Liaqat Amin Satti - How to Handle a Crisis when an Oil Rig is Blowing Up

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate. A lot of people talk about crisis communications. They do crisis communications. Certainly I mention that and what I mean by that is maybe I'm working with a politician who got caught fooling around with someone not his spouse and that's happened other embarrassing things that threaten to destroy the reputation. But there are bigger crises in the world, namely when an oil refinery is on fire or there's an explosion or a leak. And it's not just the reputation of one person, it is the reputation of an organization. It's the actual health and the lives of dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of people. That's why I'm very happy to have with us today a special guest, Leakat Aman Sati. He is a well known crisis manager and crisis communications manager. He works with top oil and gas companies, energy companies all over the globe. He truly brings an international perspective on this. He born in Pakistan, has worked the last dozen or so years primarily in Doha in Qatar and that's where I first met him and did work with him with some of the companies he works with. But he works and lectures all over the world and is going to bring to us a fabulous international perspective on crisis communications. Here's my interview with Leah Kat. Leah Kat, thanks for joining us today.

Tj thank you very much for the opportunity and I'm delighted to be with you.

Now you have a background that's frankly very different from most of our guests that you were born in Pakistan, you worked in the Middle east, you work all over the world and you primarily deal not with nice soft, touchy feely stories of a new product launch but, but actual crises, explosions, meltdowns, terrorist incidents. How did you get into this line of work?

Well, it was just by chance that I actually graduated as a lawyer and wanted to pursue my law business. But all of a sudden this opportunity came in UAE to be a translator for a month to because they hired a lot of people from the third world countries from Southeast Asia and they wanted to give them the training and trainer was a British guy and they wanted somebody that can translate from English to their languages. So I came in and trans, you know, for one month and during that month I found it is so interesting that the subject was emergency preparedness, crisis management and business continuity. So it appealed to me a lot.

And if I could just point out for our audience that's a bit of a mouthful but what that really means is if you have an oil refinery and there's an explosion, you can't be refining more oil. And the whole world is looking at you trying to figure out should they short your stock, should they abandon you? I mean, that's what we're talking about, right?

Correct. And there are many other things like the people are at risk, the environment is at risk and their reputation is at risk. So there is lot for oil and gas industry is something that the emergency, their preparedness mostly about the risk assessment, prevention, mitigation and response and recovery is the first thing that they need to design. Even they get into the business. So that is their starting point. They get license to operate only if they demonstrate that they got a robust system of emergency preparedness and business continuity.

Now, you work in a lot of different industries and for various companies, but primarily in the energy sector. Oil and gas, which by its very nature kind of lends itself to the people possibility of crisis because they're flammable, they are explosive. What's the worst situation you were ever called into in terms of a crisis?

I think in the beginning of my professional career when I got into oil and gas industry, got employed as health and safety professional. And the first induction course for me, going into an island where the island was processing gas and very toxic gas and oil and crude oil and the biggest tank of the crude oils were there. And when they in the induction they mentioned that this gas is something so dangerous that if you inhale once, you will be lucky enough to have another breath. So that was quite alarming. But my job was to make the processes safe. My job was to train people and raise the awareness to the level that they always use the protective equipments and they follow the permanent work system and they operate and maintain it as safest possible way. But you know, the oil and gas business is as such that there is a chance that you can have the big disasters, you can have such catastrophic situations. And I think this was one that back in 2006, 2007, when I was fire chief at that time. And we were called into one of the emergencies and it was quite surprising that it was very close to the fire station. But when we reach on the scene, the fire was out of control and the explosion started. And many people were trapped into that situation. So that was the worst thing. And it was the first thing that I have seen in my professional career. And that's where the training and that's where all those standard operating procedures were helpful. So we did do not let people rush into and start straight away to put themselves into. You know, you might have heard Many times that so many fire people and rescue people have lost their life because these people do not assess the situation. Or sometimes they assess the situation, but during the operation situation gets so worse. So in that case I had to actually stop people at a distance, which we called it say safer zone. And in that safer zone we assess and then we put our strategy that how we are going to deal with this situation.

