This is the fourth engaged management post based on The ASTD Management Development Handbook. Tony Schwartz’s chapter in the handbook focuses on energy at work and he offers a caution with his chapter title: The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: More and More, Less and Less.  Mr. Schwartz is the leading thinker and writer on energy and work. He runs a vibrant consultancy on energy, has authored a number of books, and he posts regular contributions to the Harvard Business blog.

Tony Schwartz puts energy into the core of work and management. Henry Mintzberg stated, in his book Managing, “managing seems to work especially well when it helps to bring out the energy that exists naturally within people” (p. 214). Schwartz provides us with a pathway and process to rekindle, renew, and refresh our energy for work and management. Yet, how can we maintain and enhance the energy for management when we operate in a workplace of permanent urgency and endless distraction? Tony encourages and enables us to maximize our performance not by doing more and more but by creating a rhythmic movement between energy and recovery based on our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy needs.

The way we’re working isn’t working in our own lives, for the people we lead and manage, and for the organizations in which we work. We’re guided by a fatal assumption that the best way to get more done is to work longer and more continuously. But the more hours we work and the longer we go without real renewal the more we being to default, reflexively, into behaviors that reduce our own effectiveness – impatience, frustration, distraction, and disengagement – and take a pernicious toll on others (page 13).

Schwartz outlined the work of Anders Ericsson on expert performance. This work is often cited for the importance of 10,000 hours to make us an expert. Schwartz goes deeper into the work and demonstrated how experts may work more intensely than most of us but they do it during short periods of time followed by robust recovery. The expert violinists he referred to tended to practice in 90 minute periods and to practice early in the day. This year I have been experimenting with my ideal engaged time period (the length of time I can sustain full engagement while still feeling I have more energy when the period is complete). I now tend to do my key work in 24 minute periods and strive to achieve six of these every day.

We have four primary energy needs: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual (yes spiritual).  We strive to create sustainability with our physical energy through proper nutrition, fitness, sleep, and rest. Physical energy creates our energy foundation. Emotional energy is based on security and feeling accepted and valued. Schwartz states “perhaps no human need is more neglected in the workplace than to feel valued.”  Self-expression is the core need of our mental energy. We need to put our unique skills and talents to use and to manage our attention as we avoid being carried away by a sea of distraction. Spiritual energy refers to something greater than our self --- isn’t work by default always about more than us? Our passion, focus, and perseverance are fueled by our spiritual energy and the experience of significance and meaning at work.

Here are three actions you can implement to infuse energy into your work:

1. Take a week to measure work not by time but by energy. Each time you look at a clock or watch ask yourself what your energy level is at that moment. Use momentum rather than minutes as your measure of work.

2. Chunk your work into shorter periods of focused attention followed by periods of rest and rejuvenation.  Work at determining your ideal work time zone. This could range from 6 minutes to 90 minutes. Make the most of your minutes with full energy invested in each specific work time zone.

3. Fuel all four energies for the employees who report to you by encouraging fitness and rest, ensuring they are valued, knowing and fostering their strengths, and ensuring significance and meaning at work.

Dialogue is at the heart of engaged management. We are often stumped or stymied trying to initiate dialogue with our employees. Here are three questions to trigger engaging dialogue

• In regards to work, hours, performance, and results, how much is enough?

• Why is energy important at work and why don’t we focus more fully on energy at work?

• My favorite work energy question, that I encourage you to ask everyone you work with, comes from Donald H. Graves in his book, The Energy to Teach: What gives you energy, what takes it away, and what for you is a waste of time?

Ten years ago, in 2003, Tony and Jim Loehr co-authored a marvelous book on engagement, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal. I have been using this book for over ten years and I high recommend you read it if you want a better understanding and action plan to manage your energy and manage your work.

I wish you all the best with an energetic approach to work and managing.

Next Post in the Series: Irreverence