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Meet
the MasterMinds: Jim Loehr - Are you Fully Engaged?
 At
one time or another, we've all experienced unwanted
drops in our energy. It may happen at a client meeting,
a family event or when writing a proposal. It's at moments
like these that we wish we could squeeze out just a
little bit more energy.
Jim Loehr can show us how.
Drawing from the lessons of professional athletics,
Loehr's prescription for improved performance, called
Full Engagement, topples conventional wisdom while providing
a comprehensive and understandable set of strategies
for getting all you can from what you've got.
Loehr is a leader in the field of performance psychology
and a founder of LGE Performance Systems, where
he co-developed the Corporate Athlete Training
System. He is the author or co-author of twelve
books, including Stress for Success.
His most recent book with co-author Tony Schwartz,
The
Power of Full Engagement, argues for
a shift in focus from time management to energy
management.
Loehr has appeared on NBC's Today, Nightline
with Ted Koppel and the CBS Evening News
with Dan Rather. He has also been
featured on CNN, ESPN, 60 Minutes, 48
Hours, Inside Edition and many
other programs worldwide.
For over twenty-five years, Loehr has worked with top
performers in business, sports, law enforcement and
medicine. He talked to MCNews about how consultants
can maximize their performance without sacrificing health
or happiness.
MCNews: Many people believe that managing time is
the key to high performance in their work and in their
personal lives. In your view, are time management techniques
really sufficient to meet those objectives?
Loehr: Well, this is where my co-author and
I diverge the most from traditional thinking. There
is no question that time is an important commodity in
our lives. But we have found that time, by itself, is
fundamentally valueless unless it intersects with our
best energy. That's because it's our best energy that
enables us to be extraordinary.
So we feel people have really missed something here:
the fundamental unit that must be managed is energy,
not time. We thought it was time but it's really
not. It's also not money, although money is important.
The fundamental resource--the currency that makes everything
happen--is energy.
It's not the amount of time I spend with my children,
my spouse or friends, or the amount of time I spend
on the job that's important. If you think about your
life, it's not how much time you are going to spend
on the planet that will define your success; it's the
energy you bring to the time that you have.
We need to use time management techniques as a vehicle
to manage our energy, which is the most precious resource
we have, individually and organizationally.
MCNews: Why have people overlooked the importance
of managing energy?
Loehr: It's so interesting. We are all over the
other resources we believe are important in our lives.
For instance, we manage money maniacally. We recognize
money as a vital resource in our lives, and so we have
built an entire industry around financial management.
The same is true for time. We have recognized that
time is sacred in our lives. We have been lead to believe
that to achieve great success, we must manage our time
more efficiently and effectively. So we have created
an entire industry around time management as well. That
has helped us to be more diligent in how we invest our
time and to hold ourselves accountable for it.
And yet, if you ask people about energy management,
they have no idea what you are talking about. In
fact, the physical body is considered to be irrelevant
to business. There's no industry around the energy resource.
Energy is the capacity to do work, and if you take energy
out of the equation, no work or business can ever complete
its mission.
MCNews: How well do most people manage their
energy?
Loehr: Good data on that has been collected
worldwide. Probably the best source is The Gallup Organization,
which has published over forty-two studies on the subject.
Gallup's data, which is completely consistent with ours,
shows that only one in four people are what we call
"fully engaged," meaning they bring their
best energy to work.
Full engagement is the pathway to extraordinary
performance. But seventy-five percent of people in the
workforce are not bringing their full energy to their
mission.
Of even more concern, nineteen percent of people in
the workforce across all industries are actively "disengaged,"
which means they are working against the mission: they
are on the payroll, but their energy is negative; they
are not working in concert with the organization's goals.
And not incidentally, the corporate costs, just for
the actively disengaged, have been estimated to be as
high as $250 billion.
MCNews: Is the lack of full engagement a result
of people not devoting their energy to work or are they
are not managing energy effectively?
Loehr: It's both. First of all, they don't have
enough energy capacity to meet all the demands that
are placed on their energy, both in their personal and
professional lives. It's like having more bills to pay
than you have money in the bank. You make partial payments
because if you emptied the account, you would be bankrupt.
If you make a partial payment with your energy, that's
disengagement. So one of the reasons that people are
disengaged is that they simply don't have enough in
their energy bank to meet all of the demands.
The second reason is that they have very poor energy
management skills. People don't know how to renew
their energy. They are not very judicious in shepherding
the resources they have, and they waste a lot of energy
on things that take them nowhere near where they want
to go.
At the end of the day, they are exhausted from fighting
purposeless battles.
That leaves them even less energy for their families
and their communities. Their energy is either very low
or is contaminated by negativity, which in our vernacular
is very low octane energy. Energy can be very toxic
as well as very positive. If you don't manage it well,
it's like the worst gas-guzzling auto.
MCNews: How can we realize the benefits of full
engagement in the workplace and in our personal lives?
Loehr: The generic principle is the one we just
covered--that the pathway from ordinary to extraordinary
is managing energy, not just time, more skillfully.
