Gary became a client way back in the mid 90’s. He brought us in to help him as the oil company he had started in his garage almost twenty years earlier was experiencing its greatest growth. We worked together as Gary grew his company until it was acquired a few years later. Gary retired only temporarily. After a bit of time to relax, build his new home and work on his golf game, Gary got together with a couple of other oil boys he’d known and started ‘playing’ with buying a small oil play and keeping himself involved in the craft that had defined who he had been his whole career. From these efforts sprouted another small oil company that went public and Gary once again found himself in the role of CEO.
We worked with the team Gary assembled in this new company and worked directly with Gary in an executive coach capacity. We spent many hours talking diligently about leadership. Gary faced both the successes and the challenges of executive leadership as he led his new company through the highs and lows of the oil industry. During this experience with a new start up organization Gary took a much deeper look at the impact leadership had on a system and how strongly the character of the individuals on a team impacted the climate of the system. He faced several challenges as he grew this little team of people into a viable going concern. The challenges were not just the technical challenges of finding viable plays to explore, even though this proved to be a key problem his company faced. More so, Gary realized how important, and seemingly challenging was the task of building a collegial team of professionals who passionately faced the ups and downs of the oil business. He had to make some changes on the team and regularly commiserated with me on the fickleness of the personalities that showed up to do the work they had been trained to perform.
I loved the conversations Gary and I had. We covered many miles of the leadership challenge ground that many have chosen not to explore. Gary found his passion of being a professional oil and gas executive based on historical technical expertise shift to a passion for understanding and leading people. With that shift I saw Gary move from a successful technical professional to a Sage Leader.
