Tag Archives: energy leadership

How Are You Showing Up? A Primer on Energy Leadership

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You bring your unique energy to how you show up each day – at home, at work, and generally in life.

This is especially important for leaders – both entrepreneurs running startups and managers leading teams in corporate enterprises. As a leader, you knowingly or unknowingly influence others, and this presents the opportunity to inspire and motivate your team.

This article will focus on Energy Leadership™, a concept I discussed in my presentation at the Association of Talent Development’s ATD ’23 conference on how to Think Like an Entrepreneur and Foster Creativity in Your Organization.

When you show up with your best energy, you can encourage your team to recognize and harness their own energy, feel a greater sense of purpose, and get more done with much less effort and stress. So, let’s delve into more detail on Energy Leadership.

Energy Leadership

“Energy is contagious; either you affect people or infect people,” says bestselling author and businessman, T. Harv Eker. When you realize how many people you interact with each day, you begin to realize how powerful your personal energy is.

The interesting thing about energy is that it can be both anabolic and catabolic. Both energy levels serve you daily, depending upon your lived experiences. Here is a brief overview of each:

  • Anabolic energy is associated with a constructive buildup force and less stress. With anabolic energy, it is easier to focus on solutions and tap creativity and experience for a complete and conscious view of situations. People have more access to this energy, with less judgment and less fear about themselves or situations – anabolic energy is essentially constructive, fueling, healing, and growth oriented. A leader with anabolic energy is collaborative, fuels creativity and productivity.
  • Catabolic energy, on the other hand, tends to distract you and pull your focus away from what you are doing. It is typically draining, resisting, and contracting energy. Yet, it serves the important purpose of self-protection, especially when experiencing uncomfortable situations. A leader with catabolic energy can use this energy in a time crunch or dangerous situations to address a particular situation. However, catabolic energy can be depleting and stress levels raised so the longer term effects are not positive. Think of it as being in continual fight or flight mode. 

In practice, a catabolic leader and anabolic leader may look like the following:

Neither type of energy is good nor bad, but an ambidextrous leader can adapt to the situation to create a better result.

The first step is to understand your personal Energy Leadership profile. This is done through an attitudinal assessment and can be used as a starting point to uncover how your energy can be harnessed to reach your goals and help you to lead more effectively.

So, how do you assess your current Energy Leadership?

The Energy Leadership Index (ELI) assessment tool, developed by the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC) measures your unique energy profile. Through a series of 84 questions, the ELI reveals the percentage of each energy level you experience under normal circumstances and how your energy manifests under stress.

The 7 Levels of Energy

There are seven energy levels, each with a thought, emotion, and action attached.   Daily, you may operate on just a couple of levels or many, but this tool focuses on understanding where you are. 

Your individual results of the ELI assessment come in a sample like the chart below. This represents your average energy presentation under normal circumstances and under stress.

Everyone has a different ELI, which uniquely reflects their lived experiences. Through the debrief with an ELI Practitioner, you bring an awareness of how you show up. In the debrief, you go through your particular energy levels and find experiences that serve you well and others that do not. The tool’s power is recognizing your level and the ability to change the level and gain a better experience. The ELI tool, which can be used with individuals or teams, has a low entry bar, and it could pay significant dividends for leaders.

New Working Styles Benefit from Energy Leadership

The new normal of remote, hybrid, and in-person working styles has brought challenges for leaders. We are currently at a crossroads where workers value the flexibility of work from home options, but in many companies, management is dictating a return to the office, or hybrid approach. This puts a lot of pressure on team leaders. As mentioned in a previous blog post, speaker, author, and facilitator Priya Parker talks about gathering with intention for meetings (or classes), along with bringing an energy that meets the needs of the situation. If you are responsible for gathering and communicating with your team, consider your intention and your energy; the benefits could be significant.

How skillfully can you lead daily? An Energy Leadership approach will identify where you can adjust to having more experiences that better serve you and your clients, and it extends beyond the realm of work to your family and loved ones as well.

In one of the sessions at ATD ‘23 by Zenger Folkman, it was discussed that with more experienced leaders, coachability decreases. (Yes, that says “Coachability” on the left axis, my camera skills attest to capturing this during a live session!)  Senior leaders have been through a lot of training and I suggest the ELI assessment as a tool that could provide new insights into how they are leading today.  

In summary, embracing Energy Leadership can inspire peak performance from individual employees and transform the culture of organizations. A key element to Energy Leadership is that we are all leaders, every day, in every area of our lives. Energy Leadership can help individuals skillfully lead when interacting with others.

Further reading: Should I work with an Energy Leadership Coach?

Learn more at https://www.energyleadership.com/ or reach out to me at patriciacotter76@gmail.com or pcotter@mit.edu

In the face of Massive Layoffs, why should I work with an Energy Leadership Coach?

