Why Everyone Needs to Understand Their Personal Energy Levels

Energy LeadershipExecutive CommunicationLeadership

Jan 13

Let’s talk assessments for a second. Everyone knows Myers-Briggs and most have had their Enneagram typed. Then there’s Strengths Finder, DiSC, The Four Color Personalities, Goleman’s EQ Test… the list goes on and on.

The Enneagram test outlines nine different interconnected personality traits, with 27 additional subtypes. The nine traits are then grouped into three different “centers”: instinctive, feeling and thinking. Workplaces often use the DiSC assessment to help employees understand how to communicate and work together. Goleman’s EQ is meant to help you understand the emotions that are driving your behavior.

I’m not here to debate the efficacy of any of these assessments – whether they are arbitrary, based on unproven theories, or simply a good topic to bring up at a cocktail party (virtual, of course). “Oh! You’re an Enneagram 3 Wing 2? I’m a 4, wing 1! Let’s be friends…” or whatever.

This is what all of these assessments have in common: they attempt to tell you about yourself. They are prescriptive … rather than transformational.

These more traditional assessments are meant to classify individuals on their preferences and tendencies, while providing valuable information when it comes to how they work with others. They are ultimately designed to group and categorize some of your internal or external traits with the goal of placing you or helping you place yourself in an environment that works best for you and those around you. It’s a worthy goal. After all, who wants to be stuck in a toxic work environment, surrounded by people you are inherently incompatible with due to personalities?

Not me.

Now let me tell you what makes the Energy Leadership Index (ELI) Assessment different: it’s prescriptive, but it’s also transformational.

This is what I mean: the ELI Assessment doesn’t only tell you about your characteristics. It gives you a tool to help you SHIFT your energy level from, say, a victim mentality where you experience feelings of being powerless, apathetic, self criticism and doubt, into one of rationality, responsibility and or caring for self and others. It not only helps you understand yourself better (ie: how you react to stressors, for example); it enables you to quantify your own reactions while giving you access to taking CONTROL over how you interact and react with others on a daily basis.

I was first introduced to the ELI a year ago while finalizing my IPEC coaching certification. I already knew a lot about energy and had been integrating what I knew into my own life and coaching practice for a while - so while I was intrigued, I wasn’t an instant convert. It wasn’t until I took the assessment myself and had my 1:1 debrief that I WAS SOLD.

Beyond that, my mind was blown. It was so accurate; it felt like having an energetic reading, but so much more in-depth and practical.

The ELI gave me a completely new perspective on how to manage my thoughts and the energy I was creating with my own mind and ways of being (which was forming my reality). It also gave me a way to make something as seemingly intangible as energy REAL. It turned energy and energy levels into tangible, malleable elements of my actual, real life.

It’s woo married to neuroscience. And, to be honest, there’s nothing woo about it.

When I saw my ELI results placed alongside the Energy Perception Chart, I was astonished. I could SEE my own energy levels, interpret what those levels meant and how the information applied to me. For the first time, I could visualize how I could work to move levels where I needed to do so…and know the exact steps to get there! Being able to literally see and recognize where I was gave me the added insight I needed to move from where I was to where I wanted to be.

The assessment removed my “blinders” so to speak. It helped me remove areas of self-delusion in my life and become more intimately aware with the unconscious thought and behavioral patterns, reactions and responses that literally run our lives when we aren’t intimately aware of them. It was invaluable (and continues to be so) to becoming truly aware and conscious of areas in my life where I was still (despite years of inner work) still operating in unconscious, miserable auto-pilot programs.

Let me give you an example. Most of us have an internal labeling system that we use to define ourselves. We slap these labels on ourselves whether they are accurate or not – they are based on what we WANT to be, not what we ARE. If you have told yourself “I’m a patient person” over and over again, yet you continue to SHOW UP in an impatient manner, are you truly a patient person? Or I’m a collaborative manager, yet as soon as one of your direct reports becomes uncooperative, collaborative goes out the window and in comes your alter ego, ‘Drill Sgt. Martyr or Ms. Disconnected. It’s so easy to delude ourselves with this type of internal circular thinking – and this delusion prevents us from changing. If we behave in an impatient way yet we keep telling ourselves that we are patient, like it’s an incontrovertible state of reality, that self-talk prevents us from working on being more patient.

Look, I get it. Life these days seems more chaotic than ever! We are overloaded with information, and just when we get used to something – it changes. We’re distracted and pulled in too many directions. We have to think quickly and make fast decisions. We have difficulty balancing work, life, family, friends, and personal enjoyment. We are constantly on the run, feeling pressure from every angle. Put all of those factors together, and it’s only a matter of time before we let opportunities pass us by, or make us believe we’re not living up to our fullest potential or, worse, feel trapped by circumstances. No wonder many of us are constantly irritated and in conflict with others – and ourselves!

So what does this have to do with energy?

The better question might be, what doesn’t this have to do with energy?

Everything is energy! Our thoughts and emotions, which come from our global belief system (meaning how we view ourselves, others and the world at large), create and trigger our energy levels. Our energy levels create our realities. And for most of us, that means keeping our potential limited.

But there is an answer and a way to break the cycle…

The Energy Leadership Index is the process that helps you develop a personally effective style of leadership that positively influences and changes not only yourself, but also those with whom you work and live. (Think you’re not a leader and this doesn’t apply to you? Think again! Everyone is a leader. A leader is someone who has the potential to impact, influence or affect anyone or anything at any given time. Whether by choice or by default, you are a leader.)

Here’s how it works:

The Energy Leadership Process: How You’ll Create Your Life as You Choose

First, you’ll begin by taking the Energy Leadership Index (ELI) Assessment - a one-of-a-kind assessment that enables you to hold up a mirror to your perceptions, attitudes, behaviors and overall leadership capabilities. The ELI forms the initial launching point for the Energy Leadership Development System, giving you a baseline for your current level of awareness and performance. You have the option to then progress through a debriefing and orientation process that enables you to plan your customized developmental roadmap.

Learn to Transform Yourself & Your World from the Very Core

As you go through the Energy Leadership Development System, you’ll learn about the seven levels of awareness and energy. You’ll learn about and be coached on each of the eight building blocks of self mastery so that you understand, embody and have the ability to apply and integrate each skill. You will ultimately become your ideal image of who you want, and need, to be to achieve all that you’ve ever sought.

When mastered, these eight building blocks provide you with the essential toolkit you need to lead yourself and anyone at any time…from a place that feels good. You will be able to understand where others (including yourself) are really coming from, to harness your strengths, to engage and inspire yourself and others to action, and to transform yourself, all those around you, and your world, to greatness.