The Art and Science of Competitive Energy

I know you've noticed this about great teams.

They have something that other, not-so-great teams don't have.

You know it when you have it, and even more when you don’t.

I'm talking about energy.

The kind of energy that is a competitive differentiator.

We call it #CompetitiveEnergy.

• Talent is attracted to energy.
• Prospects are attracted to energy.
• Competitors will try to emulate and copy you (but for the most part their efforts will be futile).

Energy is both biochemical and psychophysical, vaguely delineated, widely misunderstood, elusive as grace.

?? Some leaders get this.? They make energy their number one priority and work hard to understand it and build it - because they know how incredibly powerful it is.

?? Others, not so much. They don't get it and prefer to live in the world of rational, kanban-driven, metrics-fueled performance.

I'm an energy zealot.?

I have been on teams with great energy, and others where I felt like the life was being sucked out of me, bit by bit, every single day.? I’ve run teams where the energy was terrific, and others where I know I contributed to poor energy.

Valuable lessons that I have learned about energy:

1. Energy is what you feel within you.?Your vitality.?Your vigor.?Your passion and enthusiasm for whatever it is you’re doing.?If you’re leading a team and you don’t have this - it’s likely that your team won’t either.
2. Energy can be contagious.?To a point.?Surrounding yourself with people who are as excited as you to do something has a remarkably different impact than surrounding yourself with people who are petulant and ornery.? (Remember, Eyeores are contagious, too).
3. It’s really hard to describe energy.? So when coaching individuals on a team, the “you really need to bring more positive energy” can be a really tough and rough conversation.? I know!??
4. The power of aspiration and ambition can fuel energy for a long long time. When you're focused on something you want to achieve the ambition will propel you forward. When you're working on someone else's agenda, or worse no agenda at all, meet the domain of destructive energy.
5. There absolutely can be negative energy too.? Trust your moral compass - good energy feels good.? The other stuff doesn’t.? Avoid the other stuff.? Don’t even look at it.
6. You can 100% discern patterns.? Identify what gives you energy - and do more of that. Don't do what sucks your energy. Simple.
7. There will always be some things that you don’t like to do.? But instead of letting it pull you down, find a way to reframe the task so it is in some way connected to that which gives you energy.? Waking up at 430am isn’t great initially, but when I walk out of the gym at 6am feeling great for the day, the 430am start is a small price to pay.
8. There’s a part of this that is definitely about science and not just “feeling good”.? This is within the domain of behavioral medicine and mitochondrial psychobiology.? Dr Mark Hyman talks about the FLC syndrome (Feel Like Crap) which results from everything we put into our bodies, what we do with our bodies (exercise, etc.) and our sleep (getting enough REM?)
9. Don’t make this mistake:? This isn’t an introvert/extrovert thing - that is a woefully inaccurate assumption.? Some of the greatest energy I have experienced is from people who might be labeled as introverts.??
10. You can change your energy. What do you want it to be?

An under-discussed dimension of performance

Perhaps because it is nebulous and hard to describe, we spend far too little time talking about this. The 1-10 pain scale (provocatively pioneered by the opioid industry) sought to bring a measure to an individual's pain. There isn't an equivalent for energy. It is also a conversation that a lot of us might feel borders on the esoteric, woo-woo, touchy-feely part of who we are. So we don't talk about it.

I really do feel we should all be a little (or a lot) more focused on our energy and the impact it has on everyone around us.

It will go a long way to making teams function better, organizations perform better, and just perhaps changing how we feel about things around us.

I’d be curious to know what your experiences are regarding energy.??

I wish I could take credit for the fine description of Energy, but I must credit Nick Paumgarten instead.

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Three ways I can help you create extraordinary results:

We work with our clients to deliver results at speed. Our clients are bold leaders of functions, divisions, or organizations who want to play at an entirely new level.

Whenever you’re ready … here are 3 ways I can help you supercharge your team's performance:

1. Join our Ambition Playbook Program. In the Ambition Playbook Group Program I work closely with you to create a compelling and aspirational ambition that will catapult your team to new levels of performance, and we will implement research-based behavioral interventions that will supercharge your entire organization's results.
2. Work with me privately. If you would like to work directly with me and my team to take your team's performance from what it is today to one that is characterized by unshakeable confidence and tremendous competitive energy … just reply to this email and put “Private” in the subject line … let me know the important details about your business and we’ll take care of the rest.
3. Coaching. 1:1 individual coaching is typically reserved for our private clients. Occasionally we have capacity to open up our coaching services to non-clients.

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