Many great business leaders have inexhaustible stamina and perseverance. Purposely managing daily energy and tension patterns is essential to being alert, paying attention to projects or people and positively influencing creative collaboration. When you feel tense-energy and tense-tiredness, your priorities and abilities become cloudy and unreliable.
Calm-energy and calm-tiredness clarify and enhance your emotional intelligence. Those feelings infuse you with the best combination of productivity, healthy vitality, and creativity. The more calmness and energy you have, and the less tension and fatigue, the greater your motivation.
Knowing this about energy and tension patterns, it’s good to ask yourself in advance of a strategic interaction, “Do I have the optimum energy and emotional flexibility to engage in this dialogue or task no matter what difficulties I encounter?”
There will be times when you will answer, “No,” to that question, and those are the times you can consciously enhance (invest in) your energy to ‘get in the zone’ for optimum performance. When you increase your energy and alertness, you process the insights and information you receive more accurately, creatively, and constructively than when you are tense and tired. And the first step is becoming aware of your current condition in any moment.
Then what?
Rewire your emotional energy matrix!
Workplace energy affects how you think and feel, interact and create. Here are some suggested ways to raise that energy and optimize performance. Think about how you use each strategy now and what you can do to use it more effectively. Think creatively!
- Have an open mind about what ‘work’ should look like.
- Foster new ideas and creative collaborations.
- Facilitate individual management of distractions and interruptions.
- Create readily accessible interaction areas where people freely connect.
- Cultivate genuine interest, creative involvement and new opportunities.
- Every 20-30 minutes, take a conscious break of at least 10-60 seconds.
- Take short, periodic work breaks, adding up to at least 15% of work time.
- Get frequent, short, physical activity breaks, particularly after meals.
- Eat small, nutrient-rich meals 5-6 times per day, and drink lots of water.
- Boost energy and diffuse tension with laughter and good humor.
- Adjust lighting, ergonomics, music and colors for health and productivity.
- Get plenty of deep sleep – most of us need more than we get.
- Set a leadership example by doing these things and others that raise energy.
Optimizing emotional energy is a business investment with built-in rewards!
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