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More With Less

THE NEWSLETTER FOR HIGH ACHIEVING LEADERS AND TEAMS WHO WISH TO HAVE MORE IMPACT WITH LESS STRUGGLE

IN THIS ISSUE
ANNOUNCEMENTS: The Space Between Your Ears - The Final Frontier

FEATURE ARTICLE: The Energy Crisis – in Leadership

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ANNOUNCEMENTS: The Space Between Your Ears - The Final Frontier

The inner world of leaders and employees is vast and unexplored. Too little attention is paid to it as it is unclear and hard to measure.

Understanding and learning how to influence what goes on inside your own and others’ inner worlds is a great source of competitive advantage. It may not be the final but is certainly an untapped frontier.

We do not park our emotional selves – our hopes, our fears, our lack of self-awareness and inability to manage ourselves – at the door to our offices. How we feel affects how we perform and by definition how others perform as well.

The capacity to look inside and reflect on one’s beliefs and behaviours is an underestimated source of value. How we make meaning and engage with life is a statistically proven source of advantage.

Once you spend 10,000 hours on a subject you are considered an expert. With all the books, courses, personal study, personal transformation, and client work I’ve done on this, consider me an expert.

Call me for further information on high achieving coaching and team programs or toschedule a complimentary one-on-one sample session. Take advantage of the opportunity to leverage all my learning and use simple tools that work.

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Feel free to forward More With Less (in its entirety please) to anyone you think might be interested. This is how I grow. Please include full authorship and subscription information. Thanks!

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FEATURE ARTICLE: The Energy Crisis – in Leadership

“America’s number one energy crisis is Monday morning.”
Author Unknown

“Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.”
Daniel Webster, 19th Century American Statesman

“Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn’t you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of them? Didn’t most of them turn out all right after all?”
Dale Carnegie, American Writer and Lecturer

I have been sick with a rotten cold since last Wednesday. I scoped out my newsletter prior to getting sick and I just can’t seem to wrap my brain around it yet.

One of my operating principles is to make my work as fun and as easy as possible. Do I succeed all the time? No. Does it help to have this clear intention? Yes.

So I’m shelving my original plan and celebrating that I’ve got a great start on November’s letter.

So what about this month’s?

I’m working with a large oil company who has incorporated what is known as the Energy Project into its leadership curriculum (www.theenergyproject.com). So me being the curious type that I am had to do some research.

The stake of The Energy Project is as follows: “We’re in a new kind of energy crisis – and this one’s personal. The Energy Project offers organizations and individuals a ground-breaking, science-based approach to fuelling sustainable personal energy.”

This is a core exposure right now for organizations. People are working very, very hard and are very, very tired. As I shared in an earlier newsletter, David Ulrich has asserted that while we may be coming out of the financial recession, the emotional recession is a long way from ending.

A lot of output is happening, and people want to do great work and make a difference. However, according to Towers Perrin research only 21% of close to 90,000 respondents worldwide are engaged in their work

As consultants love to do, The Energy Project has articulated a useful four quadrant model: Performance Zone (high energy, high positivity), Recovery Zone (low energy, high positivity), Survival Zone (high energy, low positivity) and Burnout Zone (low energy, low positivity).

Only the Performance Zone is sustainable. Low positivity over time leads to burnout, turnover, and an engagement gap, or the difference between the discretionary effort companies need and people actually are willing and able to invest.

In the Survival Zone, our pre-frontal cortex either shuts down or operates at a lower level in order for us to react more instinctively to what causes us fear. If we’re not mobilizing our capacity to think, our ability to craft complex solutions, source innovation, and manage relationships constructively is diminished.

Our negativity or fear gets leaked to others which triggers them. The more people you lead feel devalued because of your worry, frustration, or irritability, the more energy they spend asserting, defending, and restoring their personal value, and the less energy they have available to create value for the organization.

The good news is the converse is also true.

Turning people’s energy and ambition into engagement and ultimately performance demands attention, focus, very different behaviours of leaders, and some new organizational practices.

