50 Days of Feedback to Strengthen Your Energy Leadership Core
Energy is at the core of developed societies.
Feedback is at the core of developed leaders.
Those two core truths converge on Route 50 in Avella, PA, site of Episode 110 of The Energy Detox podcast, which draws on:
1) The 50-50-50 Energy Corps vision announced by EQT’s Toby Rice and Switch Energy Alliance’s Dr. Scott Tinker last month at CERAWeek—50 MWh and $50K GDP per capita within 50 years to lift people out of energy poverty and help them thrive.
2 - The Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village—a reminder of how people in North America lived, but didn’t necessarily thrive, for most of the last 19,000 years without modern energy.
The result is a 50-50-50 feedback challenge that pushes you—and other energy leaders—to consciously give and request 1 piece of feedback each day for the next 50 days—so that you and your stakeholders don't just survive...but thrive.
For a basic Feedback50 tracker to make this challenge a bit easier:
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Why would you lead your team to overtime if you have a chance to win in regulation?
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"HARMFUL FOSSIL FUELS"
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editorialize - verb: to make comments or express opinions rather than just report the news
Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
So you already know that energy is the core of a developed society, but what is the core of a developed leader? Well, I Joe Sinnott, I'm standing here along Route 50 in Avella, Pennsylvania to make the claim that feedback is the core of a developed leader. And over the next couple of minutes, I'll explain why I'm standing here in Avella, Pennsylvania to make that claim, and I'll also offer some practical ways to take advantage of feedback, to proactively increase your access to feedback so that you can flourish as a leader, much as societies that have access to energy are able to flourish and realize their full potential. But first again, why am I standing here along Route 50 in Avella, Pennsylvania?
00:45
Well, first reason is because I'm a mere three miles away from the Meadowcroft rock shelter that is a historical site that you can visit. Well, not right now. You got to wait till May, but when it opens back up in May, you can go ahead and visit and get a sense of what life was like for human beings here in Washington County, 19,000 years ago. Because on that site you have access to the archeological find that is the first find, and the first evidence of human beings living here in North America, again, 19,000 years ago. And also on that site, they have a historical village which is set up to showcase what life was like for the Monongahela tribe four or 500 years ago in this part of the world, and then in the 17th and 18th and even 19th century, as human beings settled here and eventually got closer and closer to the Industrial Revolution. Again, you can get a sense of what life was like. And of course, the reality is, life was not always easy. In some cases, it was probably downright miserable, in part because those human beings did not have access to plentiful, easy, available energy, and so too with you as a leader, if you are not making yourself available and taking advantage of feedback, both the giving of feedback and the receiving of feedback. Again, life for you and your stakeholders may very well be miserable. You may find yourself surviving as, again, human beings survived in this area for the last 19,000 years. But it might not always be pretty. You might find yourself in a bit of a, I don't know, primitive stage, if you will, of leadership, because survival is not the goal. Thriving is the goal. Flourishing is the goal. Lifting people up is the goal.
02:30
Which brings us to another reason that I'm standing here along Route 50 in novella, Pennsylvania, because there was an initiative announced about a month ago by eqts Toby rice and Dr Scott Tinker of switch Energy Alliance, called energy core. And the whole idea there was to lift people out of energy poverty so that they can thrive. And their mechanism for doing that is a very simple, straightforward, clear plan that revolves around the number 50, much like the number 50 that's over my shoulder and their 50 5050. Plan is essentially getting every human being access to 50 megawatt hours of electricity per capita per year, and 50,000 US dollars in GDP per capita per year, both of which represent the average amount of energy and GDP for the developed world. And that 50, 50, 50, plan, again, set out over the next 50 years, is a nice, simple thing that I'm going to steal here on this episode of the energy detox to help make it easier for you to lift yourself and others out of feedback poverty, if you will. That is taking the concept of 50, 50, 50, and encouraging, if not challenging you over the next 50 days to consciously provide one piece of feedback to somebody else that you might not otherwise give each day for the next 50 years, and to consciously request feedback from somebody else each day over the next 50 days. And I say consciously, because I am sure if you're listening to this or watching this, you're saying, Well, I give and receive feedback all the time. In fact, I think I'm pretty good at it. But the question is, are you doing it consciously? Sure you might go throughout your day, and again, you might offer feedback and observations, and again, ingest feedback and observations, you might even ask for it, but are you slowing down to do it in the most effective manner possible? And that's the idea behind this challenge. And of course, I'll share that this challenge, this idea, this feedback, 50, if you will, is not unique. There's no shortage of other approaches out there to help kind of work that feedback muscle that you can find in various leadership books and resources and programs.
