Energy – Leadership Nugget 2
For the last 15 years I’ve had the privilege of coaching leaders and managers often to help with improving their performance which inevitably includes looking at how they communicate. In the day(s) that I coach a group of leaders I have to be at my best, fully present, fully focused, fully energised. I literally bring the energy for the day(s) we spend together as we learn better, remember more and have more fun when our energy levels stay high.
The second nugget, in my short summer series of nuggets of leadership wisdom, relates to my coaching experiences and it’s this: ‘energy levels matter, in fact they really matter!’
A leader knows that they need to bring vision and purpose, that they need to inspire and positively influence those they lead to coalesce around the vision and purpose and then lead this group to the promised land of vision/dream realisation!
And, in my experience, this needs HUGE amounts of energy! This energy literally becomes the driving force behind all that needs to be achieved and motivates/inspires people out of inertia, indifference or just ploddiness to move forward in a new direction. Where I have experienced it, this energy is palpable, you can ‘touch and feel’ it in the air and there is laughter, fun and focus. You enjoy the busyness but knowing that its actually leading somewhere. It literally transforms the organisation and acts as a form of glue that binds everyone into moving forward. It expresses itself in hope and optimism, a ‘spring in the step’ of those on the journey, an openness to new ideas, an ongoing enthusiasm that together we are going to make this happen.
I know this sounds too good to be true but trust me I’ve experienced this 5 times in my life, twice in corporate, twice in the charity sector and once in my own leadership (Inpulse growing from 5-25 employees in 12months has required a huge amount of energy[Symbol]). It was/is as exciting as it sounds and it all came from the energy reserves of the leaders I was following.
I was reminded about the importance of energy by a good friend I met for coffee recently. He works for the UK government on major change programmes and was making just this point – that a lack of energy from the leadership was significantly contributing to the changes not happening. The leaderships energy was focused elsewhere and therefore driving the change through had slowed in part as an interpretation from people that it was no longer important! That is the power of energy.
If you’d like to know more about how to help leaders have high focused energy feel free to get in touch at lucie@inpulse.com.
