Over the past year I have worked with hundreds of leaders across a range of industries. And the most common question they have asked is “How do I sustain the energy levels of my people?”. This year, more than any other in recent memory, has taxed the energy reserves of even the most resilient teams. Hugely disruptive changes, prolonged periods of uncertainty and the blurring of work and home have drained people’s batteries and made it difficult to recharge. When leaders try to step in and fill the energy gap, it’s not long before they find themselves starting to run out of gas. The key is to take on the challenge, without trying to do it all on your own.

A team’s energy comes from within

A while back I was leading a Self-Aware Team program for the coaches and support staff of a team that was preparing to represent Canada at the Winter Games in Beijing. An important part the program is an exercise in which team members create “player cards” containing key insights they’ve learned about themselves through the program. The group then comes together in a Zoom call to share those insights and give and get feedback. Like so many others, this group had been through an incredibly taxing year. Because of the pandemic, the team had to expend significantly more energy than it ordinarily would to create effective training opportunities for the athletes. Quarantines and “bubbling” rules had forced individuals to spend months at a time on the road, adapting to new routines and away from their families. And uncertainty over everything from health and testing to the potential fate of the games loomed over it all.
“The ways they brought energy were as diverse as the people themselves.”
As the group shared their player cards, it quickly came to light that a number of different members of this team had been significant “energy givers” through this difficult time. And the ways they brought energy were as diverse as the people themselves.

Three energizing principles

In listening to the group share their feedback, I was struck by three things: Energy is found in diversity. During the discussion I heard multiple different ways that multiple different people infused the group with energy. Some provided big boosts, other provided steady nudges. Some energized all team members. Others were more critical in sustaining a handful of specific individuals. Some were helpful at the start to get the flywheel moving forward. Others stepped in during negative moments to break tension and redirect focus when forward movement was stalled. Each team member’s contribution could stand on its own, but put together they added up to more than the sum of their parts. Energizing the team is everyone’s responsibility. No single contributor can create enough energy on their own to sustain a team; the demands are simply too vast. Everyone on the team shares some responsibility for energizing their teammates. The team leader’s job is to create the conditions that allow it to happen. Feedback is of key importance. In many cases, the “energy givers” were surprised to learn the value of what they provided. In fact, some had mistakenly believed that the very behaviors that others found energizing were irrelevant or a distraction. If not for the reinforcement they received during the session, many had been planning to curtail some of those behaviors moving forward. And, if that had taken place, then valuable sources of positive energy would have simply faded away because people were unaware.

Energize your team

Every leader needs to create an environment that enables their people to perform. And energy is a critical part of that environment. But it’s not the leader’s role to provide that energy all on their own. Instead, the best leaders create the conditions for “energy givers” to thrive.
“Create a clear image of what it looks like to be an energy giver.”
Start by setting the expectation that energy is a team responsibility. Work with your people to create a clear image of what it looks like to be an “energy giver” and what behaviors will move the team’s energy level in a positive direction. Help your team surface the different ways “energy givers” sustain the team in tough moments. Make it a part of your regular check-ins to ask people what’s contributed to their energy over the past week and encourage open discussion when appropriate. Finally, provide opportunities for regular feedback and recognition so that each “energy giver” knows what to keep doing. This feedback can come from you as a leader, but people should also hear from their peers. Effective feedback recognizes the behavior, communicates its impact, and encourages the person to continue. With this approach, a leader can create more energy on their team than they could ever hope to do alone, while at the same time helping their people to stay engaged and motivated through whatever may come.

Dane Jensen

CEO, Third Factor

Over the course of your career, you’ve probably handed out a few “feedback sandwiches” – a piece of criticism hidden between two pieces of positive reinforcement. But as Peggy Baumgartner lays out in her latest article for HBR, you need to stop softening tough feedback. In the article, Peggy outlines why the “sandwich” doesn’t work:

🧹 People who think highly of themselves might brush off the piece of corrective feedback, giving more weight to the positive news surrounding it.

😟 But those who are self-critical might dwell on the bad news and miss out on the good.

🐍 And the lack of direct communication makes people feel like they’re victims of a sneak attack.

Instead, Peggy offers simple advice for leaders who need to give feedback: Describe the behaviour you want to reinforce or correct, explain the impact of the behaviour, and outline what you want them to do. Click here to read the article on hbr.org. In our 3×4 Coaching virtual learning journey, participants are given challenges to apply what they’ve learned on the job. In this video, our Chief Learning Officer, Peggy Baumgartner, showcases how one program participant used a challenge activity to make a lasting difference in his organization.
When it comes to coaching, it’s not about what you know; it’s what you do that ultimately matters. That’s why we make challenge activities a part of our online learning journeys. Participants are given a challenge and encouraged to make note of what works for them and what impact it had. One participant, taking the 3×4 Coaching program through Queen’s Executive Education, really took his challenge on recognition to heart. Following the challenge, Dave Cooper shared that he had written a letter to his team to recognize their contributions through the pandemic. As the manager of retail leadership development for Sport Chek, a major retailer with approximately 250 stores, his team had been hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. “Our training team got very disconnected from the stores, which was really difficult for me personally and difficult for our team,” Dave told us. “After going through eight months of this constant stress, I wanted to see if I could write something to recognize what they’d accomplished how long they had endured. And maybe give them a little nudge that they have more in them.” Dave’s letter to his team was particularly effective because it took all the key concepts from the recognition module and used them in a very powerful way: The people in Dave’s organization are sure to feel seen, heard and incredibly valued after reading his letter. It’s always exciting to see the concepts we teach transferred back into the work world. If you’re excited about the possibilities coaching can open up, you can bring the 3×4 Coaching program to your organization or enrol as an individual through Queen’s Executive Education. Feedback is such an important part of our 3×4 Coaching model. Giving people information about their performance is one of the best ways to help them get better. But do your people actually know that the information you’re telling them is intended as feedback? A woman walked up to me in an executive leadership program I was teaching and said, “My 360-degree feedback from several of my employees says that I don’t give enough feedback. That’s nonsense! I give feedback to them all the time.” My advice to her was to use a yellow highlighter. She told me that that wouldn’t work because most of the feedback she gave was verbal.
“Let me give you some feedback on that.”
“Then use a verbal yellow highlighter,” I responded. “Whenever I have to give anybody feedback, and I want to to make sure it’s been heard and recognized as feedback, I always use the word feedback and emphasize it… as in ‘let me give you some feedback on that.’” On the next day of the program she walked up to me and said “Oh my gosh that was so simple, and it will make a big difference. In thinking back to my conversations with my employees I realized that very often when I was actually giving them some feedback I rarely used the word feedback, so they didn’t recognize it as such when they were asked.” It will definitely help the employees’ performance and, secondarily the results on her 360 feedback.