04:46
But again, on the heels of that announcement of energy core, why not take this and tie it into your role as a leader in the energy industry to again, lift yourself and others out of what is so often a figurative uh. Feedback, poverty state, if you will. And so to make this just a little bit easier, over the next 50 days, you can go to feedback, fifty.com that's feedback and the number fifty.com and you can download a very simple Excel sheet to make tracking this initiative very easy. Because again, feedback shouldn't be complicated. It shouldn't be a big burden, but it should also be done in a very conscious way. Heck, that's the name of my company, winning partners, right? The whole idea of being a conscious partner to other people, and that's a two way street. You want to be aware of when you're giving feedback. You want to be aware and slow down when you're receiving feedback so that you can make the most out of it, because just giving people aid, just giving people information, and then hoping that they run with it often isn't enough. Again, going back to the energy core, that's very much their philosophy. It's not just a matter of distributing aid, but helping lift Entire societies out of the state that they're in so that they can thrive, so that they can flourish, so that being said, this is an opportunity for you, over the next 50 days, to receive 50 pieces of feedback that you might not otherwise receive, or at least be aware of, and to give 50 pieces of feedback that you might not otherwise give.
06:15
And so with that, the last couple minutes here, I'm going to share a couple additional thoughts on feedback, in fact, a couple of additional items of pushback that I often receive when the topic of feedback comes up in my one on one conversations and group coaching conversations, starting with this idea that there needs to be some magic ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback. Again, you might be familiar with the cliched feedback sandwich, whereby if you have to deliver some tough constructive feedback, you give some positive feedback first, and then you slip in the harsh, tough negative feedback in the middle, and then you finish with something positive. And again, the intention there is sound, but often it's not done in a very genuine way, and it can leave a bad taste in people's mouth. No pun intended, given the sandwich metaphor and so to that, I say, don't think of feedback as positive or negative. Think of it as neutral. Thinking of it as observation. You know, think of those scientists for the last couple decades at Meadow Croft, right? You know, they're not worried about, you know, good fines, bad fines, whatever. They're just there to find stuff, to uncover answers, to uncover facts and to share that with the world. From a scientific standpoint, in fact, I think it's on the order of 2 million artifacts and eco facts that have been found at that site over the last couple of decades. Again, it's all kinds of data that scientists, or really anybody in the general public, can use to either form opinions about, you know, how humans have adapted here in western Pennsylvania and not North American general over the last several 1000 years? Or to make silly videos like this to help you be a more effective leader in the energy industry, either way, we're talking about facts, neutral facts. So too, should you look at your feedback if I'm observing something that you're doing doesn't matter if it's positive or negative, it's information that you can use to make your own decision. Think of feedback that way to make it a little bit easier, so that you're not worried about pointing out something that might put people on the defensive. And again, let's build on sports analogies here, where the day after the Masters, where Rory McIlroy pulled out a thrilling playoff victory over Justin Rose, well, think about somebody like Rory, one of the best golfers in the world. You think he wants feedback? Yes, he wants feedback. Every piece of information that he can ingest is going to be valuable for him to be the best at what he does. And if somebody just happens to notice that, hey, his ball is, you know, different spot in his stance or or maybe he developed this slight lean one way or the other, he's going to want to want to know that, and it's not a positive thing or a negative thing. Maybe he already knows about it, but simply pointing it out and saying, Hey, look, hey, here's what I observed worry do without what you may that's your philosophy. That can be your approach to feedback, observations neutral observations that you don't have to worry about upsetting somebody or being overly positive and patting them on the back. No, see what you can and share that information with the other person.
