
The right energy

What does ‘high energy’ look like?
By comparison, in a state of high energy, you can deliver incredible results, yield new ideas and prolific innovation, complete complex tasks with apparent ease and deliver huge value to the business. As an employee, manager or leader, you are the same person, the only thing that has changed is the energy, so what is it?How is energy defined?
The textbook definition of energy is ‘the strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity’. The crucial point in this definition is that the context of this strength and vitality is to be focused on an actual task – the Greek root of ‘energy’ (energia) means ‘within work’.What’s the best type?
Getting the right energy within a team or across a business starts by matching the strengths and passions of the staff to the specific jobs that drive these rituals. This can be tricky because businesses typically allocate people into roles to jobs based on what they can do. Whilst it is important to ensure someone is competent at a given task, it is equally important to realise that an ability to do something is not an affinity for that task. This necessitates an initial audit to match the energy of a staff to the strategy of the business going forward.Management: more of the right energies
Talk of ‘audits’ and ‘matching people to tasks’ clearly shows that managing energy within a business does require some form of discipline. We can classify energy into one of four categories; specifically, how energy affects us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. In the modern workplace, businesses are already keenly aware of the role of good practice when it comes to physical elements. One of the most recent examples of this has been the UK government green paper recommending a certain amount of sleep each night.Mental health
Mental health has also made huge strides in the workplace – from initiatives such as our own Talk It Out, to the growth of Mental Health Awareness Week, businesses now realise the vital importance of the ability to address stress, anxiety and depression in the workplace. But mental health is not just about fixing what is wrong – it is about building on what is right. Issues of emotional and spiritual energy are less well addressed in many businesses. Whilst work does (and should) incite a strong emotional connection for some people, in some roles, the reality is that this is not always possible.Culture squared

Keep staff motivated
One example of this at work can be seen in annual reviews. They are designed to keep people motivated and aligned to the objectives of a business, yet research shows that they don’t seem to meaningfully improve performance at all and if anything can be detrimental. By focusing on the positives of what has been done well and what could be done better next time, all employees can learn, grow as a person and – critically – remove any of the anxiety that comes with now knowing how they are performing. Regardless of position, when someone takes ownership of finding out how they are performing, they grow as a result. Multiplied across an entire business, this can be transformational.Share this story