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People in today’s workforce face stress – and lots of it. Layoffs, quiet quitting, a general sense of pandemic fatigue, and recessionary pressures are hitting all of us.

For corporate leaders, this stress is multiplied. Leaders are dealing with teams that are unmotivated and exhausted. In some organizations, leaders need to cut positions and continue to drive the business forward with fewer resources. Paradoxically, in other companies, there are open positions that are difficult to fill, and existing team members are stretched thin.

Burnout is real, and whether your company is primarily working from home, returning to the office, or trying a hybrid model these days – you are likely facing challenges and trying to figure out what works best. (Of course, some industries such as healthcare never had the option to work from home and the stress of these workplaces can be off the charts.)

What can we do about it? This article is about Energy Leadership™ and how you can use your energy to show up every day as your best self.

What is Energy Leadership?

Your life experiences significantly impact how you perceive things. This affects your energy in different situations. Although you may not be aware of it, you may be realizing less than your full potential at work, at home, or in social situations. 

Energy Leadership refers to both a particular and unique form of leadership, and to the process of leading energy so that it works for you, rather than against you. By learning and applying the principles and concepts of Energy Leadership, you can increase your ability to shift your own energy and the energy of those around you. When you do that, you will help inspire and motivate yourself and others, feel a greater sense of purpose, get more done with much less effort and stress, and constantly attract positive and powerful people and success to you.

If you manage people, an entire team, or a whole organization, your responsibility – and ability to influence the energy of that group – grows. Every interaction presents the opportunity to lead and have a positive impact on others. You not only need to show up with your best energy, but you need to motivate your team to recognize and harness their own energy.

That’s where Energy Leadership Coaching comes in.

How is Energy Leadership Coaching Different from Other Types of Coaching?

Many people are familiar with an executive coach, a career coach, or a life coach – Energy Leadership Coaching is different from all of these, yet it can help you with each of these aspects of your life.

Energy Leadership Coaching begins with an Energy Leadership Index (ELI) assessment, which applies a numerical value to the types of energy you experience in different situations.  It is not a personality test; it is an attitudinal assessment.  We use this assessment as a starting point, and coaching helps you identify where you believe you would like to spend more of your energy to gain the results you want.

You can work with a certified Energy Leadership coach, like me, with over 300 hours of coaching through iPEC, the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching. This will help uncover your unique energetic profile and your energetic stress reaction, and how they can be harnessed to reach your specific goals and potentially shift awareness and mindset.

What Types of Energy May be Affecting Me?

You lead with your energy. Everyone has a unique level of energy due to lived experiences. Whether you are a corporate leader or not, your energy is how you lead and influence your friends, family, and colleagues. Everyone has the potential to positively or negatively affect those around them.

As an overview, there are two main types of energy: anabolic and catabolic. Anabolic is typically thought of as constructive, fueling, healing, and growth-oriented energy. Catabolic is typically thought of as draining, resisting, and contracting energy, yet catabolic energy can be helpful for focusing and protecting us when experiencing uncomfortable situations.

Both types of energy serve a powerful purpose. And you determine how to use each type of energy appropriately, either with a thought or mindset, emotion, action, or inaction.

Who Benefits Most from Energy Leadership Coaching?

Anyone who wants insight into where they are spending their energy can benefit from Energy Leadership coaching. It can help you find areas where you can do more of what you want to do and develop strategies to improve energy-zapping situations. 

 Why is this Especially Well-Suited for Corporate Leaders and their Teams?

Executives have developed patterns over time and are often frustrated by certain situations without understanding why. Energy Leadership helps bring issues to the forefront to let you make changes if necessary. How you show up matters and all of the people you interact with – whether employees or family or friends – look at your actions more than your words.  With Energy Leadership coaching, you can identify patterns and learn to model your actions to best harness your energy.  

Can Energy Leadership Help to Build Better Relationships with Remote Teams?

Connections are so key, particularly in a remote situation. Leaders need to consider how they show up to their employees. Are your employees just listening to video calls on mute and not interacting? Are new employees feeling connected to the organization and their teams?  You can create an atmosphere of learning, risk-taking, and opportunities with a foundation of trust and creativity. However, you must understand what motivates you and your employees. 

Improving team dynamics so there is accountability and understanding can significantly improve performance – whether in a remote, in-person, or hybrid situation.  A manager or executive who feels there are barriers in the way of the organization’s creativity and communication can use Energy Leadership to improve interactions. Any time individuals or teams can better understand what is getting in the way of success – and fix the issue — results in a win for everyone involved.

What are the Takeaways?

Energy Leadership can profoundly change your leadership style. It helps you to become more self-aware and realize what messages you are sending, and how you can change this dynamic or shift your leadership style to bring out the best in your team.

Interested in learning more about Energy Leadership Coaching?

Send me an email and I’d be happy to share more information.