How Do Frac Fears, Election Ads, and Haunted Houses Fuel Sustainable Leaders?

Are oil & gas workers "fearless" or simply desensitized by constant employer & industry surprises?

Are fear-focused campaign ads (and fear-focused management styles) a sign of desperation?

Are Marcellus-based external affairs teams the ideal model of how industry leaders can address fears and division among their internal stakeholders?

To answer these questions, check out this #Halloween episode of The Energy Detox.

#ConsciousLeadership

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Happy Halloween, and welcome toepisode 99 of The Energy Detox,
where you and I, Joe Sinnott,will dive into three distinct
types of fear that you face as aleader in the energy industry.
And to drive today'sconversation, we're going to
lean on three timely topics thatall are connected in some way to

(00:22):
fear. One of those, of course,is Halloween, a holiday that is
driven in many ways by fear.
The second of those is theelection, again, something that
demonstrates how people use fearto motivate others, in this
case, to vote for or againstcertain candidates.
And the third item that we'regoing to lean on is the ongoing

(00:43):
fears associated with naturalgas development, particularly
here in western Pennsylvania.
And we're going to start withthat third one and expand again
upon the fears associated withour industry and the fears that
you face as a leader in ourindustry, if for no other
reason, than it gives me achance to explain why I'm
standing where I'm standing, andthat is at a park about 2000

(01:06):
feet off the edge of a RangeResources Marcellus pad. And
this park is significant, andthat pad is significant to me,
at least because, well, that padis the closest Marcellus pad to
where I live, and this park isone that my family and I make
extensive use out of; and infact, I think all four of my
children have participated insome sort of sports here.

(01:26):
And in fact, the baseball fieldI'm standing on is one that I
have coached many a T-ball gameon. And heck, 20 yards in front
of me is a section of the RachelCarson trail that I've hiked
with my family on manyoccasions. And right next to
that is a stream that my familyand I have splashed in and
walked through and flipped rocksin and thrown rocks into again
on many occasions. But what'sthe point? What's the

(01:48):
significance again, of thislocation?
Well, the point is, when acompany like Range Resources
comes to an area like this, theyneed to proactively address the
fears of the community, and theydid just that several years ago,
of course, when they decided tocome into this area and drill
and ultimately complete thewells that are in close
proximity, again, to where I'mstanding right now. In fact,

(02:10):
again, if my triangulationworked out correctly with the
publicly available data, thereis a well bore, at least from a
bird's eye view, about 300 feetfrom home plate where I'm
standing, albeit it's also aboutsix or 7000 feet below, so it's
not really 300 feet away. Butagain, I digress. What's the
point today? Well, it's not toget into the details of the
particular operations of range.

(02:30):
It's to talk about how the wayin which companies like Range
have responded to the fears ofcommunities over the last 20
years, since range fracked, thatRenz Number One well in
Washington County, kicking offthe Marcellus boom, the way in
which those companies respondshould inspire you as a leader,
to respond to the fears of yourstakeholders that you have to

(02:51):
deal with on a daily basis.
Because while range and again,ranges, peer companies will hold
town halls and obviously attendtownship meetings and address
the individual concerns ofneighbors when it comes to
traffic or noise or light orwhatever, you are likely missing
opportunities to do the samething when it comes to your
employees or your colleagues oryour bosses. You're likely

(03:14):
missing opportunities toproactively share information
that you know they're going towant eventually. So instead of
waiting for them to come to youand then defensively having to
respond, what are the thingsthat you can do? What are the
things that you can share toboost transparency?
And now transparency, again, isone of those many buzz words
that are thrown around thatagain, I'm not so sure your

(03:37):
average leader actually deploys.
So let me ask you this, why nottake a page from CNX Resources,
again, a peer company of RangeResources, because CNX about,
oh, I don't know, over a yearago, they kicked off this
radical transparency campaignwhere they went above and beyond
the basic requirements thatcompanies have been doing again
for well over a decade. That ofcourse, being filing for permits

(03:58):
and putting public informationout there that allowed me to
again calculate how far the wellbore is, or at least one of the
well bores from home plate,gives me a chance to again go
pull this FracFocus report andsee the chemicals that Range
Resources actually pump downwhole from their well pad.
That's 2000 feet from where I'mstanding. Well CNX resources
said, You know what? We're goingto go above and beyond that.