We have many specific principles, but I will give you
the CliffsNotes version of the four that are most important.
The first is that full engagement requires us to draw
from four distinct, but connected dimensions of energy:
physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
We humans are complex beings and to get the power of
full engagement, we've got to recruit the full measure
of all the multidimensional energy potential we have,
and focus it right here, right now.
The next principle is very basic: we can't be fully
engaged all of the time because our energy has to be
renewed. People who try to be fully engaged all
of the time eventually become energy bankrupt--they
just can't do it.
The third principle is that you have to train in
the same deliberate way that elite athletes do.
The energy demands on people in business exceed anything
we have ever seen in sports in all the years we have
worked with professional athletes. And yet most people
don't train for those demands.
The number of hours that business people have to focus
and concentrate during any given day is remarkable,
and that continues week after week, year after year
with no off-season.
The last principle of full engagement is not achieved
by conscious will and discipline, but by the use of
what we call positive rituals. We are basically creatures
of habit, and the way we manage our energy reflects
the routines we have gotten into in our lives, for better
or for worse.
If you have bad routines with regard to eating, sleeping,
exercising, mental focusing or time management, or poor
routines for getting in touch with your deepest values--your
character, honesty and integrity--those routines are
what will run your life.
MCNews: Turning to the second principle you mentioned,
any advice for how people can build effective recovery
periods into their daily lives?
Loehr: If you want to be extraordinary in life,
you have to find ways to renew your energy--physically,
emotionally, mentally and spiritually. The system
works best when you turn it on as bright as you can,
and then turn it off. And you do this frequently.
We use ninety-minute intervals we call oscillation--bouts
of energy expenditure followed by bouts of energy recovery.
To be fully engaged at the most important times, you
have to oscillate. We are oscillatory creatures in an
oscillatory universe. That's how we work best and can
be the most productive.
Every living thing needs recovery--energy deposited
and renewed in the system. If you are fit, that makes
you stronger and you need less time to recover, but
everyone needs some recovery time. And if we don't do
that physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually,
we cannot sustain this extraordinary energy expenditure.
For example, you need to find ways to transition from
work to home. During your commute, turn off your cell
phone and anything that keeps you in the on position
mentally and emotionally.
Instead, maybe listen to some relaxing music. This
prepares you, much like an athlete would prepare prior
to an important event, to change gears and be ready
to receive your children or your spouse and give them
100% of your best energy.
MCNews: The concept of oscillation seems to be the
reverse of the conventional wisdom that work, your career,
is a marathon. Are you saying that the best performance
comes from a sprint, not a marathon?
Loehr: Absolutely. If you are going to be
extraordinary, there have to be times when you put the
pedal all the way to the floor. That's when you
get the greatest return on your energy investment. You've
got to give 100% of your energy to get your genius to
surface.
To visualize the difference between a 100-meter sprinter
and a marathoner, think about their energy before and
after a race. At the end, the marathoner looks like
a train wreck, while the sprinter looks excited and
energized.
The reason sprinters are so excited and full of energy
is that they can see the goal line right in front of
them. I could give 100% of my energy to reach that clear
a goal. But the marathoner can't see twenty-six miles.
And our work lives aren't twenty-six miles, but thirty
or forty years. So it's no surprise that most people
are not fully engaged in their jobs or home lives. They
are afraid to give too much because they will run out
of steam. And once you run out, you are dead.
We encourage people to understand how it feels to
be a sprinter versus a marathoner. We show them
how to divide up their lives into manageable sprints
by beginning with physical exercise. You start with
interval exercise--walk fast and then walk slow. And
every time you step into what we call the hot zone and
then go back voluntarily on your own terms to recovery,
you confirm that it was okay to go to the hot zone.
If you've eaten properly and have worked in sprints
during the day, when you head for home you will still
have energy left over so that you can do a big sprint
with your family. And then maybe you seek some time
alone, or you go out and work in the garden or hit some
golf balls--whatever it is that helps you renew yourself.
We are trying to get people to understand the value
of oscillation, and not simply get through one more
day, grinding it out until it's over.
MCNews: The concept of full engagement draws many
of its principles from sports. How are those principles
relevant to consultants and others in the business world?
Loehr: In fact, we are the ultimate athletes.
The span of a professional athlete's career is five
to seven years, while in corporate America a career
is thirty to forty years. And the consequences for failure
in business are so much more devastating. It's not a
game, and so the demands in energy are that much greater.
We don't think of ourselves as athletes and we don't
train our energy. We think we don't have work to protect
our energy systems, while athletes understand that is
the whole key to their success.
Like athletes, we need to understand that training
to achieve full engagement is about building positive
rituals that help us manage energy more skillfully.
These rituals are consciously acquired but eventually
become automatic over time, and they are fueled by deeply
held values.
It's like an automatic sprinkler system in your yard:
you know that the things that are really important are
going to get nourished. Building positive rituals is
a process that takes thirty to sixty days. We focus
on just a few routines at a time, maybe one or two.
Over the course of a year, you might get six or seven
positive rituals locked into your DNA.
