Transformational Leadership is Deeper than Communication Skills and Positive Thinking
As a Leader, your capability for strategic vision, to see possibility and to act within your core values are critical to your organization’s high performance.
However, many Leaders find it difficult to convey messaging about the potential they see for the future that inspires their teams’ belief in it.
It makes sense for Leaders to turn to soft skills training for themselves and their managers in the hopes that new messaging and motivation techniques will support them to develop the interpersonal connections they require to engage and inspire their teams.
While there is value, I’ve always seen soft skills training as the ‘tip of the iceberg’ as compared to the deeper development that needs to take place for a leader to connect first with themselves, so that they can connect with others in an authentic and inspirational way.
People respond to Energy
I found an approach that gets to this depth of personal development for my clients, through my certification as a Core Energy Coach™ with IPEC - a comprehensive coach training program that’s trained more than 15,000 coaches worldwide.
IPEC’s proprietary methodology is so different from soft skills training and other executive coaching models because it starts with something so basic, yet so misunderstood: Energy.
Core Energy Coaching begins with a simple premise:
All people are continually experiencing energy, based on how they perceive situations in one or two ways: catabolic or anabolic.
Anabolic energy is constructive, expanding, fueling, creative, and works for a person. It’s the energy that sees opportunity, is open to different perspectives, is non-judgmental and trusts the process. Anabolic energy releases endorphins that build and strengthens cellular functioning, engagement, focus, performance, vitality, mood, and our health.
Conversely, catabolic energy is resisting, destructive, draining, and works against situations or a person. Catabolic Energy is based on judgement, fear, limiting thoughts and beliefs. Catabolic energy releases cortisol that breaks down and impairs cellular functioning, impairing focus, concentration, focus on goals and values, and causes anxiety and illness.
Research conducted by Karen Buck and Diana Galer (2011) has shown that when leaders shift from catabolic to anabolic energy, that engagement at work can increase by as much as 51%.
Through the assistance of Core Energy Coaching™ I support leaders to master 3 key building blocks so they resonate at significantly higher levels of anabolic energy – particularly needed in times of complexity, stress, and the need for innovative thinking and heartfelt human compassion.
1. Awareness of Thoughts and Emotions: What we think is our choice. How we act is our choice. However, without the awareness of how our thoughts and emotions may be driven by catabolic triggers - such as limiting beliefs, assumptions, stories we tell ourselves and our fears, then we are prone towards catabolic energy — as we unconsciously act from these thoughts and emotions. Once we have awareness of these patterns, and command over our thinking and emotions, than we can choose how we wish to act to achieve our goals and to be consistent with our values.
The key is: we have thoughts, feelings, emotions – but we are not our thoughts, feelings or emotions.
2. Overcoming Judgment: Our Ego is our perception of self. Paradoxically, we don’t notice ego in people with high anabolic energy; they just seem peaceful, wise, calm, optimistic and non-judgmental. We tend to experience ‘ego’ most in other people who have lower levels of anabolic energy, where judgement of people and situations is high.
The key is: when judgement is released, true self awareness and consciousness of one’s own thoughts and feelings can be easily accessed and objectively considered.
3. Your Perception Creates Your Reality: By their very nature, patterns of thinking narrow our perceptions, and limit our ability to see potential for what’s possible. Our perception shapes our reality; which triggers our actions.
The key is: when we shift our perception through awareness of our thoughts and feelings we not only shift to higher levels of anabolic energy, but we create a new reality, for us and those around us.
In 2018, Lynn Waldorf’s Study on the Impact of Core Energy Coaching™ validated that Core Energy Coaching clients were more adept at recognizing and countering fear-based emotions and energy-depleting, auto-reactive behaviors. As a result of Core Energy Coaching, clients were capable of shifting their energy for positive increases in satisfaction across many factors of their work and life.
Transformation starts with measuring Energy
The Energy Leadership Index (ELI) is a one-of-a-kind web-based attitudinal assessment that enables leaders to gain remarkable insight into their energy make-up (%’s distributed across catabolic and anabolic energy) under both ideal and stressful circumstances.
With IPEC’s database of hundreds of thousands of ELI assessments, IPEC has conducted studies to validate the significant impact that leaders can have from a shift from catabolic to anabolic energy.
IPEC’s ELI 360 Leadership Competency Study (2018) revealed that:
The higher the leaders’ average resonating energy, the higher the leader rated their own leadership competencies and the more their raters (colleagues, employees, bosses) agreed with them.
Conversely, leaders operating at lower, more catabolic levels of Core Energy were less confident in their leadership skills and were, in turn, viewed as less competent by their raters (colleagues, employees, bosses).
IPECs Key Factor Study (2019) further assessed the relative satisfaction of high catabolic and high anabolic individuals on workplace performance factors such as communication skills, engagement at work, leadership ability, productivity and time management. High catabolic individuals consistently rated their satisfaction with these performance factors, at less than 10% satisfaction, while individuals with high anabolic scores rated their satisfaction for each factor at over 85%.
Resonating with Authenticity
The deep development that takes place through Core Energy Coaching™ is transformational for everyone that experiences it.
However, when Leaders experience this deep development and consistently resonate with higher levels of anabolic energy, they draw people towards them — for the transformation of their culture, the transformation of their team’s performance and their company’s future.
Contact me: joanne@strategypluspeople.com to learn more about Energy and Energy Coaching; and to take the Energy Leadership Index (ELI). Experience first hand the profound insights that this assessment offers to Leaders.