We had two big energy discussions on call six.
The first, prompted by Explorers debriefing from their very productive month of exploring, covered Energy enablers, blockers and dead ends.
The second resulted from Explorers presenting the masks they had created prior to our call. The masks depicted on one side ‘how I want to lead’ and on the reverse ‘what is holding me back’. Almost all Explorers began their mask feedback muttering variations on ‘I hated doing the mask’ and then they added ‘but it was very useful/revealing/important’.
The Energy Enablers, Blockers and Dead Ends
Here are some reflections from Explorers:
1. Team Enablers
The Contagious Nature of Energy
If the person leading is generating Energy, it becomes compelling and everyone starts to generate it too. Resulting in Energy generation becoming a collective responsibility and not just the responsibility of the leadership. In this way it becomes more sustainable. But the initial Energy almost always emanates from the person leading.
Purpose is Central
All were crystal clear that the main generator of Energy is the purpose. A purpose bigger than the person leading. Teams need to know that what they are doing really matters.
The Role of Passion
Explorers over the months had observed as they spoke to Expedition Guides just how crucial passion – a mission – is to sustaining Energy in yourself and in unleashing Energy in others.
Success Breeds Success
Because this is so true, it is important to celebrate successes, even the smallest of successes. As one Explorer put it ‘success always has friends’.
Providing the Energy to Someone Else
An Explorer reflected that creating and holding space and being the source for another’s Energy to shine may well not be seen as great leadership but that it is. Women particularly understand this as they give so much of their Energy in motherness.
Energy Through Sacrifice
One Explorer talked about being small so that the other can be big. The Explorer group agreed that this is a huge Energy enabler but they also questioned how to be small without erasing yourself.
2. Energy Blockers
Get Enough Sleep
Generating Energy can get very practical, looking after yourself, eating well, sleeping enough. Understanding and allowing for your own – and your colleagues – Energy cycles is crucial.
Energy Comes in Different Forms
Some Explorers reflected on Energy that comes in different forms and how they can sometimes misread it. They said they were too often drawn to people who express their Energy in the same way as themselves. One Explorer marvelled at the quiet Energy evidenced by the Guide on her call, it was an Energy that she would previously not have recognised.
Feeling Guilty
Almost every Explorer nodded when one said she felt permanently guilty that she doesn’t do more and that this is a huge Energy drainer.
The Notion of Excellence
One Explorer talked about her inability to detach herself from a notion of excellence. She finds it almost impossible to watch something not be excellent and leave it be. She wonders if she needs to accept that excellence can be messy.
How Fast Energy Drains Away
All Explorers agreed that if you don’t take responsibility for it and take care of it, Energy can stall and drain away fast.
Exploitative and Ethical Energy
Explorers talked of observing two familiar blockers of Energy: exploitative Energy which turns into a zero sum game and ethical Energy where everyone wins but nothing is achieved. Both produce the same deadening effect.
Lack of Active Followership
A blocker many Explorers commented on was when one person is the face of leadership but this allows others to just sit back and too often just grumble.
3. Personal Enablers
How Important Human Connection Is
Many Explorers said being around the people that they seek to serve is a key generator of personal Energy. It roots them in purpose and keeps their feet on the ground. They recognise that community generates Energy and crucially it means that they hear the impact of their work which inspires them to keep going.
Recognise That More Energy Is Needed at the Start
That to create something which doesn’t already exist requires huge Energy. Collective responsibility may well be the aim but the initial Energy comes from the person who leads and has the stamina and courage to generate it.
First There Is a Breath
One Explorer resonated deeply when she reflected on her own relentless Energy and how she had discovered over the previous month of exploring just how important it is to take a deep breath so as to understand her own Energy levels and recognise when they are becoming overwhelmed. She knows that when this happens she starts to drain the Energy around her, she is determined to be better at stepping back and delegating.
Spreading Energy Too Thinly
One Explorer had been reflecting on how her pride in being able to balance everything had blinded her to the reality that she was spreading Energy too thinly, into too many pieces and as a consequence never giving her all to any work.
She reflected that though she does delegate and pass things on, she still fails to detach herself emotionally and keeps on putting too much Energy in.
This resonated with another Explorer who reflected on her own inability to say ‘no’ even when as she said ‘it should so obviously be a ‘no’.’
Custodians of the Energy We Bring
All this lead to a central conclusion. That we need to remove ourselves from being the sole custodians of both the Energy and the outcome and instead see ourselves as the custodians of the Energy.
The Masks
Some masks were beautiful pieces of art, others never made it to a page but instead remained in Explorers’ heads. Each Explorer illustrated their thinking in their own unique way, from drawing trees with ivy stifling their growth, or sharing crazy hair styles over the years that captured their journeys, to describing birds with wings of beauty and art. I am grateful that they undertook this much hated task with such commitment and eventually got so much out of it.
The Mask Front
Explorers found that they had much in common on the front of their mask where they had depicted ‘How I want to lead’. Our fellow Explorer who so often has the right words for what we are all thinking said ‘I want to create an enabling environment; one that brings quality, that creates space, that inspires growth, that enables dignity, that brings shape, that serves mankind.’
The Mask Front and Back Combined
Some Explorers didn’t do a reverse. They brought ‘what is holding me back’ onto the front to sit alongside ‘how I want to lead’. They felt that every aspect of what they aspired to be in their leading also had its own dark side that held them back.