Please go to their site for more resources and information. They offer what they call an Energy Audit which helps you assess how well you are doing at meeting your four core energy needs – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. They also provide many useful tips on how to amp up your energy in each of these areas.

As someone in need of some additional and sustainable energy right now, I have decided to share with you The Energy Project’s top 10 rituals for performing at your best:

1. Choose specific times and days to do at least three cardiovascular and two strength workouts each week. Yikes – a failing grade on this one!
   


2. Eat energy rich foods, focusing on proteins and complex carbohydrates, every three hours. A typical day should include three smaller meals and two snacks (each 100-200 calories). Not bad here – could cut down on my sugar intake.


3. Begin preparing for sleep at least 45 minutes prior to going to bed by quieting your body and mind. Sleep at least 7-8 hours per night. Brilliant on this one!
   


4. When you notice yourself feeling like you’re a victim, separate the facts of the situation from the story you are telling yourself. What is the most realistically optimistic story you could tell here without denying or minimizing the facts? Put another way, how would you respond to this situation at your best? 8/10 here. Learned optimism is a leadership and life strength and key ingredient of happiness.


5. When you feel triggered – pushed into negative emotions – take a deep breath and feel your feet. Whatever you feel compelled to do, don’t. Buy time until you feel able to truly reflect on how you’d like to respond, rather than simply reacting. Yes – finally. We heady types have to learn to feel our bodies, including the earth beneath our feet. Being too high in the stratosphere can leave you disconnected from what is real.


6. 6. Designate specific times throughout the day when you ask yourself: “What energy quadrant am I in?” If you find yourself on the negative side of the quadrants, ask yourself: “What do I need to do to move myself back over to the positive side? No and I will now add this as a daily practice. Easy enough to do.


7. Before you go to bed, identify the most important task you could do the following day. Do the most important thing first thing in the morning by scheduling a minimum of 45 minutes and no more than 90 minutes for this task. Treat this time as sacredly as you would a meeting. When you are finished, take a renewal break. This is definitely a new performance practice for me.


8. Set aside designated periods of time each week to reflect, strategize and focus on the big picture. Could actually reduce my reflection time and add a bit more doing. I can be a learning and musing junkie which definitely serves my clients.


9. Set aside regularly scheduled times – at least five minutes for each one – during which you meditate or engage in a deep breathing exercise in order to develop and train the “muscle” of absorbed focus. Getting better.
   


10. Check in with yourself once a day to reflect on this question: “How well is my behaviour today aligned with my deepest values – the person I want to be?” If you’ve fallen short, what change do you need to make going forward? Honestly, I am role model at holding this kind of focus. As a leadership mentor, I can do nothing less.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

1. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on the above rituals. What is one simple practice you want to put into place to move the lowest, and if not the lowest, the most important score?


2. Identify the different ways you use up or deplete your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy. How could you improve in each area? Go to www.theenergyproject.com for ideas.
   


3. Look for ways to conserve your emotional energies by being more relaxed and optimistic in the face of daily challenges and disappointments.
   
   
4. How aligned are you against your deepest values? Remember, how you spend your time is a pretty good indicator of what is most important to you. For the sake of what are you spending or not spending your energy?
   
   
5. When you raise your energy, what will you do to increase your RETURN ON this ENERGY? What will you say YES to and what will you say NO to?

If not you then who? If not now then when? Take charge of creating More with Less and remember, CoachingWorks!

Sincerely,

Sharon Miller, B.Comm., CPCC, PCC
CoachingWorks
sharonamiller@rogers.com
(416) 484-8018
http://www.sharonamiller.com

“The art of resting the mind and dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of energy in our great men.”
Captain Hadfield (can’t find who this guy was – sorry!)

“The key that unlocks energy is desire. It’s also the key to a long and interesting life. If we expect to create any drive, any real force within ourselves, we have to get excited.”
Earl Nightingale, American Motivational Speaker and Author

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