The Positive Energy Workplace

It's all about the energy. The energy you bring to your life, your leadership, and to your team - physical, emotional, and vibrational - is having an impact at all times. How you use it has a significant impact on your leadership influence, your personal productivity, and the engagement and productivity levels of your team.

Is your organization “healthy”? How about your team? If you knew that the beliefs you held and the actions you took today (even small), would positively impact the health of your organization tomorrow, would you do it? I'm guessing you would.

While many think of "health" in the more traditional sense as "health & productivity," or fitness and wellness, it actually goes much deeper than that, offering tremendous opportunities for impacting your organization's emotional, energetic, and fiscal well being. Just like with attending to a personal fitness program, where you do something for your health every day to move you towards greater wellness, you can do little "somethings" everyday to move you towards organizational wellness. It doesn't take a lot, but it does take intention and focus.

This short article is about creating organizational health from the "inside out." Having a somewhat eclectic background in kinesiology, health & productivity, energy management, and leadership development, this is a topic near and dear to my heart, and one I find that provides lots of opportunity to help leaders stay on their "edge."

Getting what we want and creating lives we love can be a complex process, but most often not as complex as we think. I find over and over again in my work with clients a couple of very common themes. (After all, being human beings, we tend to have common threads of growth and it makes it really convenient to help us learn together.) A couple of these helpful themes are: 1) get quiet, breathe, 2) look inside for answers, trust your inner knowing, 3) directly engage, don’t waste your time in “he said/she said,” making stuff up, and gossip, 4) take excellent care of yourself in the process, and, 5) just do…after contemplation, due diligence and decision making – action must occur.

Whether I’m working with someone on their leadership, their business or their personal life, I believe that it is necessary that we look inside ourselves for answers, that we take great care of ourselves while we do it, and that we put it all to good use focusing on action, outcomes and results. There’s the “being” of life and leadership, and the “doing”….one cannot escape the other, as much as we might try or believe it can work (in a sustainable and peaceful fashion!) There’s an integration of the being and doing, and an opportunity for a very holistic approach to all of it. When we stop, implement even one or two of the five things I mention above, and move forward, we become more aware, leadership happens, our life unfolds even more. It’s a beautiful thing.

I’ve come to call the work that I do with clients and teach in seminars, “Bootism.” It’s easy to remember, offers a kicky and unique style, and it’s fun. I find that it sticks, puts a kick in one’s step, and it’s sticks because it’s congruent with the individual – after all, they choose their path, their plan, their action. It’s theirs. It’s not hard, but it’s effective. It’s not complex, but it’s powerful. And it’s not for me to say WHAT exactly it means for you, but it is yours to find.

So what is Bootism? In a nutshell think Eastern Philosophy (wellness, spirituality, joy, peace) meets Western Philosophy (business, great results, leadership, bottom lines, growth), add in "boots, hugs and cupcakes" as core secret ingredients, and you have a way of creating sustainable results, authentic leadership and joy in the process.

There was an article in Crain’s Chicago a couple of weeks ago about the toll entrepreneurship takes on relationships, etc. how “hard” it is for entrepreneurs and “balancing it all.” It was a good sized piece and I was happy to see the “soft” stuff being given this attention in the press. This is often the stuff that I notice gets disregarded or put off as it’s not clearly linked to numbers and bottom line results, etc. It’s also often the stuff that is the most difficult to tie to value and “return on investment” with organizational clients. Once they do the work, they get it, but up front, it’s more ambiguous and hard to see where it ties in. I get it. You can’t actually “see” balance or the impact it has as clearly as you can see a P&L sheet and the story the numbers tell... But it’s so there. Everywhere you look, even if you can’t see it, this idea of “balance” and the impact it has or does not have, is there….in our relationships, our health, our teams, our joy factor, etc. It’s there. Now, I don’t actually call it balance, or even believe in balance, I actually invite clients to laugh in the face of balance, but I do have a pretty good hypothesis of why it’s so hard for people to achieve it…so read on….

What does it mean to be a hero in your life? Everyone has their personal stand for what they believe makes a hero. No matter what our personal definition of “hero” is, we all have the opportunity to be the hero of our own lives. Sometimes it takes a bit of an awakening and sometimes it’s just connecting with and “owning” that hero inside us…Whatever the case, we know when we are being a hero in our own life. Being authentic, fully engaging and truly caring about others is a great start…But often it’s not enough. There is much more to being a hero in your life and it centers on creating more energy, stamina, self-awareness and courage for YOU. This article address what it is to be your own hero and how you can use energy, leadership and daring to call forth an even greater hero in you everyday.

I've had this conversation with many people and find it highly fascinating. I've found that the meaning of "hero" is very personal and unique to each individual. Everyone has their personal stand for what they believe makes a hero and some have varying degrees they've designated of the "hero scale."