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I recently had the opportunity to get my hands dirty in the oil patch. I can now add “pumper” to my resume. The job consists of monitoring and reporting well site production, maintaining equipment functioning and organizing fluid haul logistics.

Oil is pumped out of the ground into storage tanks and then transferred by either truck or pipeline to a processing facility. Along with the oil, salt water is produced and needs to be disposed of. Some of the well sites produce enough volume that two storage tanks are required to hold the oil and water. Water is only removed from one tank at a time. I was trained on the procedure for switching the water disposal from one tank to another on my last day of training. I would need to preform this task on my own the next day.

Moment of Truth

Step 1 – open the valve. Easy enough I figure, I grab onto to the valve handle and begin to push …. not moving; hmmm a little tougher than I thought …. so I push harder. Wow this valve is still not budging. So I bring all I’ve got to this task, grunt, and push with every ounce my strength. My trainer has a little smile on his face and asks if I’m alright. I start laughing and admit that I can’t budge this handle even though I am pushing with all my might.

The ability to laugh at one’s self is a powerful relationship skill – when used intentionally. With this skill, a leader can demonstrate humility and lower group anxiety during stressful situations. Very often, however, this type of self deprecating humour is not purposeful but rather an automatic patterned way of functioning. My own ability to laugh at self developed from a young age as a way to fit in with the group. When laughing at self occurs as an automatic response to anxiety, it erodes confidence… but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I invite you to consider the opportunity to purposefully use these types of relationship skills. This requires an awareness of your skills, an understanding of how they developed and an ability to discern between automatic and intentional functioning.

Overcoming the Obstacle

The trainer was gracious enough to share his technique for “cracking” a valve open. He showed me how there was a little “play” in the valve and explained that you need to use this bit of slack to generate enough momentum to crack it open. Even with the use of this technique, I was exhausted and unable to budge the valve.

I developed a solution. I would get a longer pipe that I could place over the handle of the valve for additional leverage – work smart not hard! Upon hearing my plan to overcome the obstacle, my trainer laughs and suggest that if I want to use a “Pussy Bar” that’s up to me. Without skipping a beat, I proclaim that I am secure enough with my masculinity and will be bringing a pipe along with me the next day.

Use your Resources

The kind of strength I am talking about in the title of the blog post has nothing to do with muscles or masculinity but rather courage and confidence. Paradoxically, in my view, it is a sign of weakness to avoid using a resource that may be perceived as weak.

There are many resources available to assist leaders, both men and women, that go un-tapped due to fear of being perceived as weak. Resources in this category include but aren’t limited to:

  • Employee Assistance Programs
  • Health and Wellness Benefits
  • Maternity/Paternity Leave
  • Family
  • Outside Resources
    • Legal
    • Public Relations
    • Training
    • Coaching

I have witnessed leaders who have declined the opportunity to access these resources during times of increased anxiety, where the stakes were high, and the outcomes were predictably disastrous.

Be Resilient

I arrive at the well site the next morning and decide to give it one more try without the “Pussy Bar”. I do a brief moving meditation (perhaps the first ever on an oil well site) and visualize the valve cracking open like the karate kid breaking a brick. I did it, I felt like a Man! I would like to report that at the moment of accomplishment I was free of any gender bias and I felt like a physically strong human… but I didn’t…I felt like a Man. Being present to the feeling of the moment exposes unconscious bias. Although I felt like a man, it doesn’t keep me from carrying my “Pussy Bar” in the tool box. I am strong enough to use it, if needed.