World Shale Winners: Leading Rock-Solid Teams Who Make the Planet Green With Envy
Although shale energy development has created countless worldwide winners, only one person won the 2024 #WorldShaleEnergyDay sweepstakes.
That being said, this LIVE episode of The Energy Detox kicks off by drawing that lucky winner.
Then we dive into the challenge of sustaining the winning performance of envy-inducing, high-horsepower teams in the high-pressure of world of energy.
So, tune in for some practical tools you can employ to manage the fracture-inducing burnout and jealousy that winning teams often have to navigate.
To learn more about World Shale Energy Day, the 75th birthday of hydraulic fracturing, and all of the 2024 giveaway items, watch the video below:
What is World Shale Energy Day?
ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY OF 1949, HALLIBURTON PERFORMED THE FIRST TWO COMMERCIAL FRAC JOBS — ONE IN TEXAS AND THE OTHER IN OKLAHOMA.
75 YEARS YEARS LATER, THE WORLD CONTINUES TO REAP THE BENEFITS OF AN INNOVATION THAT UNLEASED SHALE’S POTENTIAL
To honor this occasion, each March 17 is #WorldShaleEnergyDay — learn more by visiting WorldShaleEnergyDay.org
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 2023 World Shale Energy Day & St. Patrick's Day episode of The Energy Detox.
Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Hello, and welcome to this live episode of the energy detox coming to you today on March 18 2020, for the day after World shale energy day and the day after St. Patrick's Day. And on this special episode of the energy detox, we're gonna kick things off by announcing the one winner of our grand prize to honor world shale energy day. But before we draw the winner and announce that here on the energy detox, we'll take a couple of minutes briefly to explain what world shale energy day is, and the stack quickly through all of the prizes that we're giving away this morning. And so what is World shale energy day or what was World shale energy day that was celebrated yesterday, march 17? Well, it is a celebration. It is an acknowledgement. It is an awareness campaign for the energy that is derived from shale and we celebrate it on March 17, every year, because March 17, marks the anniversary of the first two commercial fracks completed by Halliburton back in 1949 75 years ago. And I'd be remiss not to also mention another anniversary, perhaps less significant. This occurred four years ago today, and that was the birth of the energy detox. So on March 18th 2020, just as that pesky pandemic was kicking off there, again, the energy detox was born. And here we are 91 episodes later, in a celebratory mood, of course, to give away some prizes, and what are those prizes that we're giving away. Again, if you want more details on these prizes, you can head over to shale shamrock.com, we did a 10 minute video going into more detail. But again, in the interest of time here and for those of you who enter the contest and are well or you're waiting to find out if you're the big winner, we'll step quickly through them. Starting with this, this shale energy de Guinness blast trying to get in focus but was challenged here, we're giving away four of these again, because you think about shale, often organic, rich black shale, Dennis is certainly a nice parallel to that if you happen to enjoy a nice dark beer like that. The other thing we're giving away is four of the Guinness coasters that again are emblazoned with happy world shale energy day marking March 17. And again, well these are not made of shale, they're made to certainly look like rock here. They're made of slate. And if you've had a couple Guinness and you happen to be a lowly engineer like me, not a geologist because, you know, geologists cannot be fooled for something that is not shale and calling it shale. But if you're, again, like me after a couple of minutes, it certainly passes for shale and again is a good reminder here of what we do in our industry. That is of course protect people protect the planet and a coaster is a good representation of that. The other thing we're giving away is one of these stone bottle openers, again to symbolize the fact that what have we done with the shale revolution? Well, we've unlocked the potential of the shale below our feet. And again, a bottle opener is a perfect representation of something that unlocks potential. That being said, the other thing we're giving away is that potential energy below our feet. And to mark that is these world shale energy day socks here again, commemorating the fact that we have all of this potential, below our feet, especially here in some parts of the United States where I'm sitting today in the heart of the Marcellus in the heart of Appalachia that is just outside of Pittsburgh. And the final thing we're giving away is this biography of George Mitchell often called the father of fracking while he did not invent fracking 75 years ago, again, he certainly brought it to where it is today and this book here fracking, sustainability and an unorthodox quest to save the planet. It's a good read about a unique interesting man and again, our one lucky winner will be receiving that in addition to all of the other prizes that we just stepped through so that being said and without further ado,
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let's go ahead and draw that one winner of everything that we just shared here and after that we'll of course collect some shipping information and get this headed your way unless of course you happen to be a local winner so with that I of course have them all here in this leprechaun hat I even brought along a trusty shall ally to give all the the entrance here a stir. And with that again, blindly choosing our one winner…
Who is…
John Roberts of Englewood, Colorado.
