I recently chatted with Maria Tomas Keegan, a certified career and life coach and successful author, in her podcast Tips for the Transition: The Career Roadmap.
We covered a lot of area involving the challenges – and opportunities - women face in leadership today.
I thought I’d share some highlights that can help women (and all leaders) navigate the path to successful leadership.
The Early Years of Leadership: Learning the Industry
Maria asked me about the early days of my career.
As I’m sure many women can relate to, I struggled to know what to say and hold myself and others accountable. Working in a male-dominated industry, I worried continually about being too hard (or not hard enough) when having difficult conversations. I second guessed everything I did.
Sound familiar?
I realized I was getting in the way of my own leadership and happiness. I learned that the challenges that we face teach us something about ourselves, and about how to do it better next time.
It got better once I started understanding that I can't make everybody happy - and I can't be everything for everybody, including myself, all the time. That led me down a really helpful road that allowed me to focus on my people and on the business.
Eventually, I ran seven multi-million-dollar businesses for that company, basically addressing and overhauling challenges. That led me to where I am today. In my first leadership job I was fortunate to have had an internal coach, the first professional coach I had.
The Power of Energy Leadership
Early on, I was frustrated and thought coaching was not for me.
Once I got past that, it opened up a whole world of how I interacted differently with my people and it really turned everything around - including those people that didn't feel I should have been in the position.
Within six months, they were totally supporting me and asking what more they could do to help, and looking at my vision and wanting to follow it - which was a huge step and relief for me.
The coach taught me about energy leadership and I've been using it ever since - even before I was certified as a practitioner. It brought a level of awareness that I couldn't get from anything else.
What is Energy Leadership?
The term energy leadership was created by Bruce D. Schnieder in the early 2000s and it's one of the top 10 leadership assessments and programs in the US.
Used world-wide, energy leadership pinpoints how you perceive yourself and others in situations and the world around you, which helps you understand how to interact without feeling inauthentic.
It lets you play outside of the box, whereas a personality chart simply tells you who you are. This gives you full control of how you're interacting with people. It's based off of emotions and thoughts, which is something that's usually not tangible.
You ask yourself:
I'm in this space right now - is this where I want to be?
Do I want to be up here?
Or do I want to be over here?
How do I want to interact with this person?
And where are they at in their own energy - where are they sitting in their perceptions, and their thought process?
Energy leadership helps us navigate those situations.
I started using it in 2008 with my teams in a male-dominated industry - where you don't talk about emotions. Workers would come into my office and say: “I need to talk to you!”
I’d respond: “Great! Where do you need me to be before I respond?” That actually helped me interact with them - and it calmed them down a bit.
Energy leadership is actually seven levels. It's a continuum that we go through throughout the entire day, depending on what's coming at us, what’s going on, where our thoughts are, where our emotions are.
And each of the levels represents a thought - like a core thought, and a core emotion, that you can tap into or you may already be tapping into.
Examples of four of the levels of Energy Leadership:
Level 1: is associated with feeling like you have no influence over the circumstances that are happening. It's very much: “I can't do anything-no one's going to listen.”
Level 2: is about frustrated, angry feelings like, “I'm going to win and you're going to lose because that's the only thing that can happen. I really want to make sure that I succeed in this and you're getting in my way.”
Level 3: is more about cooperation. “I have a goal I'm looking at. I'm going to achieve it and I'm going to see if people fit into the puzzle to help me get there. If they win with me, that's awesome – however, I'm really focusing on what my goal is and I'm going to move forward to that.”
What happens?
You've really let go of the frustration and the feeling like you have no control, at this point, yet you're not really interacting with other people, you're still focused on what you want.
Level 4: the Midway point. I call this more of like the servant leadership area: you're very focused on other people winning. It’s all about the other person, what they want, what they need, how to support, grow, and build them up.
When we get higher up in these energies, it's more about connection, creating win-win solutions that work for everybody. It's really where your imagination and your intuition run wild depending on the situation.
Here’s an example:
Someone comes in my office very upset and they need to vent. After I would teach energy leadership to my people, I would pull out a chart and ask: “Where do I need to be? You seem to be somewhere on the lower - one, two, three areas - at the moment. I want to make sure I support you. So where do you want me to be?
Do you want me to be down and frustrated, like I got your back venting it out?
Do you need me to be like more in a four - where I'm more empathetic and I'm not like getting on the bandwagon and building that up?
Usually that would give them enough time to take a step back and go. “I am kind of in that venting, frustrated place. Is that where I want to be?”