And I should point out for our listeners that you're not just dealing with how to speak to the media during a crisis, you're actually helping people manage the crisis on the ground. I'm frankly too scared and chicken for that. The closest I ever got was 30 years ago as a PR guy going in with a politician to shut down illegal boiler room operations because there was always the danger that the person seeing the government officials run in would start waving a gun, there would be a standoff. So I always cowardly waited till the authorities went in, made sure any guns were got and then I went in with the media. But you actually have to be there on the ground when a crisis is still occurring. How do you, how do you make that difference between what have I got to do to manage the crisis versus what do I do to let the media really know what's going on? Because they want to alert the community and the people affected.

Correct. And this was one of the, I think I was fortunate to go through that experience of being at operational tactical and strategic as well. So I have seen these operations taking place and rescue and all that under my command and control and instructions. And whereas I have also seen preparing the media response team and talking to the media during a situation or after a situation. So I think sometime my feeling is that the people, operational people, the blue lights people will do the great job. But if the media team and the crisis management teams are not properly trained, they will mess up and they will actually wipe off all the good work that these people have done. And you know, you imagine those people are doing a very, very difficult job. It's the job that when people got fire, explosion and people are dead and injured that time all the people are running away, the emergency services are running in to save those people. So it's a very hard situation. A special training is required, there are special measures that they take. But if the media response people are not prepared, they are actually not giving the full credit to these people what they're doing at the ground. So I think with the fast paced media world, it is very important to train the people at the ground level, at the operational level. But the strategic team, crisis management team and crisis media response team need to have equally better training and drills and exercises before a situation comes so they are prepared so they can deal with those situations. Otherwise they will make a mess out of all that and they won't be able to give the proper information or timely information or the right information to the audience.

How do you really get people to perform under stress? Because no matter, because I face this in my own crisis media training is that this training situation, at some level, people know the stakes are low. It's not really going to hurt your reputation. So a lot of organizations will hire crisis communications people, crisis management people like you and me, and we have a fun day of training and maybe there's a nice big thick manual that's put together and it goes on the shelf and then six months go by, an actual crisis happens and nobody does anything remotely similar to what happened in training or what's spelled out in the manual. How do you, first of all, do you even think that's a fair criticism? Because that is a common criticism. And number two, how do you handle it?

I think that's very fair and I have seen it live in my professional career and I think some of the trainings that we have done together and you have seen those people performing very well in the training, but during a crisis that I have seen them not doing very well, not doing justice to their job. So the best thing is that they need to take it very seriously. It should be part of their training and competency process. So the crisis media response training is not a one off training. It should be a proper skill development training and it becomes a competency assurance program. So they need to do the regular drills and exercises and continuously improve the processes and look for all their worst case scenarios and practice on those worst case scenarios. That's the only thing. Otherwise, if a person, as you said, if a person is panicked or a crisis management team leader is panicked, then I will not expect the good result. I have seen the CEOs during a real disastrous situation coming and very calmly sitting at the head seat and telling people to calm down and assess the situation and make the right decision and the approach of the team will be totally different. And if a CEO is coming in a panic and showing too much uncomfortable situation and gestures, then that is going to affect negatively the entire team. He's not going to get good result out of that.

And of course the challenge with the crisis is even if you don't look or sound panicked quite often, it's just one Wrong phrase that can destroy the reputation of an organization. If I mention crisis communications to most Americans who are in the industry or follow that, the first two examples, certainly if they're say over the age of 40, first big example they'll give is Exxon Valdez. It may be the Tylenol scandal, but Exxon Valdez and what that did to Exxon. The second one would be the BP oil spill, which is a little more recent. That's only been, I guess six years or so, both of them involving oil and gas. Now, in the case of Tony Hayward, the BP of the CEO of bp, I would make the argument that he came across smooth, comfortable, confident, relaxed, believable, but that he made the classic blunder of not rehearsing his Q and A sessions with staff. Consequently, he got quoted saying things like of course I want my life back or it's America, of course there will be frivolous lawsuits. Those two quotes are partially responsible for him losing his job and BP's market cap going down $35 billion. Now that's not the only reason, but to me that's what's so different about regular media training and crisis communications training is at some level they're exactly the same. You need to have good messages and great sound bites. The difference is if you're a little bit off promoting your book or promoting your consultancy, it doesn't really matter if you're a little bit off during a crisis, people can be mocking you. 10, 20, 30 years later, movies can be made about it, which is what is happening right now with bp. I want to get your assessment of how BP handled their crisis and how their CEO handled himself in the media during the crisis.