05:08
Again, if you happen to be watching this here, we'll get that in focus. So you can see John Roberts of Englewood, Colorado, if you are John, congratulations. And if you know John Well, again, you can head his way here and a couple of days, whenever he receives his, his prize is here to celebrate next world shale energy day, and certainly next St. Patrick's Day. So with all the fun, out of the way, with all of the discussion about winning out of the way, we're going to shift gears a bit, we're going to continue this winning conversation and talk about what it's like when you find yourself in a position when you are leading a winning team.
05:45
What is it like when you are leading a team? Who is having tremendous success? What does it like when you're leading a team who, again, others look to and know, is tremendously successful? Because while that's certainly the envy of most leaders, right, you want to get to that point, it does come with some trade offs, it does come with some challenges. And we're going to step through some of those challenges some of those common questions that I get asked in my day to day job as a coach in our industry. And of course, this being a Live episode of the energy detox, I welcome your questions, your comments, your stories, your anecdotes, your strategies for how to deal with the unique challenges that come with leading a highly successful and winning team. So without further ado, let's pull that first question. What are the biggest challenges of leading a winning team? Well, they vary, and we're gonna go into more detail on each of these. But some of the most common ones that pop up first and foremost are of course, sustaining that momentum, managing all of the expectations that come with a track record of winning. And in turn, another challenge is, of course, avoiding burnout. When you have a team of high performers, typically, that also means that they are at a high risk of burnout. Some of the other challenges that come with leading a winning team is the envy of others, people who look to your team and say, Man, this team is filled with all stars, I'd love to have one or two of those members, or oh boy, you know, that team? Seems like they can do no wrong. They're constantly getting praised by others, directly or indirectly? And are they really as good as other people? Make them out to be some other challenges that can come with success in general, and certainly, when you're leading a winning team is a measure of complacency, if not boredom, you know, you know, there was a certain politician who famously said, you know, you're gonna get sick of winning Well, there are times where again, you find yourself in a position where you're leading a team who's constantly asking, Well, what next, you know, are they going through the motions, even though they're continuing to generate perhaps more value than their peers or their colleagues, all of those are various challenges. Again, I welcome you to share some other unique challenges that come with winning and we'll dive into those here as we navigate the rest of this episode of the energy detox. But for now, let's start by diving in one of the questions one of the questions that pops up sometimes when, again, you find yourself leading a winning team, a highly successful team is, and that is, should I feel guilty for having a team of all stars? And again, this almost seems like a ridiculous question. And I'll certainly get my answer. And that is no, you should not feel guilty. You should not apologize for building a team of all stars. You should be proud of building a team of all stars. Or if you haven't, you inherit a team of all store stars. Great. But again, this is nothing to apologize for. But subconsciously, sometimes people find themselves in that position where they almost need to apologize for having all of this talent. And what does that do? Well, it does a disservice to the people on your team. Because it's an opportunity when people are looking at you and saying, Boy, this team is stacked. It's an opportunity to of course, give them all of the credit that they're due to let others know that yes, a team of all stars breeds more winning, more success. And that's what every leader should want. Every leader shouldn't just say, You know what, let's, you know, let me let me bring on a couple of people who are going to bring down the average performance level of my team. No, absolutely not. So I don't think we need to spend much more time on this question. But it's amazing how often this does pop up. Again, sometimes it's more subtle. But if you are a leader, you find yourself in a position where you're apologizing for all of the talent on your team. Well, that's, that's not necessarily a recipe for success. It's not a good signal to your superiors to your bosses who of course, want winners.