(04:20):
We're going to put air monitorson some of our monitors on some
of our locations, and we'regoing to make that information
available in real time toanybody.
Well, what can you do to mirrorthat same approach? Because I
run into a lot of leaders whoknow that they have information
that would be valuable to share,but they're scared to do it.
They feel like they can't shareit, maybe it's seen as secret or

(04:42):
proprietary, or maybe theiraudience won't be able to handle
it, or they'll misconstrue it,to which I say, Well, what are
all the ways to address theirfears without sharing
proprietary information? Whatare all the ways to at least
acknowledge their fears and thenpoint them to certain things
that are in the public? Domain,again, much like Frac Focus and
all kinds of other informationthat's out there, from an

(05:03):
industry standpoint, even inpeople's personal lives. Again,
when you're talking aboutchildren, hey, what fears and
concerns do they have? Becausecertainly there are some topics
that, yeah, maybe you don't wantto address with your children,
but this isn't some black orwhite thing. It takes a little
bit of innovation to say, hey,look what are all the ways I can
address their fears withouthaving to dive into a topic
that's maybe a little heavy fora young child.

(05:27):
So again, ask yourself, what canyou do to channel the stuff that
our industry has been doing fortwo decades, to boost
transparency, to proactivelyaddress the fears of the
community? What can you do toproactively address the fears of
your community in the workplace.
That being said, let's move onto the other topic, or one of

(05:48):
the other two topics we talkedabout, and that, of course, is
the election, which, again,we're only five days away from
election day. I think that'smost people could agree. That's
probably a good thing, if for noother reason than you've been
inundated, especially if youlive here in western
Pennsylvania, with lots of fearbased advertising, whether it's
mailers, whether it's radioadvertisements, television

(06:11):
advertisements, again, in thishome stretch, we seem to see an
Increase in fear based politicalads. And why? Well, at its root,
again, fear is being used to tryto motivate people to take some
sort of action, that is to votefor or against a certain
candidate. But the other side ofthe equation is that this

(06:34):
increase in fear basedadvertising could be seen by
some political commentators as asign of desperation. And again,
regardless of your politicalleanings and regardless of your
assessment of whether fear basedads are a signal of desperation,
the reality is that in theworkplace, using fear or
overusing fear Absolutely, canbe a sign of desperation. If

(06:56):
you're seen as somebody whodoesn't have any positive tricks
in your in your toolbox, if youwill, mixing analogies and bags
of tricks and tool boxes.
But regardless, if you don'thave anything that's positive,
you don't have anything that'sjoyful, and if all you can do is
basically instill fear in othersto try to get them to take some
sort of action. Again, notaction without regarding voting,

(07:18):
but action regarding maybecompleting a project or meeting
some sort of deadline, or goingabove and beyond for a client,
if all you have is fear tomotivate people Well, again,
it's very easy for people todraw a conclusion that you are
desperate. You've got nothingleft. And again, whether that's
fair or not, you need to askyourself, in what ways you're
over using fear in, what waysare you being seen as desperate

(07:39):
and not again, having somethingthat's positive and so again,
what do you do with thatinformation? Well, it starts by
leaning on the positives. Itstarts by flipping the message
and saying, Well, no, look,here's what happens if we meet
this deadline. Here's whathappens if you go above and
beyond in this project.
Here's what happens if you kindof shape up, so to speak. So

(08:01):
don't allow this narrative tocome to fruition that all you've
got is fear, because in manycases, there's a good chance
that you're not doing itconsciously. You might not
realize that you're doing it,because, hey, there's a time and
a place for fear, right?
Sometimes lighting a fire undersomebody's rear end is the best
motivator and the mostappropriate motivator. But it's
also important to keep in mindthat typically, that's just a
short term motivator, right?

(08:24):
When it comes to the election,you know what? I don't think a
lot of people that are puttingout those ads really care what
happens after November 5. Theyjust have to get to November 5
and then that's it. But if youcare at all about being a
sustainable leader and havingperhaps even some sort of
legacy, well then you need toexpand your bag of tricks a bit
and ask yourself in what waysyou might be over using fear.

(08:46):
That being said, let's move onto the third and final tie in
between fears in the in the newsand in the headlines and in
current events and the fearsthat you face and have to
navigate on a daily basis. Andthat is, of course, the fact
that today is Halloween, andwhen it comes to Halloween, one
thing that's interesting aboutfear is that most of the fear

(09:07):
associated with Halloween isdesired. People are asking for
it. Heck, people pay to bescared, right? People pay to go
to a haunted house or go on ahaunted walk or a haunted hay
ride. People want to besurprised, and many cases,
people are willing to pay moreand more to seek out those
thrills.
Why? Because, while we've becomedesensitized in many ways, to

(09:29):
fear, whether it's scary moviesor whatever, again, especially
this time of year, it's kind ofpar for the course, which kind
of flips things over to you tosay, All right, well, in what
ways are you having to deal withthe desensitization that the
people around you have when itcomes to fear? Have people
become so used to surprises atevery turn that again, their

