Dear friends, welcome to our February Valentine’s edition of BIC Magazine — your Business & Industry Connection. As we celebrate our 30th anniversary of publishing BIC Magazine in April, we want to begin by sharing the exciting news about our new and improved website BICMagazine.com. Thanks to our new partnership with K-fx2, our Web provider, and Launch Media, our video provider, we can now deliver a website with videos that is comparable to the quality of BIC Magazine. The website will be updated with fresh content daily by our Web Editor Brady Porche. It is our hope our readers take the opportunity to utilize BICMagazine.com as their daily news resource for the latest updates in the oil and gas, petrochemical, refining, drilling and exploration, and the business behind it. We felt the website will also offer our print advertisers a great addition to their print campaign and the opportunity to get their marketing message to their target audience daily on BICMagazine.com.
Now, with your help, our goal is to expand our readership beyond North American print capacity to reach who’s who in energy globally.
To kick off another exciting year for BIC Alliance, our 270 marketing partners and 100,000-plus readers, I want to share a few thoughts about leadership and the power of positive influence. On Jan. 6, I was privileged to speak at the TEEX Leadership Development Symposium in Frisco, Texas. The theme was the power of influence, so I decided to share a few of my comments with you here.
First, leadership and influence go hand in hand. In order to become a great leader, we must be able to influence others to accomplish the goals we set.
It has been said there are more than 17,000 articles and books that have been written about leadership and the power of influence. On the surface it would seem impossible to share some tips in a one-hour presentation or a few paragraphs from the publisher, but I will try. Using the format we used in our “Michael Learns to Listen” book, let’s break down the word “leadership” into letters. Then, let’s take the 10 letters and write down the first words that come to mind when we think of great leaders we have known.
L: For L, I chose love and listening. Every great leader I have known has shown a genuine love for others and they were great listeners.
E: The two words I chose for E are energy and enthusiasm. Leadership takes energy and it takes enthusiasm. If we want to lead others, we must be willing to work hard and be excited and enthusiastic.
A: Under the A, I chose accessibility and action. A great leader must make himself accessible to others so we can get input from them. Also, we must not be afraid to take action instead of waiting to respond.
D: Determination and delegation. All great leaders must have determination to succeed. Losing or quitting are never options and even setbacks are used as lessons toward moving forward. Also, a great leader knows how to delegate and give recognition to others.
E: E stands for education and effort. By education, I am not talking just about formal education but lessons learned from adversity and the school of hard knocks. Often we learn more from our failures than from our successes, but education without effort are failures. A great leader shows tenacious effort and sets an example for others to follow.
R: Under the R, I place recognition and resilience. Second to survival, recognition is man’s greatest need. Here is where I share the people secret — when we make others No. 1 they will respond in kind. Resilience means staying power; if we work to become a leader in our field of endeavor, we must get up and keep going even when we fall down.
S: S represents strength and strategy. When we talk about strength we are talking about not only physical strength and stamina but inner strength that comes from faith and a loving heart and the mental strength that comes from learning and listening. Also when we think about the S, let’s always remember the importance of strategy and the 5 P’s — proper planning prevents poor performance.
H: H stands for honesty and helpfulness. Being honest with ourselves and then being honest with others. Being honest with ourselves means being able to access our strength and work on our challenges. We cannot be a well-respected and successful leader unless we are honest with others. As for helpfulness, a good leader is not only willing to lend a helping hand but also remembers to share words of encouragement.
I: When it comes to leadership, the I’s have it. Words like integrity, interest, instinct and influence come to mind. Integrity is the rock on which every great leader must stand. Also great leaders are always interested in the well-being of others. Great leaders are also intuitive, have great instinct and have the ability to influence others.
P: Passion and perseverance represent the P. Every great leader I have ever known or read about was both passionate about their mission and willing to persevere in times of adversity.
Now that we have talked about the characteristics of great leaders, let’s look at some of the great leaders we are featuring in this issue of BIC. We include insight from Matthias Bichsel, projects and technology director, Royal Dutch Shell; Woody Paul, plant manager, ExxonMobil Baytown Olefins Plant; Brenda Kenny, president and CEO, Canadian Energy Pipeline Association; David Huff, president, Progressive Pumps Corp.; and Kyle Wilson, business development, Intergulf Corp.
As always, we also feature a myriad of industry hot topics in this issue. You can stay on top of daily energy industry news updates on our new website, which we encourage you to make your home page.