Sometimes we need those lower levels because we move through them, because there may be a trigger; we feel victimized or just plain mad about the situation and we need to work through those emotions. Having someone help us do that might speed the journey of it.
It helped me not be triggered. If I'm in the middle of something and somebody barges into my office upset, I'm probably not going to respond in a way that's going to be supportive for them.
It allows me the space to take a step back, too, and say: I know this is not where I want to be.
Leverage the Power in the Pause
Maria has a phrase she tells her clients; “There is great power in the pause.”
I agree. I didn't used to be okay with silence. It’s hard to pause, since we feel we need to be doing something.
Maria elaborated:
“It's a pause to reevaluate. It's a pause to choose. We have to be conscious about where we are and what we want instead…It’s an intentional choice.”
We do a lot of things unconsciously. We think of that as negative – in reality, it's actually something that our brain just naturally does so we can function in the world.
Our brain works to automatically make assumptions based off of past experience, memories or emotions. We don't really control it unless we're very aware of how we're showing up. That's when we can get really intentional and live in intentional choice towards how we're behaving, how we're responding.
Maria noted that unconscious bias can influence how we show up, how we respond to situations. If we choose to live by intentional choice, we choose to become aware of as much as we can than when we're triggered. We get curious.
How are you showing up as a leader? Get curious.
Curiosity is a big part of the equation. And it's not just the curiosity of us reflecting back. One of the tools that I give to a lot of leaders is something that's super simple: the start/stop/continue question:
What do you want me to start doing?
What do you want me to stop doing?
What do you want me to continue doing?
The more we can ask those questions of other people, we can understand how we're affecting them; we can understand how we're showing up. The more that you do this and the more awareness that you bring, the easier it gets.
Change is Difficult in Leadership & Life
Maria asked how I deal with people that have the philosophy of status quo and say: This is the way we've always done things and why are you coming in here and trying to change it if it isn’t broke?
It starts with really understanding their values. why are they afraid of the change?
Basically, it’s fear, stress, and worry that change brings. As leaders, we make decisions to help everybody be in the place that they need to be.
I often see common missteps. People:
second guess themselves.
don't trust their intuition
don't test their theories
aren’t being consistent
In studies, MRI’s were done on a test group. People were given visualizations to do for 10 to 15 minutes a day, for four to six weeks.
They again did MRIs and they were completely changed!
We don't get stuck in our fight and flight as much when we're able to think more logically and rationally and when we are consistent.
Baby Steps to Consistency
Maris asked how you teach consistency?
In two short words: baby steps!
We think about making big changes. Often it seems very overwhelming, so we don't usually do anything. We get stuck and feel it’s insurmountable.
Humans like to take our foot off the gas peddle once we feel comfortable. We don't challenge it because it's working and we've been taught if it's not broke, don't fix it.
The challenge is that if you want to keep growing, you have to try new things. You have to get out of that comfort zone- and it's uncomfortable.
Key Tips & Takeaways for Leaders
My tips:
Use the chart. It's super helpful. I actually spell out exactly how to use it
Be mindful of when you're in judgment. It's really difficult to stay in curiosity when we're judging things - and we judge things all day long. It’s part of that unconscious bias, and our natural default.
Be conscious of how judgment can quickly pull you down to lower levels of energy.
Maria agreed, noting we judge things unconsciously without even realizing it. I give the example:
You’re called into the boss’ office 2x and have a negative experience. When you’re called in again, your brain will already judge it. We look for things that make that judgment true - we aren't going to look for things that make it untrue.
A Final Leadership Tip
Spend 5-10 minutes a day focusing on how you want to be.
Regarding this, I’d like to share the results of a study:
In basketball, they took a group and had them practice free throws for an hour a day.
Another group visualized for 30 minutes a day and never touched a ball.
The control group didn't do either.
The results?
The group that actually practiced free throws every single day for 30 days got about 25% better, those that visualized got 25 better- without ever touching the ball!
Visualize how you want to show up, visualize the outcome you want to have. The more we do that and practice it, the more it just actually comes naturally. We're creating that default tendency and that's how you create that new neural pathway.
I invite you to do that for a month on a specific thing and see the change that you get!
Listen to the full podcast: Tips for the Transition: The Career Roadmap
Learn more about The Energy Leadership™ Index (ELI) assessment.
Download our new free PDF, The Energetic Self-Perception Chart, a model that describes the 7 levels of energy. It can help you become aware of how the different energies show up in yourself and in others – and how you can leverage it to your advantage.