I think the BP especially this Gulf of Mexico incident was a biggest one in the history of oil spill. If you look at the managing part, there were thousands of people there, they experimented on few things in a given time and technology. But again, going back to where the things gone wrong was only Tony Hayward not making the right response. Maybe right response, but not make choices of the word was as such that today everywhere I go and I have seen the people actually start the media response training with his where he says, well, I want my life back. So he was a good CEO, he was not a bad CEO. He was, you know, I think on the heights of his professionalism technically and administratively and managerially. But what he missed or what the organization have not focused to do the media response training and teach them the proper etiquette and ethics of talking to the media and what is the best like when you came to train one of the organization that I was working with and, and we did this ambush type of interviews in the beginning and later on when you have trained, then after I think half day or on the second day, there was a significant improvement in their response, in the choices of word, in their comfort level, in their honesty, in how they appear and everything was improved. Now that's not only the one time, it's important that they need to continuously follow the instruction, have little mock up the discussions or exercises or drills and that is the only way to keep it current. Otherwise, in case of a real disaster, you are already under pressure, your mind is actually entangled with many things. So the media response training, especially for the top management, should get to the point that they practice so much that it gets gets into their muscle memory and if not, then that's what will happen. What happened to Tony Haber?

Leocot how do you deal with a culture of a lot of oil and gas companies? You have people who are former military running them. They often have a, and believe me, I don't mean this as a criticism, they're lovely people. I've worked with a lot of oil and gas companies and I've been fortunate enough to collaborate with you from time to time. Our listeners should know, but they come from a culture that's very top down, authority driven and that can work in most situations of running an oil or gas refinery. But when there is an explosion, when there is a hint of terrorist attack, when there is a leak and you've got cnn, Al Jazeera, BBC showing up outside with a camera and they want to interview someone, quite often the tendency is to say no, no, no, no, you can only talk to our CEO and the CEO wants to get everything approved by the lawyer. And next thing you know, two days have gone by. How do you combat that sort of hierarchical top down culture? Number one and number two, what do you actually recommend as far as how quickly should someone be speaking to the media during a time of crisis and then how often should there be updates?

Good. I think I will answer the second part first because that's where most of my work have gone into the industry. The first time we have done the exercise, we prepared the media response press statement and that press statement gone from one crisis communication team to the crisis team. They were debating on the words and verb and spellings and they took like two and a half hours to just approve the first draft in the crisis management team. Went to the lawyer, lawyer took like maybe two hours to complete it. So it was. The exercise was almost finished and we were not being able to produce the first media statement. Now, in today's world, you have no time to wait for hours and hours for all this bureaucracy to go through and debate about the words and the effect of these words and all these. The best response time for any crisis media is that within when you have the confirmed facts and figures and this can take a long time, but if an incident happens, then people will come to know. So within 30 minutes you need to produce something. Either it is a generic statement saying, yes, we have an incident, our highly trained response teams are on site, we do not have any other information at this moment. As soon as it's available, we will give you, and these are our numbers, these are our channels that you can actually speak to. So that is the best practice at this moment. If you fail to do this, then media will go out and they will make their own story. They will talk about you, they will talk maybe, you know, for you or against you, but then later on you are going to actually counter that and then you will never be able to win. So it's the first thing that you need to set up a system and system which should be proper procedures, people being responsible, they've been trained, their facilities set up. So in case of a crisis, then you actually have something already pre approved ready, the wordings, the kind of generic statements. You can actually have a pre approved statements so you can get control of the situation. Otherwise once media goes out and makes a statement, then it is very difficult to do, you know, a positive impact because already people will start talking about it. The story will have the effect, it will go to another one, another one will tell, another person will be more bigger and higher. So the best thing is that you set up a system and aim for as soon as possible. But it should be not be more than 30 minutes to 40 minutes. If it is more than that, people won't wait for you.

And how do you determine who the spokesperson should be? Should it be just a PR person, a crisis management person, the engineer, the plant manager or the CEO? There's a lot of different schools of.

Thought on that, I think.

Yeah.

And there are many ways to do this. But the best way, after looking at Tony Hayward and what happened in there, is normally people do not put their CEO on the first statement they assign or they appoint a person of one, two or three people. They give them quite good training. Generally public relations officer or your operations manager will be in a better position to make these statements, to get the information and disseminate because they are part of the crisis management team or the incident management team. So it's important to have these people trained first and nominated and they have a process ready. So CEO at this moment, I think learning from incident and few disasters and response, those were very poor from top management on those disasters in front of media. So it is better to expose, not to expose CEO and then have the second person talking to or any other person nominated talking to the media. And if there is an issue then you still have a senior person who can actually go and say sorry, this is how we are dealing with it now.