Being in service was a good example of this.
For many Explorers it captured how they aspired to lead, they choose to be in service to others. Yet at the same time this service concept was what was holding them back. Because they seldom focused on their own Energy, too often slipped into people pleasing and maybe even worse feeling that they have to serve to be loved.
The Reverse
For the Explorers who did have a reverse side depicting ‘what is holding me back’ there were some big themes.
The Mask Itself
One Explorer talked about how her mask was always a happy smiling face. She admitted to just how exhausting it is to keep it this way and to how much energy she wasted in maintaining the illusion and in hiding an Energy she feels she cannot share.
This rang true with another Explorer who featured ‘organised, smiling and listening’ on the front of her mask and admitted that it could all be destroyed in an instant by one person, one word or one mail. And that this holds her back big time.
Another Explorer had another different take on masks. For years she had a mask that showed glamour, her answer to ‘how do I want to lead’ was ‘glamorously’. She has moved on from this, now she is her natural – eccentric – self. But looking back she is grateful for the glamorous mask, it played a crucial role in saving her from the mask she was probably born to wear, one which she was meant to wear in what she called her ‘cage’.
Fear Holds Me Back
This came from many Explorers and with it the sense that fear cripples Energy. Fear of upsetting people, of letting people down, of not being able to rescue people, of not having enough Energy to see things through, of not being clear enough, of not finding the right people to share their passion.
The Explorer who brought the tree and ivy analogy to her mask said of these fears that we must simply cut the ivy off the tree and with them all the people who suck the Energy out of us. It wasn’t just trees that illustrated this, another Explorer whose mask featured a wild flower meadow talked about the weeds that must be pulled out from their roots.
A Yearning for Calm
One Explorer described this yearning resulting in having too much noise in her head. She talked of her longing for calm and stillness. Another Explorer said she strived for equilibrium.
There was a quiet smile from another Explorer who revealed that she had drawn her mask with the help of her two year old. By doing so she had managed to break away from the noises and the sense that she has to have control. Her first instinct had been to keep strictly to the mask brief. But by instead letting her motherness in, she abandoned any attempt at stillness or control, went along with the unfamiliar, opened her eyes and let go. She reported that in doing so messiness became expected.
Impatience Featured Again
Again Explorers admitted to impatience, which often for them meant that their judgement of energy was unreliable. Another Explorer agreed and said moving too fast produced a burnout that was a constant threat to energy.
Maybe there was a link here to another Explorer who said that she was conscious of often being ‘too much’ which left little room for the energy of others.
Backing Off Conflict
One Explorer raised this by saying how they struggled to work with people who don’t have a healthy approach to conflict. She called it a lack of forthrightness and she says it is a killer of her energy.
This elicited quite a response from fellow Explorers who recognise themselves in this description, they simply back off from conflict. They don’t like it and they also know they will struggle not to take anything said personally. They think they do it to please people and were surprised to hear quite the opposite for the Explorer who craved forthrightness.
Hair That Fits In
One mask had hair standing on end and flopping down at the sides. This the Explorer exclaimed was her real hair. For too long she spent hours straightening it so as to fit in. She declared to anyone with curly hair that they should never ‘castrate your hair to fit in, it will stamp out your energy’. With her hair as it now is, she feels honest, in her full power, present and clear that no one can squash her out.
This inspired another Explorer to talk about the hours she spent over the years perming her hair, hours lost, but no longer. Now her hair is the way it is.
Hair was the analogy but the message was clear, fitting in is exhausting and gets in the way of generating energy.
Delivering the Perfect
How many times did we hear this from fellow Explorers? One Explorer said she had once almost thought the perfect was divine.
Another Explorer talked about how her perfectionism was the source of her caution and need to touch everything to make sure it was perfect.
Another agreed. She said that she had always struggled with the expression ‘don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good’ in her eyes ‘good’ was always minimal and not enough. That she had become almost an expert at catastrophising to the point of indecision and total lack of action.
Explorers decided to reframe the word good as enough. Good maintains the energy for what comes next.
Another Explorer urged us all to keep reminding ourselves that ‘we are doing good, and we are doing OK’.
About the Author:
Julia Middleton is the host of the Women Emerging podcast and a best-selling author of “If that’s leading, I’m in” as well as two previous books: “Leading beyond Authority” and “Cultural Intelligence”. She is deeply committed to helping people from all backgrounds to find their own approach to leading. In 2020, Julia launched Women Emerging and in 2022 she lead an expedition of 24 women to find ‘an approach to leading that resonates with women’. She now leads expeditions with women all over the world based on 4Es methodology, discovered in the first expedition.
Prior to that, Julia was founder and, for over thirty years, Chief Executive of Common Purpose, which grew to become one of the biggest leadership development organisations in the world. Julia is also an Ambassador for the Aurora Prize based in Armenia, on the boards of Alfanar Venture Philanthropy in the Arab World and Equality Now, which operates globally, and on the Advisory Councils of Fundacao Dom Cabral in Brazil and Synapse in Pakistan. Born in London and brought up in New York, Julia was educated at French Lycées and graduated from the London School of Economics. She is married, with five children and seven grandchildren.
