Six Critical Leadership Activities: Energizing

The following list identifies six activities that I consider “critical” to successful leadership. These activities have helped me become and remain a more effective and efficient leader here at Remote DBA Experts.

1. Strategize
2. Align
3. Energize
4. Enable
5. Actualize
6. Recognize

In my last post, I defined what I meant by Aligning and described what it entails.  In this post, I will do the same with the next Critical Leadership Activity:  Energizing.  If you’ve been keeping up with this blog series, I have mentioned that Energizing and Enabling were activities I used to give better meaning to the process of getting the most out of people.

What is Energizing?

Energizing is the process of getting and keeping people excited about aims, strategies, and the tasks necessary to accomplish them.  Energizing involves careful management of three key levers of Motivational Force:

• Capability:  Believing one can accomplish feats in the time-frame expected
• Benefit:  Understanding the benefits and rewards of accomplishing the feat
• Meaningfulness:  Understanding the importance of the benefits and rewards

The ultimate goal of the Energizing Activity is to get and keep people engaged.  Highly engaged individuals tend to give their most and do their best.  They are more able to perform at peak performance than those who are unengaged.   Unengaged individuals, on the other hand, tend to be “out of it”.  They do not put their best efforts forth and they can have a negative effect on others. They tend to suck energy out of the space.

Energizing is not cheerleading.  It is not motivating.  It is helping people be and do more than they thought they could.  It is helping them find the “inner source” that propels them to peak performances!

What does Energizing Entail?

Energizing is a situational activity.  You may need to energize some people more often than others and you may need to energize at different stages with more or less emphasis on one of the levers I mentioned above.

Help Them Feel Capable

This entails helping people feel that they have what it takes to accomplish what they need to do.  When people do not see how they can get something done at all, or within a given time-frame, they cannot get energized to act.  Your role is to help them become confident in their capabilities.  Sometimes this process starts by making sure they understand the aim, strategy or the process of accomplishing itself.

Help Them Understand the Benefits and Rewards

This entails helping people clearly understand the benefits and rewards associated with accomplishing their part.  This is the second step necessary for energizing a person.  If they do not understand the rewards and benefits associated with performing their part, the final and most critical aspect of the motivational force equation cannot be completed.  Your role as a leader is to communicate the benefits and rewards in context to his or her frame of reference.

Help Them Make a Connection

This entails helping people connect benefits and rewards with key values.  When we relate things to our key values, we are best able to elevate their importance and value to us.  This is a difficult process sometimes, because it requires that people have a clear sense of their key values.  Not all of us have that.  Making this connection is a critical lever.  It is the final step to get energized and accomplish amazing feats.

Energizing is hard work, but it is high leverage work. It is worth every effort to make it happen.  It may actually be the most important activity.  If key people are not energized to perform the tough tasks that accomplishing great feats necessitates, a great aim or strategy becomes meaningless.

Leaders must not only energize others, they need to energize themselves, especially if there is no one else above them.  You need to feel capable, get the benefits and rewards, and make a strong connection with your key vales.  That means that you need to find your energy and then help others find theirs.  It is (almost) like the oxygen mask routine on the airplane.   Get yours on first!

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO