Roughnecks To Role Models: How Leading With Vulnerability Transformed An Oil Rig

The transformative journey of embracing vulnerability and authenticity to redefine leadership in high-stakes and high-risk environments

One of the assumptions we all make about vulnerability is that if you’re a tough guy or gal, that being vulnerable inherently makes you weak and…not tough. It’s actually a big theme that I address in my new book, Leading With Vulnerability, where I interviewed 100 CEOs and surveyed 14,000 employees.

When he was 14 years old, Tommy Chreene started working on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for Shell. It was an exciting job that he loved but it was also a dangerous job where people lost their lives. In an interview he did for NPR in 2016 accompanied by a brilliant article they published, he recounted a story of how we saw one such tragedy occur.

One man had just finished his shift and was standing in front of a massive pipe that workers had twisted into the ground. It was held in place with a handle that the man accidentally kicked, which caused all of the tension to release. As it swung around it caught the man’s ankle and whipped him around. As Tommy recounts, “In about three seconds, it spun him around about 80 times," A few feet from the man was a post, and "his head was hitting that post like a rotten tomato."

Tommy and his team were given 15 minutes to mourn the death of their colleague and then had to get back to work.

Even in the face of death, the men on the oil rig never showed any vulnerability. If they needed help they didn’t ask. If they felt they couldn’t do a job, they stayed quiet and did it anyway. If they felt burned out or unhappy, they put up a facade. 

Sounds like many corporate environments today doesn’t it?