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Feature Article: Are you having an energy crisis?
"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
Mohandas Gandhi
Charlotte collapsed into the chair in my office near tears recently. "I am stretched so thin and totally
stressed out all the time. My kids and my husband say they never get my full attention. My staff complains that I am not
available, and worse yet, that I am letting stuff fall through the cracks. I am always behind schedule. Was I crazy when I accepted this
promotion? I love the work but I think I'm losing my grip. If I can just learn to manage my time more efficiently, I think I can get a
handle on things. If I just work smarter, learn to delegate, and a become more efficient multi-tasker, I'll get it all done."
This is typical of the stories I hear from many of my coaching clients.
These are high achievers who are trying in vain to create some kind of
healthy balance in their busy lives. Starved for time in their 24/7 world,
they assume their only choice is to cram as much as possible into every
day using their day planners, to-do lists, and BlackBerries in an attempt to stay on top of things. Like so many of us, these folks are going
through life as if they are on a marathon. They assume that their energy
is an unlimited resource until they are brought to a screeching halt by a health crisis, job loss, or some other painful experience.
As their coach, I offer a different perspective -- managing energy, not
time, is the key to enduring high performance as well as to health,
happiness and life balance. We work with a model my colleague, Kate
Ebner, and I call The Resiliency Model which refers to the "balance" that
occurs when there is a healthy flow of energy and attention in the four domains of the Self-- the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
These four centers are each distinct, yet inseparable. They are evidenced by moods, energy fluctuations, health, and mental
state. Energy is the common denominator--to be centered and in
balance requires strength, endurance, flexibility and resilience in all four
dimensions. This framework draws on the work of Richard Strozzi Heckler, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz among others.
Heckler calls "Center" the bodily and energetic base camp for the self. It
is more than an idea. Rather it is an embodied experience that can be
felt and used as a way to focus, learn and support high performance. With practice, our clients learn to focus attention on each of the four
domains and discern the quality and quantity of energy in each. They describe what it feels like to be "off center", overwhelmed by emotions,
mental intensity, illness, or heavy spirits. They note what it's like when
they feel good in each domain, and determine the conditions and practices that promote healthy balance in each domain. Working with
energy in this way takes us beyond cognitive knowing. "Center is a living process of self-organization that increases our capacity to be
self-generating, self-healing and self-educating. To center ourselves is
to shape ourselves in a particular way to life. Center is a state of unity in
which effective action, emotional balance, mental alertness, and spiritual vision are in a harmonious balance. "(Holding the Center,
Heckler)
"The best moments in our lives usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a
voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile." Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Leadership Lessons: The Power of Full Engagement
The skillful management of energy, individually and organizationally, makes possible what Loehr and Swartz call full engagement. "Full engagement requires us to be physically energized, emotionally connected,
mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our own immediate self-interest. It means
being able to immerse yourself in the mission you are on, whether that is grappling with a creative challenge
at work, managing a group of people on a project, spending time with loved ones, or simply having fun. Full
engagement implies a fundamental shift in the way we live our lives."
Loehr and Schwartz made the startling discovery that energy is the X factor that sustains high performance
through their work with world class athletes. Not once did they tell Dan Jansen how to skate a faster race or
Pete Sampras how to improve his serve. Instead they helped accomplished athletes manage their energy
more effectively in the service of whatever mission they were on. Word of their success in sports has spread,
and today, the Full Engagement Model and The Corporate Athlete Training System® are benefiting people in all walks of life.
As their work expanded beyond the sports world, they learned something else that was totally unexpected --
performance demands that most people face in their everyday work environments dwarf those of any
professional athletes they had trained. Here's the reality: professional athletes spend about 90% of their
time training to perform 10% of the time; their entire lives are designed around expanding, sustaining and
renewing the energy they need to compete for short, focused periods of time. They have precise routines for
managing energy that involve diet, rest, summoning the appropriate emotions, mental preparation and
connecting to their mission. In addition, they usually have a long off-season and a career span of 5-7 years,
with the possibility of financial security at the end of that time. By contrast, you probably will work 40-50 years
with no significant break. And more than likely, you spend little time systematically training -- yet you are to
perform at your best 8-10 hours a day. Get the picture!
According to Loehr and Schwartz, full engagement requires cultivating a dynamic balance between the
expenditure of energy (stress) and the renewal of energy (recovery) in all dimensions. We need energy to
perform and recovery is more than absence of work. Too much energy expenditure without recovery leads to
burnout. (Overuse it and lose it.) Too much recovery without sufficient stress leads to atrophy. (Use it or lose
it.) They identify four key energy management principles that will enable you to build the capacity to live a
productive, fully engaged life.
PRINCIPLE 1: Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical,
emotional, mental and spiritual.
PRINCIPLE 2: Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance
energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.
PRINCIPLE 3: To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic
way that elite athletes do.
PRINCIPLE 4: Positive energy rituals/practices-highly specific routines for managing energy-are the key to
full engagement and sustained high performance.
"The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time we have."
Loehr & Schwartz
TIPS, TOOLS AND PRACTICES: Purpose - Truth - Action
To bring about lasting change, Loehr and Schwartz propose a three-step change process they call
Purpose-Truth-Action.
1. Define Purpose: How should I spend my energy in a way that is consistent with my deepest values?"
Most of us are moving so fast that we rarely stop long enough to reflect on what we value most deeply and to
be guided by these priorities. Connecting to your values and creating a compelling vision fuels a
high-octane source of energy for change and serves as a compass for navigating the storms in your life.
To explore your values further, set aside uninterrupted time and respond to these questions:
- Jump ahead to the end of your life. What are the three most important lessons you have learned and
why are they so critical?
- Think of someone that you deeply respect. Describe three qualities in this person that you most admire.
- Who are you at your best?
- What is the one sentence inscription you would like to see on your tombstone that would capture who
you really were in your life?
2. Face the Truth: How are you spending your energy now? We assume we can spend energy indefinitely in
some dimensions-often mental and emotional-and that we can perform effectively without investing much
energy in others-most commonly the physical and the spiritual. We usually underestimate the
consequences of our energy management choices, failing to honestly acknowledge the choice of foods we
eat, the quality of energy we invest in our relationships, how focused we are on the job, for example. Check out www.poweroffullengagement.com and take the inventory that will provide baseline data on your
primary performance barriers.
3. Take Action: close the gap between who you are and who you want to be by building a plan grounded in
positive energy rituals or practices. The more scheduled and systematic these routines become, the more
renewal they provide. It is possible to build and sustain energy in all domains rather than watching
passively as our capacities slowly diminish. As Aristotle said, "we are what we repeatedly do." Here is a
recovery ritual that Charlotte, my stressed out client and I devised to help her create more balance between
energy expenditure and energy renewal in her life.
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Charlotte's Recovery Ritual
Performance barrier: work-life balance; low stress tolerance
Desired Outcome: greater resilience; more enjoyment at home and at work
Practices
10am: Recovery break - Close office door, practice yoga stretches for 10 minutes
Noon: Get out of the office. Walk up the street to the park and eat lunch, weather permitting. (Lunch in café downstairs otherwise)
3pm Listen to music and have a cup of tea
10pm Get to bed
Wednesdays 5pm Pilates class
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© 2006 Bette George & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
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