4 Ways to Take Responsibility for Your Energy

Recently, I shared a photo on LinkedIn that struck a chord with thousands of people. The photo shows a sign posted at an Indiana University Health facility which reads:

Please take responsibility for the energy you bring into this space.

Your words matter. Your behaviors matter. Our patients and our teams matter.

Take a slow, deep breath and make sure your energy is in check before entering.

Thank you.

I wonder if those words resonated with so many people because we all know what it’s like to be affected by someone else’s energy — for better or for worse.

As leaders, we have to watch the energy we project. We don’t have to be perfect but do have to remember that we’re always in the “invisible spotlight” and that our behavior and presence sets the tone for others. 

So how can you take ownership for the energy you bring as a leader — even when things get crazy and stressful? Here are a few strategies that consistently work for my executive coaching clients.

1. Take Care of Yourself

You can’t bring positive energy if you’ve depleted your own tank. Are you getting enough sleep, breaks, exercise or healthy food? Too many of us fall into the trap of thinking, “How can I possibly take time for ME right now when there’s so much to do?” But experience and research show that self-care will boost your productivity and help you better support others. Taking care of yourself is not “nice to have” but rather a critical leadership strategy that affects how you show up.

2. Notice Your Energy Patterns

To maximize your energy, plan your activities with your personal energy patterns in mind. For example, if you typically feel more energetic in the morning, complete your most challenging or creative work then. Don’t save it for when your energy is already drained. And don’t schedule most of your draining work activities on one day. Your body will always give you clues about when it’s time to walk away (such as headaches, back pain, fatigue, and the inability to focus) and give yourself a break.

3. Build Your Executive Presence

Think about all the times when someone else’s energy affected you. Their energy probably had less to do with what they said and more to do with how they said it – perhaps with an edge to their tone, impatience, or frustration. Before you dial into your next call or log into your next videoconference, ask yourself, “How do I want to show up? What energy do I want to bring?” By simply pausing to do this, it will affect your executive presence including your tone, body language, and energy.

4. Boost Your Confidence

Your confidence level significantly impacts how you show up with others. Sometimes, all it takes to give yourself a confidence boost is setting aside a little more time – even 15 minutes – to prepare more fully. Go beyond the subject matter to think through the audience, their potential questions and resistance, and your own presence. And remember that taking even 5 minutes a week to jot down a few of your accomplishments and the value they created for your organization, will build your confidence over time.

Your energy as a leader has a ripple effect on other people. I want to challenge you to identify one strategy that you will use to keep your energy in check this week. To take a deeper dive into the topics explored here — including self-care, boosting your energy, developing your executive presence, and building confidence — take a look at our tools and resources ranging from the New Lens® app to books and audio training to executive coaching.  You’ll find solutions that fit both your needs and your busy schedule.

One Thing Video Series: How Are You Showing Up?

Your presence — the way you show up with others — is one of the key parts of your personal brand as a leader. The unpredictability of our world and our work lives today can affect how you show up. In my latest One Thing You Can Do video, I'll give you a few ideas for making sure that the way you're coming across reflects how you want others to see you.

How to Stop 'Getting By' and Start Leading Strategically

Back in March, the global pandemic upended the way we work. For most of us, this initially felt like a short-term crisis. So we dug in to power through.

But now, almost five months later, you might be stuck in this mode — which damages both your executive presence and your career prospects.

As the deep shifts in our work lives continue, we have to find a more sustainable approach. Today I'm kicking off a new series of blog articles to help you pause, reconnect with the bigger picture and be the leader you want to be even in the most challenging of times.

At Home, We're Working More 

As an executive coach, I'm seeing too many leaders right now who are packing their calendars, working at all hours and saying "yes" to everything.

What's driving this? Cuts and restructuring at many organizations are leaving fewer people to do the same amount of work (or even more). There's also a new urgency around showing your value in order to protect your job.

At the same time, working from home is making our jobs more logistically challenging and blurring the lines between our work and personal lives.

When Microsoft recently studied its own newly remote workforce, it discovered some dramatic changes in how employees were working:

• Time spent in meetings each week rose by 10%.

• Using instant messaging activity as an indicator, Microsoft found that employees were working more during lunch and evenings. Weekend work also grew.

• Also based on instant messaging, managers' workload has grown more than that of individual contributors.

• All of this adds up to a workweek that, on average, is about four hours longer.

Are You Neglecting Strategy?

