Hermann Eben, management consultant from Midland, Texas, is a people person in more ways than one.
With an outgoing and easy-to-smile personality, he is a hail-fellow-well-met. He also is a student of the human animal – especially in observing and measuring strengths, weaknesses and communication skills.
Affiliated with Trim Tab Solutions consultancy in Midland, Texas, Eben is dead serious in his dedication to leadership coaching to create high performance leaders.
Eben, who has been consulting with the AAPG headquarters staff for the past four years, also has led seminars at annual AAPG Leadership Conferences, coaching AAPG members in strategy and goals alignment, creating action plans and, one of his main topics, managerial communications skills for geoscientists.
Eben is one of 12 instructors who are offering courses at the AAPG Winter Education Conference, to be held Feb. 11-15 in Houston.
The conference offers a smorgasbord of a curriculum where registration is for the entire week and the badge is transferable. Courses also are priced individually and include refreshments and a buffet lunch each day, in addition to course notes. Member discounts are available.
The conference has three different tracks – Business, Unconventional Reservoirs, Seismic and Petrophysical – with multiple courses successively available in each track. Also, attendees can mix and match the courses as they so desire. Transferable badges allows for multiple individuals from a company to receive training.
In the course titled “Thinking on Your Feet,” Eben teaches techniques on how to communicate memorably and with clarity and brevity – and focuses on persuasion.
“While there is a tendency for people to think they communicate well, the reality is that their actual performance suffers lack for formal training in the communication skills,” Eben said.
“Scientists in particular sometimes can have difficulty in getting their message across due to the technical nature of the subject,” he added, “because of a lack of focus on that particular skill set.”
Eben, who holds two degrees from Oklahoma State University and is included as one of the top 100 OSU football players in its history for his All-American performance as a wide receiver, continued that communication skills are vital on numerous levels, especially as a part of a team.
Noting his experiences in various executive management roles over 12 years for Pioneer Natural Resources and its predecessors, and previously as a corporate developer and planner in the oil industry, Eben flatly asserted “bad communication costs money.”
The course is one of a suite of management-level education classes Eben leads that range from executive and group coaching and strategy design to conflicts and conflict resolution using the Kolbe System, which is built on the fact that our “innate talents” are unchanging, constant and identifiable.
This is in stark contrast to our skills and learned abilities, he added, which are in flux throughout our lives.
For further information on Eben’s course and the Winter Education Conference, see the AAPG Web site or
contact Debbi Boonstra
with the AAPG Education Department.