09:08
That being said, another common area of pushback is, well, you know, I don't have anything else to offer. This person's a rock star. Or conversely, if you know, you think of yourself as a rock star, and you go around asking for people to give you feedback, you know, what is holding them back? What is preventing them from giving you something valuable? Well, in some cases, the reality is, you know what you might be very strong at what you do, or the person that you're working with might be very strong at what they do. And so the antidote to that, in many cases, is one of my favorite questions, which is, okay, well, what am I already strong at? Or what are you already strong at? That can you know, maybe see more of the light of day. What strengths do you have that are maybe somewhat suppressed because of the environment or the projects you're working on, that we can leverage a little bit more? What are some things that you're good at, that you really enjoy, that again, you don't have an opportunity to do that's a great way to give constructive feedback. And again, if you see some strengths in people that. You can share to say, hey, for what it's worth, I've noticed that you're effective at speaking or delivering a message or really diving into these technical problems. What are some ways to take more advantage of it? It's a great, excellent again, I would argue positive piece of feedback. That is a great way to overcome this sense that people get into of yeah, there's really not much more room for development. So why would I go through and try to force myself to engage in this silly feedback 50 exercise?
10:28
And the third observation, if not again, push back item that I receive is, well, you know, I'm busy. How am I really going to slow down, especially if you're in the energy industry, to consciously give and receive that feedback. Joe, you know, it's hard enough to schedule those quarterly or annual performance sit downs with people. How am I going to really find the time to do this? There's all kinds of other initiatives and daily things I can do, whether it's from a physical standpoint and working out, or maybe it's spiritual growth, whatever. Joe, the last thing I'm going to do is add on some other initiative that is inevitably going to fade after three or four days, to which I say, Well, look for those excuses to make it easy, right? Look for those excuses in the moment to ask for feedback. And again, we've talked about this on many episodes of the energy detox. But one of the easiest things you can do is, as soon as you leave a meeting, as you're walking down the hallway, hey, ask the person for some immediate, timely feedback on how you performed, what you shared. And hey, ask them if you could say, Hey, I made a couple observations. Can I share again? This doesn't have to be extra time that's set aside. What excuses Do you already have in your day to make it as seamless and easy as possible? And then again, go ahead and track it to build that feedback muscle, to take advantage of it, so that, again, you can, in essence, strengthen your leadership core, which, again, I would argue, starts with feedback.
11:52
So that being said, I'd be remiss not to end this episode of the energy detox by asking for your feedback. 110 episodes into this series. What are your observations? Again, doesn't have to be positive or negative, although I will happily accept both. What would you like to see more of? What have you found most useful? What episodes have you found to be meh, a waste of your time. Let me know, privately, publicly, it doesn't matter. It's what I need to help grow. It's what I need the energy detox. What I need for the energy detox to keep growing and providing value. And again, I'd be remiss not to go through this feedback 50 challenge, if you will, at the same time as you.
12:30
So that being said, you can head on over, as I said before, to feedback, fifty.com that's feedback. The number fifty.com you can download that simple Excel sheet. And again, before we close out, the last thing I'll remind you of is that consciousness piece that we talked about about 10 minutes ago. It's not enough to just go through the motions and give and receive feedback. You need to ask yourself, Am I doing it in a conscious manner? Am I seeing everything that's there that I can convey to this other person, and is that other person that I'm requesting feedback from Are they really taking the time to say? What else? What else is there? What else is this individual doing that maybe he or she doesn't realize it's that consciousness piece that's going to take you to the next level. It's that consciousness piece that's going to lift you out of a state of again, feedback poverty, and it's that consciousness piece that's going to help differentiate you from the 1000s of other leaders out there that you know might have a similar background, but don't necessarily act in that conscious, intentional witting manner that I am challenging you to do so with that as always. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the energy detox from beautiful Avella Pennsylvania, here in Washington County and again here in a couple weeks, when Meadowcroft, rock shelter and historic village opens, I encourage you to head on over check it out and again, use that as a reminder of not just what human life was like before, abundant, affordable, accessible energy like that that's produced below my feet here in Washington County, but also how deprived you and the world around you might be from a leadership standpoint, if you are not tapping into sound, solid, regular feedback. So with that, take care. Thanks again, and have a great rest of the week.