Leah, Kat, a lot of people have a basic tendency to want to be upbeat, optimistic, to look at the glass half full in most aspects of life that's a good thing. Unfortunately, during a crisis that's probably the worst possible thing you could do. Going back to bp, there were just countless days when they said things like, well the hole should be plugged in 48 hours and then 48 hours go by and you've got all the video of it coming out. And now it's not just a problem of the league now the problem is that hey, they lied to us, they said it would be plugged. How do you combat that basic nature of that basic aspect of human nature where people want to be reassuring, they want to be positive, they want to be calming, but then they're really stepping into dangerous territory making promises they can't keep.

Correct. And this is quite difficult to undo this mistake. If somebody makes it says, you know, being too optimistic, not telling exact story, if it is they speculate or they make promises, those they cannot fill. So the best policy is to go out and accept the responsibility and tell them that we are doing every possible thing to do within this response. And I think hiding or changing or twisting historically never help anybody. It will come back and bite back even harder. So it's always best that you need to have a process in place. Obviously one person should not make a statement without consulting the entire crisis management team or overall the company management team. Their response should be cohesive and integrated. So it's not the one person is saying one statement, other person is actually giving different impression. So best thing is to actually go out and honestly express the sympathies and accept the responsibility. That's the more better way and be people actually want. In most of the cases if you are going to hide it, twist it, then that is going to be used. As you said earlier, that even years later people will make stories, they will make videos, they will make films about it. So it's always better to be honest and straight.

Now, I wasn't working for BP during their crisis, so I don't really know what's going on, but I can't imagine for the life of me than any PR crisis communications person pulled Tony aside and said, hey, let's do a quick rehearsal before this press conference and I'm going to ask you what's going on now and how do you feel? Because if they had done that and he had then said, I want my life back, I think any competent PR person would have stopped the tape and said, hmm. If you look at the whole answer, Tony, it makes perfect sense. And you're hitting all the messages because if you do look at his answer to that question, he did say all the right things. But Tony, what happens if someone pulls out just this quote, and then they talk about how 11 of our employees were killed and, and that you have a big yacht, that you'd be getting your life back to you? Are you happy with that? It would have been pretty easy for Tony to say, oh my God, I'll look like an idiot. Now I know not to say that. I mean, my, my guess is that they did not rehearse him on video. And my question to you is, during a crisis when everyone is rushed anyway, how do you make that happen? Number two, quite often there's a stature gap in really large oil and gas companies because your CEO, Tony Hayward was making, I don't know if it was 12 or 20 million dollars a year. I mean, he was just fabulously wealthy. He was a king. And in many corporations, your head of PR might make 100,000 and your head of legal might make a million dollars a year. So already the PR person is looked at almost as a puny gnat in the hierarchy. And it's hard to assert your authority with the big shot CEO or even the big shot head of legal. Now, your background is a little different. Unlike most people in PR and crisis communications, you actually have a law degree. So I'm interested in your perspective on both sides of that.

I think it goes back to one of your previous question when you said how often we need to brief the media, how often we need to go out and repeat our press statement. Tony was, I think, single handedly handling this media part. And too often and too many events were taking place. And that's why, and you're right, if there was a proper process of having a proper team to train, to rehearse, to actually package the right messages and given him in writing saying these are our key messages. Your answer, your first speech and also your all answers should be within these same parameters. Then he might have done it that way and definitely he will do it that way if he was briefed in that situation. Again, if we are too much connected to the media all the time, then again chances that there will be an issue. So the best thing is you need to decide and again, it depends on the magnitude of the incident, the magnitude of that disaster and complexity of that disaster. But the best thing is that you don't put your person to media response all the time. It should be regular intervals and with the specific information and with a specific controlled information. So even if the media tries to tap into the areas, those are not yet settled. So you can actually package your response in that way. I think most of these people, as you said, they are highly paid and they are highly valued into the organization as well. And their training and competency is also very much important to the organization. And significant time and money and and efforts are going into their training and their preparedness as well. So mostly what I have seen that people develop the system, one off incident do not happen every day. TJ this is, you know, which is good thing. But they develop the system, they keep it on the shelf and they forget about it. The companies, those are not actually keeping this as agenda point number one in their quarterly meetings, then they are missing at least quarterly. The top management need to have a review or a discussion or an agenda point that how we are going to deal with the crisis if it happens. What are our biggest risk in the company? Do we have proper mitigation and prevention plans in there? If not, then we have the preparedness properly established and is there anything that we can do to make it even better? And crisis media response, as I said earlier, you know, they will, the blue lights people will do good job because they are every day, they prove it and they actually respond to many complex situations and they successfully handle those. But the crisis media response team do not have, you know, response to the media almost every day or every week or every month. So that's why they need to have, need to establish a regular training or discussions or drills or exercises program. And that is the only way that they can actually keep on top of it.