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Again, it's not really a good signal to those around you who might be interested in inevitably joining your team if they get wind of the fact that you know what, yes, we need to dilute the average of the team and bring on somebody else. So the short answer to this question is absolutely not, don't feel guilt, feel pride, and leverage that to better everybody around you. That being said, a related question is how do you manage the envy of other teams. So we just said, if you are leading a successful team, a high performing team, a winning team, you certainly shouldn't apologize. But you do need to recognize the fact that there are going to be others out there who are green with envy, if you will, or who are jealous of your success. And that can manifest itself in a couple of different ways. Obviously, the worst way and certainly a way that I don't see often and I don't like to see, but it's it's almost, you know, putting people in a position where outside your team to constantly be looking for ways to to knock you down a peg to be looking for things that you're potentially doing wrong to get your so to speak, so that you don't continue to to be there on again, what others say is your your high horse. So how do you deal with that? Well, there's a couple of discreet ways to attack this envy and not just push it away, but actually embrace it. And the first way to attack it, if not embrace it is, of course, to give credit constantly to other teams, to let other teams know, verbally, publicly, that the key to your team's success and wins is their efforts is the things that they're doing. So don't even give them the excuse, which again, is not uncommon for people to say that you and your team are constantly taking credit for the work that other people are doing, nip that in the bud proactively address it. And again, that's going to chip away at some of that potential envy some of that potential jealousy that exists outside of your highly successful winning team. Another good offensive attack plan, if you will, is of course to continually show how your team wants to learn. How are you learning? How are you amassing new information, share that share how you're going out to other teams and asking for more information again, not so that you can learn something to get credit for but because you're genuinely curious about what the other folks are doing, and vice versa, make an extra attempt to share what you're doing to share what you know, in a way that again, builds up others. Again, this might sound like a bit of fluff. But for those of you who find yourself in a position where you feel like you have a target on your back, these are some discrete things that you could do very simply very cheaply to make sure that that envy that jealousy doesn't creep in, and in some way, shape or form detract from your team's performance. That being said, the defensive strategy to dealing with the potential envy of others teams is quite frankly, to, again, be on defense, be on guard be extra diligent against the things that your team is saying and doing that others again, could run with could use as an attack plan. And I'll give you a specific example of this. And that is when it comes to rumors and hearsay, when there's things going on within your company that are maybe you know, somewhat secret, or that you shouldn't be sharing necessarily, even if it's an open secret, even if everybody beyond your team is talking about it, simply warning your team and saying hey, look, we're not going to engage in this because we know we're not supposed to be doing it, even though everybody else is doing it. And we're not going to give anybody else an excuse to point to us as the one out of 100 other folks that are doing it, we're not gonna allow other people to point to us in some negative light. So again, it's a matter of being more diligent, and of course, conveying that to your team. And the final piece, and again, this is a bit of proactivity. But it's making sure that you as a leader, and certainly your team members, call out mistakes, things that have gone wrong that your team has done before others do. Take the wind out of the sails of others, be the people that put a spotlight on yourself to say, look, we messed this up.
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You do that again, you've taken away 90% of the ammo that somebody else might be salivating. So again, this isn't the most positive topic. I don't like diving into this. But it's a reality for many leaders who are leading again, teams of all stars winning teams, and you need to be on guard against it. Or else you're opening yourself up to a ding in your performance.
