Leadership Between the Lines

Why is positive energy important? How do we create it? How does it impact our culture? For years we've worked with leaders and organizations on building healthier more positively contagious cultures and authentic positive energy leadership. Often when I speak about how to do this, people will ask for the "checklist" -- the checklist for building a healthy culture or leading better. ("Yes, yes, yes... I know positive energy is important, yes yes yes... give me the checklist.") We can give you a checklist, trust me, we have many -- however, it will ultimately only be as good as the honest inner work you do to truly create positive energy within yourself first. Creating healthy leadership and a healthy culture is an inside-job... 

Last month, Harvard Business Review published an article, "The Best Leaders Have a Contagious Positive Energy".  (Four of my favorite words in one title: leaders, contagious, positive, and energy!) The article speaks to some of the what and why of positive energy leadership. In the video below, I offer you a bit more about the (sustainable) authentic how as well as some things to watch out for as you build your leadership and culture. Enjoy!

My team and I get asked questions all the time about the quickest three things to do for this or that or all of the above. Building a healthy culture and an authentic Positive Energy Workplace™ takes awareness, honesty, intention, energy, presence, and action. It doesn't have to take a ton of time, however, you want to watch out for "doing" those quick three things just to the "check cultural health" box off your list.

If you are truly tending to your IEP (Intentions/ Energy/ Presence) and taking action from a place of awareness and service... you won't need a quick checklist, your culture will take care of itself. That said, if you do want some quick things to start paying extra attention to, I've shared some in the below video (timestamp below post).

You're in a conversation with a colleague, maybe on a first date, maybe you're meeting someone on the plane, or you keep noticing that every time you think about this person or that situation, you get a funny feeling in your gut. The context may be personal, it may be professional. The sense may be subtle, if you're lucky it may be really strong. And either way, you might not be able to identify exactly what it is. You just know it's there. What do you do? 

Years ago when I wrote CONTAGIOUS CULTURE (McGraw-Hill, 2015), people were surprised to find that when I talked about “creating a healthy culture,” I pointed them to first look at their own leadership health, and how they showed up, to actually create that culture. This was both confronting and liberating for many, after all, I can’t control my culture or the people around me, however, I can absolutely control ME; how I take care of myself, how I show up, the energy I bring to the table, and how I ultimately contribute to being the culture I want (or don’t want). This means I have tremendous power, this also means there may be big work to do.  

My stance on culture created a lot of positive results as well as many questions for people, so I wrote my next book. In CONTAGIOUS YOU (McGraw-Hill, 2019), I dug deeper into the IEP Method® body of work and took people further into how to be their most positively and usefully contagious self (energetically, emotionally, behaviorally, and attitudinally) and how to strengthen their leadership in order to create the impact and culture they wanted. Again, confronting — however even more liberating if you did the work (at 384 pages, with an executive coaching program pretty much built into it, as one reader emailed me, "It’s not exactly a light read, Anese, but it is a game changer.").

I recently had a conversation with an executive team who wanted to work on ways to make their culture feel better right now. People are tired, they're trying to connect remotely and do their jobs while walking their dogs and managing their kids' Zoom rooms, workload is high, connection is low, and presence is extra tricky right now. This organization was particularly interested in exploring ways to build resiliency and create a healthy culture now in this new business environment.