And forgive me because I lumped in too many questions in a row, but I do want to know and explore this divide between the legal department and the PR department because I have seen in so many crisis situations the CEO turns to the chief legal officer quite often. And hey, so my best friends are lawyers. And you have a lot of good. But lawyers are skilled primarily in the law. That's what they studied. So quite often their response is say no comment. And that way we don't make ourselves liable to say anything illegal and set ourselves up to go to prison. So a lawyer's job is to keep you out of jail and to keep you from violating crimes. And that's certainly an important issue any CEO needs to think about. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, if you only follow a lawyer's advice, you might win in a court of law, but lose in a court of public opinion and the media. So destroy your reputation that you don't have any customers yet and governments have regulated you out of existence. And the lawyer can say, hey, I did my job, I kept you out of prison. I've long said that using your lawyer to tell you what to say to the media during a time of crisis makes as much sense as being on trial for your life for murder and only using a PR person. Well, that would be crazy. But I want to get your sense of this divide since you straddle both camps as a lawyer and a crisis communications advisor.

I think this is classic example that you have given. I have seen many times these debates in front of me when there was a big crisis or a disaster and the lawyer got totally different hat and he's trying to give them all those advices and all those directions. Those are actually totally different. The requirement of the time is that you need to go out and you need to look honest, you need to look that, you know, sympathizing with the people. You need to take the responsibility. If that was your issue or your area of responsibility was the one which caused all that incident. But unfortunately this is the mix. Having lawyer into the crisis management team is as I seen that they will take hours and hours to just only read one statement that can possibly. The language of that statement can possibly have a negative impact on them in the court, but that can actually give very positive impression to the world and to the people and to the victim. And these people will, you know, connect back to the company. Otherwise, if what lawyers are saying, if you are going to read that into the public, I think you will save yourself, but you might not be able to save your business.

And unfortunately the CEO has to worry about both. It's not enough to save your own skin. If you don't save the business, a lot of people are harmed, not to mention their careers and their financial life. How did you get into this business at a deeper Level. How did you get a fascination with communication? I know you've long been involved with organizations like Toastmasters. In fact, you've been nice enough to have me speak at your. Your own Toastmasters chapter in Doha, which I enjoy. But when did you first develop an interest in speaking and speaking to the media? And who are your role models growing up?

That is very, very good question. I like it because this was a turning point in my life when I was not kind of person who will go out and speak in front of people and public and make a sense. I will try every opportunity to actually be at the back bench so not to speak. And it was actually in 2002 when I went into the Toastmasters. That's where I learned the way to speak and the art of and, you know, science of everything that goes into the speaking and public speaking and the leadership skills, both. That's where an exciting turn came into my life, where when I learned about the communication, when I was able to make my point across very clearly, very nicely, people started to listen to me in the meetings. My bosses started to get, you know, that note of me that he is, whenever he's speaking, he's in control. He makes sense. He speaks to the point and he gives suggestion. Those are valuable for the company and organization and for the business. So that was the time that, you know, it was a takeoff time for me. So almost every year I got from last 14 years, I think there were 11 promotions for me. And if I have to give the credit back to one element, and that was only the communication skills. So Toastmaster actually taught me a lot.

What's your advice to young people who are interested in a career in communication? Because these days, not only can you major in public relations or communications as a college degree, there are master's degree programs in information management, public relations, strategic communication, which I always get a kick out of this phrase, strategic communication. Isn't all communication strategic unless you just have Tourette syndrome and you're spurting out obscenities. There's also a school of thought that says, you know what? Lawyers run the show. Go to law school, and you'll have ultimately a stronger position in any organization. And there's a third school of thought that says, no, no, no, don't do any of that. Don't major in communications or PR or law. Major in something like English or whatever language you. You want to ultimately work in and learn how to be a great writer. And that's a skill that will take you farther in any communications field. Where do you fit there.