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That being said, moving on to another question that pops up for leaders who are in a again an envious position to be leading a winning team. And that is how do I manage the success induced pressure and potential burnout of a high performing team. And again, there's a couple of discrete tools that may or may not work for you in your specific position. And the first of those tools is generating no templates. And this is a topic we've talked about in the past on the energy detox, but it bears repeating because when you're leading a winning team when you're leading a highly successful team, it's extra important that you give your team and certainly you're armed with easy ways to push back against extra work really
15:00
doesn't add value that your team doesn't need to be doing, but might be flowing your direction, because of course, people are gonna say, hey, if I want this done, I want this done right? I'm going to hand it off to this leader and his or her high performing winning team. So it's up to you to construct what again, some would call no templates. And that is call it a half dozen, maybe 10, different discrete ways to turn back work or to clarify priorities that are coming your way, especially if they're coming from above. And again, we're not going to take, you know, five minutes or so to construct all of those ourselves here on the energy detox. This is something I do on a regular basis with the folks I work with on a coaching
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from a coaching standpoint, but ask yourself, what are the common things that pop up? Is it busy work that, you know, doesn't add value? Is it fire drills from above that seem important because of who's asking, but may not actually, you know, move the needle from the bottom line? How can you succinctly confidently and easily come back and say something as simple as, hey, we'd love to tackle this. Unfortunately, given what we're doing right now, something else is going to have to move off of our plate, or we're going to have to do this at maybe 50%. How do you convey that? Because it's true in a way, that's easy? Or when somebody shares a task? How do you say, hey, we'd love to do this. But in all honesty, what from what I've seen from a different group, they might actually be better suited to do this, they might be able to do this more efficiently and more effectively. Have you have you reached out to them yet? And again, you know, depending on the answer, you might not be ready with another note template or redirect template, if you will. But it's up to you to again, have these in place. So you don't, again, just default to saying yes, because in many ways, that's probably what's gotten you to where you are, from my winning team standpoint. Couple other themes that can
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help you push back on unnecessary work that again, could lead to burnout or could lead to extra pressure that could reduce your output is one, emphasizing that your team is more focused on quality over quantity. And that again, as we just set a couple minutes ago, something might have to give something might have to suffer in order for you to take on something else. And as a related response, also lean on value, bottom line value for the organization. If the person coming to you with some new task, can't articulate how it's connected to the bottom line, then you need to push back. Because you and your winning team should be working predominantly on things that are connected to the long term vision to the bottom line of your organization. And if you're not, or you're presented with something that you know, is not going to check that box, then it's up to you to have a simple ready statement that you can deploy, to push back to say no to redirect to make sure that your team doesn't continue taking on things that are only going to cause it in the long run, to suffer.
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The next question that pops up for leaders of teams that are highly successful winning teams. And that is, how do I rate a team of top performers who don't necessarily fit a bell curve. And of course, this is a bit of a touchy topic for some who are part of corporations who have annual performance systems. And again, for many of those companies, there was going to be some distributions, if you will, there's going to be some expectations that over the, you know, if you look at the statistics, especially of a large company, you're going to have a number of employees that are in that highest performing bucket, you're going to have a number of employees that are in the lowest performing bucket. And then the rest of the employees are scattered about the various buckets in a way that ultimately resembles some sort of bell curve. But again, what if you're leading a team of high performers that is made up of all all stars, all winners? What happens at performance appraisal time if you're in a position where there is some pressure on you as a leader to force your team in some way into a bell curve? And of course, the immediate answer is, well, it depends on the company depends on the situation. And clearly, we're not going to go too far into the weeds of corporate policies and procedures when it comes to performance appraisals.
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But I can tell you some of the things that you can do that you can control as a leader. First and foremost, you can control the amount of trust that you have between you and your team of all stars. And the way you do that, of course is not not leaning on the excuse that you're forced in some way, shape or form into some sort of rating. That's what your employees likely expect. That's what they think they know or actually know. But again, don't give them that ammo don't allow that to seep into their mind. If you want to build trust. You need to demonstrate that you're constantly fighting all of the battles for them. Be
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Big and small, you need to be able to demonstrate to them that you're a fighter, that you're there to fight for things, not just for bonuses, not just for promotions, not just for high ratings, but for the little stuff for work life balance items, for a new company vehicle, for better work conditions, for better work from home conditions, those are things that you can share that again, don't say, Hey, I asked for this, and they're just gonna say no. And, you know, I tried anyway, no, demonstrate to them, that you're constantly fighting for them, you constantly have their back, build that trust so that when you get to some of these bigger items, like you're in performance appraisals, they know, you don't have to tell them, that you're there fighting for them.
