Leadership Questions

Jon Fleener, Maintenance Manager at Cedar Bayou

2026-05-28

I figured I was asking so many leaders that I would be remiss if I didn’t ask my manager, Jon Fleener. He’s more quiet/soft spoken so how he leads is going to be very different from how I (or other folks I know) would.

Jon Fleener

• What's been your career path? what's been the role you felt you grew in the most?

• What’s something you wish you knew early in your career?

• Who do you look to as a great leader (inside or outside of the company)? What about them do you admire/want to imitate? Is there a mentor you really grew under?

• Which leadership skills were the most difficult to develop?

• What’s one change you’d like to make here that you haven’t been able to?

• How do you identify talent?

• How do you recover a failing culture?

• How do you approach collecting feedback from your team when some individuals are more vocal than others?

If this time doesn’t work, please let me know and I’ll reschedule.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-—start of convo

We started by just explaining the intent behind this meeting, I ran through my usual spiel and even added some additional questions like “how to develop people, how to give eoy feedback, how to pick someone to give for a project and "not play favorites." We only had an hour so Jon knew we wouldn’t be able to get to answer everything but start with just a general career path discussion.

Jon became driven his senior year “grew up and got dedicated”, coming out of school he worked in Port Arthur at a refinery. Early he transitioned into operations and was given the large FCC unit. He was moved to the operations contact for a new megaproject construction. In the megaproject role, confidence and decision making were two skills he really learned in that role. You couldn’t be a liaison; you had to decide and direct. He led the megaproject all the way through commissioning, becoming the commissioning team lead (contractors reporting to him) and that became Process Supervisor (leading the hourly staff) for creating procedures and training operations since he knew that new unit the best.

##One of the highlights from this is how he lived with “the scars” of his own decisions during design/commissioning since he’s now building/troubleshooting.

That process supervisor role was not for him, even though he had previously looked up to it as the pinnacle of where he’d end up. Jon wasn’t able to find happiness. He wanted to do and complete every issue he noticed so he ended up working 350+ days a year. Management stepped in, showed him to a new role as Area Manager. Being a little more removed from the day to day benefited him greatly. He was able to be more strategic in how he approached the role/responsibilities, it was much healthier for him.

He mentioned a lot of his career has been “mission roles” where he was put somewhere with a mission to “go in and fix it”, his next role as the project development team lead was one of these. He had to change the culture, where SMEs of 30+ years were hesitant to change. Then as the maintenance manager was leaving, he tapped Jon about backfilling, with no maintenance experience (almost all operations at this point). The Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook became core to learning why we do what we do and how the process of getting work executed happens.

##Jon also noted it’s not about direct experience for the role, it’s about behaviors. Listening to people and asking questions. Before you challenge the status quo have a good understanding for “why” (which he got that from reading the handbook) i.e. Chesterton’s fence

He had a toxic plant manager, whom he learned a lot of negative ways to lead from. When those bad habits begun to rub off on Jon, he knew it was time to get out. The site had gotten bad at a lot of things they had been good at. When you get rid of a process just to show change, but in 6 months you complain about not having a process it drives folks away.

##This is another instance of Chesterton’s fence, and why Consultants are not directing but “consulting”.

The jump to CPChem Borger in the maintenance manager role was likely a step back (career ladder wise since it’s a smaller site), but it was way better for his sanity and his family. He was able to turn the group around quickly and get it on a positive trajectory. Jon got tapped by Jason McAlistar to move into Operations and help turn that group around (another mission role). It was a lot of building the belief in the team that your job matters, to take pride and do the correct action every time. Sometimes that means someone has to be an example.

##He mentioned he takes every role with “honesty, integrity, bring everything forward - you can't lie about what you don't know”

He was brought to Cedar’s maintenance for another “mission”, addressing the PBD effort and managing maintenance costs. He’s really learned to be clear on expectations in this role and how you need to adapt your leadership to the role/site. You can’t always be the same kind of leader in roles that require different priorities.

After hearing all the roles, I wanted to know which has been the most “natural fit” for him and his personality. Jon said CPChem is much more his style. He also mentioned how not all coaching is good coaching and not all advice is good advice, especially if it’s not aware of the situation for why you’re doing something.

##This reminded me of the difference between physics and engineering, one is the theoretical ideal situation and abstract solution, the other wants the specifics to solve for this instance.

Jon did mention how he worked with a coach/trainer about leadership at TotalEnergies. They helped he create a self-reflection loop of “what happened, what'd you say, what do you think they heard, and how did it play out.” Often the message you wanna send is not what is received. Thinking about how you would do it over can help make the next instance a little better. This is often easy to say “oh I’ll do better” but much hard to do. Create the process and then continue to watch.

##Hearing this reminded me about how hard it is to communicate what’s in your head into what’s in their head. This is the true human experience

I wanted to know how you get honest feedback from the team since you’re seen as the boss and they might not want to upset you. Jon mentioned how “open answer questions” don’t always get great responses because often you’ll just get the cookie cutter response. If you’re too probing, you can lead to putting the words you want to hear in their response. And if you give it to them cold (with no warning), they often default to something easy and basic. You need to be vulnerable, start the conversation, and let them know you’re actually looking for feedback. And sometimes that’s getting feedback in a day or a week, don’t force it. Jon did mention that he tends to take things personal, when there’s an issue it puts a chip on his shoulder.

When I asked how he sets goals and gets team buy-in, he broke it down setting goals is finding where you naturally fall and then you need to focus on the other sectors. Jon mentioned how personal development is not his natural pull, so he needs to be more intentional about it. He’ll focus on the technical and forget the people development portion of leadership. On “buy-in” from the team, Jon mentioned that you need to align with them and know where they see themselves. If you can show how what you’re wanting will help them, you can get them working towards the common goal. If they see the need, you can get effort from the heart.

##It really reminded me about extreme ownership and how you ‘gotta explain the why’

LASTLY, at the end of the conversation Jon mentioned how we barely scratched the surface and if I would be open to setting something up on a regular basis to discuss more and about myself and my goals. He’s been the only person who’s ended the meeting this way!

end of convo————

I mentioned that one of the things I felt most uncertain about was being 20yrs down the line and put in a situation where I should know the answer but don’t. Jon gave me 2 pieces of advice.

1. You’re curious and good at learning. You pick up things quickly

2. You know how to problem solve. It’s what you do with engineering; draw a diagram, break into parts, etc. Solve it one bite at a time