I think the best description of this is you can be doctor, you can be engineer, you can be any other profession, but you cannot be successful until unless you are a best communicator. I have told this to my son and I actually dragged him. He was not willing, but I dragged him to the Toastmasters, just a crush program, which was only for a week. And now he came back from Sheffield University after completing his mechanical engineering and he came back and he said thank you very much for giving me training in the Toastmaster because I was the best presenter in in my final project, because each student gets a project, they design, they develop something and then they present it. And he told me that there were best design and best production and much better and high tech than him. But he got the first award because of better presentation skills, better communication skills.

So sounds like dear old dad wasn't so dumb after all. Well, that's great.

And you asked me about the ideals. I think I must say that I admire the way you train people and the way you speak and the way you actually coach people and make them better communicator. And one of the example that I must say, you remember in one of the conferences that I called you and you said, do you want me to see your speech, how your opening and closing is? And when I actually delivered that speech in front of you in a fast way so you can actually approve it or not, then you straightaway said, no, it's not good because it's very boring, it's monotone, it's the same thing like anybody else do it, why don't you bring a story into it? And I think it was 10 o' clock in the evening and next day 8 o' clock, we were starting the conference. But within that short time I've been able to incorporate one of the story and that really given at least me a great satisfaction that it was good opening, people were engaged, people were actually and that was making sense to everybody. So these little touch things from you people, you know, really bring the best out of the people. And I have seen those live examples.

Well, thanks, I'm glad it helped. And certainly the number one problem most speakers have isn't nervousness or flop sweat or forgetting. The number one problem most people have is in fact being boring. The easiest way to solve that for anyone is to tell an interesting, relevant story to the audience. That doesn't have to be funny, but that does generally solve most problems. I'm glad it worked out in that situation. Now, the account we do have an audience all over the world listening to this podcast were heard in more than 100 countries. But most of our audience is American so they have a lot of American reference points. I try to expand their horizons and my own I should say I'm no wiser than anyone else. But who were your role models growing up watching television or listening to the radio in Pakistan?

Oh, that's interesting because I not been in Pakistan a lot because I was 21 years when I moved out from Pakistan. But one of the guy who actually comes on national television and he coaches children and students and even the adults, he gets like half an hour talk. But that talk is so engaging, so so good. It's so nice that everyone takes away something. And I used to actually watch him. His name was Dr. Fareed Mona and he was PhD and PhD in strategy something but every word and every sentence of his speech will actually straight away make an impact and effect on me. So I was great fan of this guy.

And how about on the current world scene today a lot of our audience, if I ask them who do they like? They'll often say in the last 20 years they will say Ronald Reagan, they'll say Bill Clinton, Barack Obama. But what non Americans on the international stage do you remember respect the most as communicators?

I think I was going to say Obama because you now ruled out the US one.

So.

In UK I think Tony was quite prolific speaking.

Tony Blair, the former prime minister Tony Blair.

Yeah, he was really good. I liked his way of speaking, the way he engages the audiences. I also like that the Amir of State of Qatar at this moment he is quite young guy but his English even when he speaks in Arabic he uses the expression and words those are very close to your training. Like you are saying, you don't make, you know, big vague statement, you just talk to the people, engage straight with them. And I remember one of your lecture in one of the Pakistani school when we have given to children and teachers and you said, you know, you just talk to the people and then that's how he when he talks to the people really the people feel that he is directly engaging me. So these are the personal personalities are that I really like their style and their way of speaking to the public.

And leakat before we go, any final tips you want to share with our audience about how they can be better communicators whether it's in time of crisis or times of good news.

That's good. Thank you very much for that opportunity because I won one of the quite good award. It was the best speaker award in World petroleum conference in 2008. And the secret was that why I was the best one, because there were many other people and they were seasoned professional. All of those. The one tip that I can give to audience is that there are three things that you need to do for the preparation, and that is practice, practice and practice.

And so few people actually do it. It's fun to talk, it's simple to make the repetitive phrase, but very few people do it. Leah Kat Amin, thank you so much for being our guest today.

Most welcome, T.J. thank you. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Thanks for listening to speaking with T J Walker.