(09:50):
expectations are such that youknow what I'm going to show up
today, and I wouldn't besurprised if anything happened.
Is that really the mindset thatyou want your people approaching
each day with? No, of coursenot.
So, the question for you is,well, how do you address that
desensitization? And I wouldargue it starts with the fact
that, well, again, most peoplethat you deal with, they don't
want fear. It's not like onHalloween, where people are

(10:11):
seeking out fear and payingmoney. No, the people that you
deal with, what do they want?
They don't want to be surprised.
They want some measure ofcertainty. And so the question
for you is, well, how do yougive them some measure of
certainty?
As we said in that firstexample, you know, you can't
necessarily share everythingwith everybody. You know,
there's a point where, yeah,being radically transparent
makes a whole lot of sense, butthere's always going to be

(10:32):
something proprietary, somethingthat you can't share, something
that, again, you know, might besurprising to your audience. I
get that, but it comes back tothis idea of asking yourself,
right? Well, what are all thethings you can share that can
give some measure of certainty?
How can you positively andproactively emphasize the things
that aren't changing? How canyou go ahead and alleviate

(10:54):
concerns that aren't warrantedso that it doesn't snowball into
this just generalized, hey,let's throw everything in there.
Anything can change at any giventime when that couldn't be
further from the truth. Again,it's all under this umbrella of,
how do you overcome thedesensitization that has
occurred in your organization?
And again, this is from anindustry standpoint. This is

(11:16):
what we're used to, right theups and downs of the industry,
the constant fears of layoffs, Iget it, but just because it's
there doesn't mean you should beusing it as a crutch. Just
because you're a leader in anindustry and perhaps in an
organization that has becomedesensitized to surprises and to
fear at every turn, that doesn'tmean you can't take steps to

(11:39):
overcome that, to decrease fear.
You can be that differentiatedleader if you start by again,
being inspired by Halloween, ifyou will, and recognizing that
day to day in the office. Well,maybe today in the office, but
most days again, people aren'tlooking to be surprised.
So that being said, how do wewrap all this up together? Well,

(12:00):
a couple different themes. So inthe three different ones, you
could argue that the threedifferent examples that we
talked about three differentinspirations. We started with
the energy industry and shininga light proactively. Well, what
is that? When we do that, well,it addresses division, right? It
addresses what can be a falsedivide between people who have
information and people who don'thave information. How do you
bridge that gap? How do you notjust give them all the data from

(12:22):
a radically transparentstandpoint, but also help them
understand it, to proactivelyaddress their fears? So again,
division. The second thing thatwe talked about was, what
desperation? How do you avoidbecoming desperate or being seen
as desperate because of youroveruse of fear as a motivator?
And the third item we talkedabout was, what desensitization?

(12:43):
How do you overcomedesensitization? And how do you
avoid allowing yourself orothers around you to use it as
an excuse, to allow this wholeidea that, hey, what's next?
There's a surprise at everycorner. How do you use those
three things?
So again, division, desperationand desensitization, those are
all three, things that you canovercome by asking yourself the

(13:03):
right questions, the types ofquestions that we asked here on
the energy detox That beingsaid, it's not enough to just
overcome those three negatives.
Clearly, from a detoxstandpoint, we want to focus on
the positive. So how do we dothat here? Well, today we're
going to wrap up by emphasizingthe positive, at least when it
comes to something that Octoberis known for, not just for the
again, the anniversary of thewrens frack by Range Resources,

(13:27):
not just because it's the monthof Halloween, not just because
it's the last full month beforethe election.
No, let's start with somethingelse, and that is the fact that
October is healthy lung month,and it's a reminder of the
importance, of course, of havinghealthy lungs, and in
particular, those growing lungsof your children. Because when

(13:48):
it comes to natural gasdevelopment and members in this
community, what's one thing thatthey're concerned about? Well,
again, it's what's in the air,right? What are your children
breathing in? And so we're goingto leave today with something
positive, something uplifting,and that is the fact that a
study was done that showed thatup to $1 trillion of health

(14:08):
benefits for people inPennsylvania have been realized
over the last 20 years becauseof natural gas development. In
particular, our shift to naturalgas from coal when it comes to
power generation, and inparticular, the reduction in
particular matter and in perchin particular, the reduction in
NOx and SOx right nitrogenoxides and sulfur oxides that

(14:29):
have increased the health of ourlungs here. So again, don't just
start by trying to addresspeople's fears and say "it's
okay." No.
Find those opportunities to goabove and beyond, to tout the
positives, to tout the reductionin respiratory ailments because
of an industry like natural gasand so on that positive note
again, thank you, as always, fortuning into the energy detox. I
hope you join me for Episode 100next week. And until then, have

(14:52):
a safe and happy Halloween.