Positive rituals can completely change the way you
navigate in the world in terms of energy and can bring
about profound changes.
MCNews: What is a common barrier to achieving full
engagement?
Loehr: There are many enemies to full engagement.
Enemy number one is multitasking; it's the antithesis
of full engagement.
We celebrate our ability to tend to multiple balls
in the air. But doing so just means that you are not
fully engaged in anything and that you are partially
disengaged in everything. You will never be extraordinary
in things that you do while multitasking. So, if
you care about something, never do it with other things.
If it's not important, multitasking is fine. For example,
you may want to watch TV and read the newspaper at the
same time. But if it's something that really matters,
multitasking will insure that, at best, you will be
normal or below, never extraordinary.
Think about a surgeon who is operating on you. Do you
want the surgeon multitasking during that critical procedure--checking
email, talking on a cell phone or having a bite to eat?
The brain is only capable of focusing on one thing
at a time. If you split the signal to the brain, you
are bouncing around and while you are not there something
critical can happen.
MCNews: When you start to work with people, what's
the most common area of improvement that you see right
away?
Loehr: The return on energy. Many people think
that they have as much energy as they can possibly get
until we show them how to get a thirty to fifty percent
return on their energy. They are stunned. They can't
believe how life changes when they go from being tired
or moderately energized to being fully charged when
they get up in the morning and still ignited until 10:30
at night.
We get that process started very quickly and people
get excited because they realize they can have more
energy.
MCNews: One last question: if someone wanted to
focus on just one thing to improve their energy, which
one would you recommend?
Loehr: The answer is simpler than you might
think. We need to take care of the basic energy systems
first. That's where we always begin. Energy comes
into the system through consumption of food, and we
have found that stabilizing blood sugar is probably
the single most important thing we can do.
Eating small meals, and eating often, actually has
the most profound effect over time of almost anything
that we see.
Then exercising would be right alongside of that. Interval
exercise, whether it's walking, running, cycling or
anything else, even if only for fifteen to twenty minutes,
has a huge impact.
Those two--eating and exercising--can profoundly change
the dynamics of energy in a person's life to such an
extent that it means the difference between being successful
and just ordinary.
MCNews: Thanks for your time.
Find out more about Dr. Jim Loehr, his books and services
at www.fullengagement.com.
Loehr's site includes a complimentary self-assessment
tool to measure your level of full engagement.
Was this interview helpful? Send me an email
with your feedback.
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Reality
Bytes
Does IT Need Your Help?
According to two recent surveys by the
META Group and
Deloitte & Touche,
the IT budgets of many companies, which swelled in the
recent past, are coming under the corporate microscope.
With nagging economic uncertainty and
the allure of rock-bottom prices for offshore/outsourced
IT resources, it's no surprise that Chief Information
Officers (CIOs) are being asked to tighten their belts,
and demonstrate the value of their IT organizations.
Consultants specializing in organizational
effectiveness have a window of opportunity to serve
this need. By bringing expertise in IT organizational
design, performance measurement and communication planning,
consultants can help CIOs solve today's need to do more
with less.
For the next year or more, you can expect
consultants with these capabilities to have more work
than they can handle.
Keep Your Eye on Your Client
CEO turnover is showing no sign of slowing,
according to a recent study by Booz
Allen Hamilton.
Forced turnover of CEOs in the world's
2,500 publicly traded companies increased more than
seventy percent in 2002. Of the CEOs dumped in 2002,
almost forty percent were axed for poor performance.
If your client CEO was appointed from
outside of the organization, that CEO is at greater
risk of being cut loose than one appointed from the
inside. And, in spite of the massive corporate meltdowns
in the U.S., CEOs fired in North America in 2002 were
less than half of global CEO turnover, down from over
sixty percent in 2001.
The Global Consulting Marketplace
Kennedy
Information Inc., in their recent report on the
"Global Consulting Marketplace 2003," indicates
that "for the first time in more than three decades,
global consulting revenues declined in 2002."
The report goes on to predict that consulting
fees will remain soft in this buyer's market though
opportunities do exist for new firms to grab market
share.
For more information on the complete report,
contact John Egyed at
jegyed@kennedyinfo.com.
Can a Meeting be "Perfect?"
Yes, says Tom Krattemaker in a recent
article in Working
Knowledge, a publication of the Harvard Business
School. Here are five fast strategies for making every
meeting count.
Don't Always Have Meetings - One
easy solution to an unproductive meeting is to cancel
it. Challenge the reason for having each meeting before
setting it up.
Do More than Talk - Make sure each
meeting has an element of action and decision, not just
discussion.
Spend Time to Save Time - A simple
way to improve meeting productivity is to be sure that
advance work is completed, specific agendas prepared
and outcomes defined.
Park Digressions and Deflate Windbags
- Meetings can quickly veer off course when long-winded
participants go on a rant. Meeting facilitators should
gently bring the meeting back around by suggesting that
the issue be "parked" and discussed at a later
time.
Declare a Meeting-Free Day - Sometimes
people just need some uninterrupted time.
Was this article helpful? Send me an email
with your feedback.
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