you got to emphasize that talking points alone are not enough to inject positivity into a conversation when you have a worried workforce. So what do you do you need to look for the things that are going to fertilize that are going to energize them and that audience and that includes finding ways to better connect them to the long term mission. I say this all the time. It was a big part of the conversation I had yesterday with Jason Spees on the crew life where one of the things that leaders need to do to sustain momentum is to emphasize the long long term goals, the long term mission, the positive aspects of being a part of an industry like the natural gas industry, the shale gas industry to, to place a little extra emphasis on today's holiday. And the key to that, of course, is recognizing that everyone, no matter your role, is connected to that bigger picture. And that no matter how bad things seem, probably 95% of things in your professional world are actually not changing. All of the foundational things that you and your team have done that your business has done is not going away. And it's a leaders job to emphasize all of the things that are not changing, there is no better way to inject positivity into that trough into those negative periods of time than to emphasize what is not changing and what has already been done. So that you're only focused on maybe that 5% of the company or the culture that needs a little bit of regeneration. And that's a lot easier task than trying to boil the ocean, which again, as an aside, for those of you who enjoy a beverage or two on St. Patrick's Day, if you were to boil the ocean, there is no better way to do it, than by using natural gas, which of course is very effective and very efficient at boiling water and boiling things needed to produce things like whiskey and things like beer. But as an aside, let's move on to protection. And it's very similar to the idea of growth and, and recognizing all of the foundational things that you can build upon that you can grow upon. But protection. And this is a concept we talk about all the time. And that is the idea of protecting what actually matters most not protecting all of the tiny little distractions, every single little clover and a field of trillions of clovers, you need to protect the things that actually matter most to your people. And what is that? Again, it's cliche and as soft and as fluffy as it might sound. It's a sense of purpose. It's a sense of being connected to that bottom line that we just talked about a couple minutes ago. That's what you need to protect. Because the moment that people feel like they are disconnected, they're being set aside. Well, that's the moment that your your sustainable leadership Shamrock, if you will, starts to fall apart. That protection leaf gets to be bastardized, for lack of a better term, it begins to shrivel, because you spend all of your time protecting the things that don't actually matter. And what are those things? Well, there might be silly company initiatives that were starting years ago that don't serve a purpose, and that nobody's revisited certain processes, and tasks and meetings. And as cliche as that sounds, again, the idea of sustainable leadership and conscious leadership and being a winning conscious leader who is not unwittingly going through the motions is getting rid of the crap that doesn't need to be protected. So you want to inject positivity, positive growth, get rid of the things that don't need to be protected, and worry about protecting people's valuable time, their energy, their focus, and again, their connection to the bigger picture. Which leads us to the third leaf, if you will, in the sustainable leadership Shamrock. And that is sustainability itself. And what does that mean? Well, it means defining sustainability. And again, there's been several episodes on the energy detox, where we attempt to define that often ill defined or at least, confusingly defined if I can use those combination of words, sustainability. And what is sustainability? Well, coming back to World shale energy day, it's like talking about green, what is green energy? Well, there is a case to be made that natural gas is about as green as you can get these days, you talk about green energy, it's not necessarily wind or solar, or so called renewables. In many ways, it's the energy that has had the biggest impact on carbon emissions. And that is natural gas. Again, I'm sitting to you here on a relatively gray day here in Pittsburgh. But obviously Pennsylvania is a perfect study in how to reduce carbon emissions by using natural gas, and replacing other sources of energy that are anything but green. So defining green in a proper way is similar to defining sustainability in a proper way. And in your own company, defining words like culture, and engagement, and diversity, and sustainability. defining those words to finding efficiency, which again, can be bastardized all of these words, which start to lose meaning because people don't know what they mean. So it's up to you as a leader to actually define them. You need a sustainable definition, if you will, that can carry people forward. So in a couple bullet points, not something that you've hired some third party to write up and a couple practical bullet points,

09:51

what is sustainability? What is diversity? What is inclusion? What is efficiency? What is quality? What is safety, all of these words that lose meaning very quickly, when you start throwing out 80 Page sustainability reports, it's up to you to define these things clearly and concisely. And if you can do that, then you will be much more able to sustain momentum, instead of having a big segment of your population of your company, making up their own definitions or dismissing these things as soft, as fluffy as fluffy as the whipped cream on the top of a shale rock shake, if you will. So that's the definition. That's the goal for you. Just as the goal for our industry is to redefine what green means much as Ohio, where I look forward to heading off to next week, Ohio, again, redefining what green energy is and including natural gas, you can do the same thing within your company. But it might take a little bit of revision. Of course, this is the age of rewriting the definitions of words. So why not take the ticker? Take a page from the playbook of of our current world that we live in and redefine some of those words that, again, they might make up some sort of mission statement that was written for your company, you know, 20 years ago, take a moment and actually lay out some bullets and what they you know what that means, you know, what does sustainability mean? What does green mean? It's up to you to define it, and share it with your people so that they're not lost trying to look for their own definitions. So with that, I appreciate you taking some time from your St. Patrick's Day or whenever you happen to be listening to or watching this. I hope you have a safe, healthy, happy, enjoyable St. Patrick's Day and, as always, I appreciate you tuning in to the energy detox

Leadership, Management, Coaching, Energy, Envronment, ESG, SustainabilityJoe SinnottMarch 17, 2023Leadership, CoachingComment

Fueling Sustainable Leaders One ShaleRock Shake™ at a Time

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