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And more practically, the other thing you can do throughout the year to make this easier is continual, constructive feedback. Now, if you have a team with some lower performers, the advice, of course, is to make sure you're getting feedback throughout the year that is demonstrating to those performers that, hey, they need to, you know, they need to step it up, or they need to do a couple specific things to improve their performance. So that when you get to the end of the year, again, they're not surprised by potentially low rating. Well, how does that apply to a team of all stars? Well, guess what, it's the same exact approach, you need to give continual constructive feedback, not just continual feedback, that are Pat's on the back and saying, You're doing a great job, keep it up. Because if for some reason, their rating, or their ranking at the end of the year is not where it needs to be, then they're going to come back and say, well, obviously, hey, you know, I thought everything was alright, you know, you never gave me anything else, I could do better.
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But even if they're your top performer, if you're making a point constantly to give them some sort of feedback, something that that individual your team of individuals can be working on, then again, it lesson to the surprise, they can't come back and say that, hey, you never gave me anything to work on to focus on. So there you go, regardless of the performance of the individual on your team, whether they would be ranked top of your list or bottom your list and any sort of forced ranking system, the same solution, if you will, applies, and that is continual, constructive feedback. So that at the end of the year, you're not just protected as a leader, but they have something to continue growing apart. But again, that's up to you. So again, to address this touchy topic, this potentially controversial topic, to reiterate, one, continual constructive feedback, and to demonstrate throughout the whole year, that you're always willing to fight for the big things and small things for all performers on your team.
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And the final question here, the final, unique challenge that can come up when you're leading a team of winners, is how do I sustain team momentum after a particularly exhausting victory or series of victories?
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Well, it probably goes without saying, but it's also easier said than done when you're so busy. And again, you're a high performing team. And everybody's looking for you for that next when that next challenge, but that is, of course, to take the time to celebrate wins. And of course, on this episode of the energy detox, what are we doing, we're celebrating the big win of John Roberts of Colorado who of course, won our grand prize. But for you and your team of winners, again, take that time, it doesn't have to be grand, it doesn't have to be expensive. Sometimes it is just time. But take that time to celebrate wins to let them know that they did a good job, let them rest on their laurels for just a little bit. Instead of shifting gears and saying, Hey, look, guys, here's how we can do better. Here's what we can do next. There's a time and a place for that. And I just said a minute ago that that's important to do throughout the year. But recognize those times to celebrate wins. Going back to some of the earlier questions, celebrate the wins of other teams of other groups of other individuals who helped get you to the point that you are now at the point of victory, if you will. And again, at the end of the day, focus on the positive focus on the strengths, focus on those victories that you can build upon. Resist the temptation to bring out a list of all the various things that you know what didn't go as well as planned. And next time, we're gonna do even better. Yeah, there's a time and a place for that. But after a victory, start with the easiest thing, which is this is what we did. Well, this is how we got to the point of success. This is how we emerged victorious. Start with those strengths. Start with those wins, start with those victories. And make sure you're setting aside the time to actually do that to celebrate to collect your thoughts.
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And with that, thank you, as always for joining us here on the energy detox. Thank you to everybody who entered the world shale energy day competition.
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If you're interested to learn more about world shale energy day, you can do so by heading on over to world shale energy day.org not.com has just popped up on the screen there world's shale energy day.org, which is now correct here on the screen, and you can learn again all about the celebration that occurs every year on March 7 teeth. So with that, as always, I'm your host, Joe Sinnott, I appreciate you all for tuning in to again, this live episode of the energy detox. And I wish you all the very best over the next 364 days until we can once again celebrate World shale energy day and St. Patrick's Day. But in the meantime, we'll have a another episode of the energy detox on deck soon enough, and I certainly hope you'll join us for that. So with that, take care. Thanks again and have a great rest of the day.