Leading change? Your energy matters.
,
I get up every morning, and I have a smile on my face. It’s a new day of life! I just enjoy it and I make a point of laughing when things go wrong. Not that I don’t care that things have not gone quite the way we expected; I do care a great deal. But there is no point becoming depressed and frustrated. We just need to learn and move on. And we might as well enjoy the process of the working through challenges together – doing the best we can.
After nearly three years of continuous changes for many Australians, due to the pandemic and fires and floods, most senior leaders are very tired. Many that I speak with have been carrying more than a fulltime load as they have tried to protect their staff from overload and exhaustion too. But small things can take a big toll. The apparent joy of working ‘hybrid’ turns into a case of cognitive overload as we need different work habits, different decisions to be made each day depending upon where we are working. And that alone can be tiring.
So…. How are your energy levels? Here’s a quick quiz.
Which words would describe you more often over the past week?
- tired, exhausted, frazzled, anxious, stressed
- calm, confident, happy to see a new day, rested
- passionate, raring to go, chafing at the bit, elated
Which words do you think your various team members would use most often?
How we interact with the world, and the people in it, depends on how we are feeling because our thoughts are intertwined with our feelings. They co-exist together. And when we interact with people, our feelings and thoughts, or our states of mind, determine the quality of the interaction and the outcomes.
It is always the case that our energy or state of mind influences outcomes – and it is never truer than when we are trying to lead changes. Leading change is such a complex challenge – requiring personal changes, structural and often cultural changes within a team or organisation.
To birth changes you will need to:
- develop a shared understanding
- collaborate
- make decisions
- be courageous together
- support each other
- experiment
All these activities together will be affected by your state of mind and that of your team/group.
So, how do you manage your feelings or state of mind? How do you self-regulate or manage your energy levels so that you are sharing a positive energy that helps rather than hinders other people’s contributions?
You might like to consider my 90-minute workshop to manage your State of Mind. I ran this workshop with a group last month and received some amazing feedback from participants!
