Find Your Leadership Energy Source
Join the free Rising Stars - Leadership Community on SKOOL here and get access to the Energy Canvas
Understanding where your energy comes from is a crucial aspect of effective leadership. Jens Heitland, in his Leadership Bootcamp session, delves into this topic, providing valuable insights on identifying and harnessing your leadership energy source. This article explores key points from Jens' session and offers practical tips to help you become a more energized and effective leader.
The Energy Canvas Concept
Jens introduces the concept of the energy canvas, a tool designed to help leaders map out what activities and situations either energize or drain them. The canvas is divided into two main sections:
Activities and situations that drag you down (bottom left).
Activities and situations that lift you up (top right).
Being aware of these areas allows leaders to make informed decisions about where to focus their energy and what to delegate to others.
Identifying Energy Sources
For Jens, activities such as listening to others' success stories and helping people succeed are significant energy boosters. He finds immense satisfaction and motivation in seeing others accomplish their goals. This self-awareness is critical for leaders as it helps them align their daily tasks with their sources of energy.
Handling Energy Drainers
On the flip side, Jens identifies slow progress, company politics, and negative people as major energy drainers. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing these drains and taking steps to mitigate their impact. For instance, Jens advises delegating tasks that slow you down or fighting against company politics to maintain a positive work environment.
Practical Strategies for Leaders
Delegate Draining Tasks: Leaders should delegate tasks that drain their energy to others who might find them energizing. This not only boosts the leader's productivity but also empowers team members.
Avoid Negative Influences: Negative people and environments can significantly drain a leader's energy. Jens suggests distancing oneself from these influences and, if necessary, even firing negative customers to maintain a positive and productive work atmosphere.
Focus on Energizing Activities: Leaders should prioritize tasks and activities that give them energy. This focus ensures that they remain motivated and can inspire their teams effectively.
Watch the Video of the Live Leadership Bootcamp here
Understanding and managing your leadership energy source is essential for effective leadership. By identifying what energizes and drains you, and by implementing practical strategies to manage these factors, you can enhance your leadership effectiveness. Jens Heitland's insights from the Leadership Bootcamp provide a valuable framework for leaders looking to optimize their energy and drive success in their organizations.
Transcript of the video:
Where do you get energy from? This canvas is built with two focus. What is dragging you down, which is unhappy and low energy. The bottom left side and the other extreme is the high energy and happy place. Of course, the best place is the top right corner, but being aware of the others is super helpful because then you can avoid that, then you can delegate it to other people.
Then you can find out how do you change this, and so on. So if we just give you a couple of examples from myself, I love to listen. I'm getting super pumped. And that's maybe why I do a podcast when I listen to other stories, when I listen to other people success stories. And that's connected to
I love to help people. I'm getting a lot of energy when I see people su succeed.
So this are, and then obviously
when people accomplish something, including myself be around inspirational people are a couple of other topics. And then if we just look into what drags me down, and I've spoken about a couple of that things on podcasts as well. Slow progress is something I am not a fan of. It's really something like, especially if you remember back from a story perspective, the.
Large corporate where things are naturally a little bit slower than in a startup. I was always frustrated. Company politics. This is something I hate. I truly hate. I'm, the tricky thing is I'm good at it. That's most probably why I was successful inside of the corporate world. But company politics is one of the biggest waste we have, and that's not just company.
I think it's also if we look into political games on a country level, society level, and so on. So I'm just not that's not giving me energy at all.
Another thing is negative people. So negative people is something I don't like. And for me, it's not about challenging people for me, it's about really, truly negative people. They're always people who can find the negative and everything. These are the things I get energy from.
These are the things where I'm happy with, and these are the things where I'm unhappy. I don't like it. It drags me down. If you are clear for yourself, you can decide, I want to go towards the happy place. I want to get rid of things. Because you are in power. You have the possibility, especially as a startup founder, as the founder of a business to delegate things.
But as well, if we take the company politics topics, whatever I do with my companies, I will fight against it from day one. If we have company politics, even if it's a small team with 3, 4, 5 people, I'm fighting against it. There is no talking behind the back. This should not be existing. And that's just for me.
And if you know this, then you can take these things and tackle it. Or you can say, okay I don't want to be connected to this, like negative people. Obviously, if you have, let's say if you work in a service business, you have a customer or a client like that, you can fire the customer, even if it's a well paying customer, if they're extremely negative.
And that's not giving you and your company energy. You can fire your customers. Very important to understand that you are in power. So energy gives you the opportunity to understand where you get your energy from.