The Positive Energy Workplace

You walk into work on a Monday, feeling pretty great, and are immediately greeted by the "stress bug." People zooming around, stressed out about the week at hand, discussing their weekend dramas, worrying about their next meeting, or just feeling overwhelmed by all the "magic" of Monday. Your mood starts to shift as you feel the pull of the "dark side" — the dark side of stress. What started out as an awesome Monday is quickly becoming a bummer. And nothing bad has even happened to you. In fact, not much has really changed for you from the moment you walked in the door. The only thing that has changed? You're surrounded by stress.

As I write this I'm just off a plane to Singapore after traveling 22 hours plus to get to the other side of this beautiful planet. I'm excited for the week and working with some amazing people, and I'm also curious about how this week will "hit" my body, and when. I've noticed when it comes to jet lag, a couple of things are certain:

In my work with business leaders and their organizations, the majority of them want to avoid "hierarchy" in the organization in as many ways as possible. Many of them are highly successful at doing so. They set structures in place to create more of a "flat" organization, they get clear on organizational values, and they get very intentional about the culture they want to create. While the reporting structure may have a hierarchy to it (this structure can be an intentional system that supports culture vs. hinders or lids it), the goal is to have a collaborative and peer-oriented mindset with non-hierarchical behaviors.

When I do IEP (Intentional Energetic Presence) Cultural Assessments for companies, I go in looking through the lens of "What's the energy of the company?" What's not being said? What's going great/where are they super strong? What needs attention? And where might possible blind spots be that may be creeping up, especially as they grow quickly and on-board more people?

In the first column of this series I talked about shifting your culture's mindset from "j.o.b.s" to "callings" and tapping into purpose to energize, fuel, and bring out the best in your people. In part 2, I talked about shifting your culture to a healthy mindset of collaboration and competition. This week I'm talking about the most important thing you have in an employee: their personal level of accountability and nourishment. In order to innovate into 2020 (starting yesterday) we must cultivate a culture that allows for, and inspires, a greater level of accountability and nourishment than ever before. Our future literally depends on it.

I get questions from subscribers and participants all the time about random things that relate to leadership, presence, energy, collaboration, dealing with their mom, changing something that they're afraid to change, etc. All sorts of Qs. I try to respond to every single one. Sometimes these Qs inspire articles. Sometimes an exercise. Sometimes a post. You just never know...

Today I thought I'd start sharing some of these in simplest form with the intention that there just might be something gold in here for you. If this is helpful to you, and you like this format, let me know—like it, share it, whatever your fancy—and I'll keep doing it.