This relentless pace has consequences. You might think that your hard work makes you a team player. But constantly focusing on the tactical vs. the strategic actually reduces the value you create as a leader. If you're always "putting out fires," you have less time for your truly important work, such as tracking what's going on with your team, motivating and engaging your team members and managing up with your bosses.

Remember also that, as a leader, you are always in the "invisible spotlight." Others are constantly drawing conclusions about your leadership based on what they observe. As working from home eliminates our in-person interactions, your virtual executive presence takes on greater weight. So think about what messages you are conveying by, for example, sending a lot of after-hours emails or arriving late to Zoom calls because you were in another video meeting.

Give Yourself Some Space

It's time to start thinking beyond just getting through these unprecedented times. How can you do so in a way that shows others that you are a strong leader and that sets the stage for your future success?

The first step is simply freeing up some more capacity in your schedule. To do so, take a moment to think about the most important work you need to be doing right now. Has it changed recently? Do you need to adjust your schedule to shift more time toward your top priorities?

Next, think about what you can get off of your plate. Are there meetings you can cancel or decline? Can you turn a one-hour meeting into a 30-minute one? Can you delegate more? Adding even a few minutes back into your day can provide some relief if you're feeling frenzied and overscheduled.

In my next article, I'll show you how to make the most of the capacity you've restored to your schedule. In the meantime, I invite you to explore my self-paced tools that will help you keep growing as a leader no matter how busy you are.

Connecting the Dots for Others

There's one area that I always work on with my clients that they never realize they need to work on. It doesn’t come up in our initial discussions about their coaching goals, but it does affect their ability to truly lead with impact and build a strong leadership brand.

Let me explain. Usually, when I ask leaders about the most critical things they want to accomplish from a business standpoint, they rattle off a list of things. The same thing happens when I ask about their teams. Very few of them can easily articulate the two or three areas of focus that guide everything they do.

For example, I have a client who has the remarkable ability to dive into a completely new area of responsibility, learn what she needs to, and restructure the work to maximize results. On top of that, she empowers and develops her team to step up and sustain the performance. She has done this time and again, and can give me countless examples. Through our work together, she has come to realize that her primary focus is on creating sustainable value while minimizing risk for the business and developing future leaders. This is her beacon that guides everything she does.

By realizing this (i.e., Connecting the Dots for herself), she can now articulate a consistent message about her focus and intent. This provides tremendous value because she can give others a way to interpret what she says and does by constantly framing her actions and decisions in the context of her areas of focus.

Remember that others will draw conclusions about what you say and do using their own filters — and they may take away something different than you intend. Let me give you an example to further explain. I have another client (let’s call her Michelle) who has a strong focus on supporting her team. This means that Michelle invests considerable time coaching her new hires, but she also recognizes the need to get her employees working independently without her day-to-day guidance.

So she was surprised at her new hire’s frustration when she scaled back her one- on-one time with him. Michelle knew that pulling back was the best support she could give him because it would serve him well in the long run. However, her employee didn’t realize what she was doing. He didn’t Connect the Dots in the same way Michelle thought he would. In fact, he had drawn the opposite conclusion. By explaining her primary focus, Michelle helped him understand that she was supporting him and how. He now has a way to interpret her actions and understand her expectations.

Remember that Connecting the Dots for others is not a “once and you’re done” exercise. You have to do it again and again — and you can’t do it unless you have Connected the Dots for yourself. So take advantage of the unique opportunity you have to provide a framework to give others insight into what you think is important, what success looks like, and what will guide your decisions. It will also create a stronger sense of conviction for you — about what you want to accomplish, how you will get there, and what you want to be known for as a leader.

Do You Know What Really Differentiates You?

As I have coached high performing leaders over the years, I can’t help but notice some common themes. As they move up the ladder, sometimes they take for granted how hard it would be for someone to fill their shoes. Or they underestimate the value of their perspective, one that has been shaped by a unique set of personal and professional experiences.

So, today, I want to ask, “When is the last time you stopped to think about what makes you truly unique and valuable to an organization, whether it’s your current employer, a client or prospect?” If you’re like most people, you spend little to no time contemplating what differentiates you—unless you’re actively job hunting or lobbying for a pay increase or promotion. Yet going through this process can help you step up your game, leveraging your unique value in a way that serves you and your company.

To clarify what sets you apart, start by answering the three questions below. Remember that this won’t take the place of a more thorough personal leadership branding exercise, but it will get the ball rolling in the right direction.

What common themes do you see in the type of work others ask you to do?

Sometimes it takes other people repeatedly pulling you into certain types of projects or opportunities before you notice that what you bring to the table is unique and valued. Think about some of your experiences over the past six to nine months. What jumps out at you?

What have you heard others say about your work?

What do others value most about your work? I want you to think about it from two vantage points, what you do and how you do it. Also consider what you have heard people consistently say, whether or not their feedback made it into your performance review.

What skills or perspective do you have that would be hard to replace?

Finally, get to the aspects that cannot be easily replicated, i.e., your unique approach, perspective, skills, or background. People often openly point these out when they initially meet or get to know you. So, think about conversations you have had with people who have known you for little time, as well as those who have known you for years. What have you heard them say?

It may help to start by asking a few people you trust for input. But even if you don’t, you should gain some insight from answering the questions yourself. If you want to take the exercise one step further, identify one small step to highlight or leverage your unique value, in the context of your career goals and what’s important to business.

Put More Power Into Your Communication Style

Women sometimes undermine their own power in how they communicate. I see this time and again with my coaching clients, and I have made some of these mistakes myself.

Women often don’t realize how their communication style gets in their way or impacts how others view their leadership. Although women may have good intentions, those may not be apparent in their communication. I think this quote drives the point home: “We judge ourselves by our intent, but we judge others by their actions.” So, remember that your actions may be doing you a disservice, no matter how positive your intentions.

Let’s take a look at three common communication traps to see if any of them apply to you.

1.  Getting into the weeds.

Women often make the mistake of building up to their conclusions, rather than starting with the two or three key headlines. They often don’t realize how this can diminish their credibility. By taking everyone through the details first, they run the risk of losing their audience in a sea of information, or giving the impression that they can’t see the big picture or get out of the weeds. Remember you can always provide additional information if others need it — so lead with the headlines.

2.  Holding back.

Have you ever been in a meeting and never said a word? Perhaps it’s because you agreed with what others said and you didn’t see a need to convey that. Or maybe you didn’t want to be rude and talk over someone to get your point across. Or perhaps you simply wanted to respect everyone else’s time and not prolong an already long meeting. Whatever your rationale, what did your participation (or lack thereof) convey to others? Did your presence really make a difference?

So next time, speak up! Before you walk into that meeting or jump on that conference call, take five minutes to anticipate what will be discussed and develop your point of view. This will make it easier to dive right in, contribute to the discussion, and get your voice heard.

3.  Treading too softly.

Women sometimes use a tone of voice or language that reduces their power and influence. Their voice may take on a higher pitch at the end of a sentence, giving the impression that they’re asking a question rather than making a statement with a strong sense of conviction. They may speak too quietly, or use words that communicate indecisiveness: “I think”; “I guess”; and so on.

So, pay attention to what you say and how you say it. To get a better sense of how your communication comes across, ask people you trust for feedback so you know what to watch for.

The good news is that you can address these issues through minor tweaks in your communication. Identify one small step you will take this week to put more power into your communication style. Remember that small steps can lead to big results.

Do You Have Executive Presence?

Everyone has his or her own ideas about what executive presence looks and sounds like. Regardless of what someone’s personal definition may be, let’s look at three areas that can affect whether others consider you to be executive material:

1. Strategic focus

I constantly hear senior leaders noticing the difference between people who think strategically and those who focus more on tactics. Your ability to consistently tie what you say and do to what matters to the business can help others see that you “get it” – that you understand the big picture and won’t get derailed by details. Ask yourself how often you intentionally make these connections for others.

2. Confidence

I’m sure you’ve come across people who can be very convincing even when they are way beyond their scope of expertise. Remember that it is often less about what they say and more about how they say it. Think about yourself for a minute. How often does your tone convey a strong sense of conviction, high energy, or confidence? How does your body language add to or detract from your message? Nuances like this can make a big difference.

3. Competence

Your ability to integrate your life experiences into your message can quickly help others understand what you bring to the table – and why it matters. Integrating short contextual phrases helps others understand your strengths and skills and their relevance to the business. Take this brief example: “I learned three key principles from my experience marketing global products and brands. One of those applies to this situation today.”

At the end of the day, you may believe that you are strategically focused, confident, and competent. But the question is whether others see you that way. So, this week I urge you to take one small step, whether it’s asking others for feedback or focusing on one of the three areas above. I have found that starting with tweaks to how and what you communicate can dramatically affect your executive presence. Remember, small steps can lead to big results.

© 2013 Neena Newberry | All rights reserved.