Successful executives know how to manage their energy levels and do so by getting rid of negative people and activities that drain them – both in a professional and personal capacity.
If you are feeling professionally fatigued it may be worth giving thought to whether it is due to people or activities that zap the energy and positivity out of your working day. You may wake up with a lingering ill feeling about a specific meeting, or perhaps there's an action item or two that repeatedly gets pushed to the end of your weekly "to do" list and is never achieved. For many executives an energy zapper occurs when they are forced to either confront or deal with colleagues and clients who leave them feeling low. All of these are what I call "energy zappers" – people and activities that zap energy from your soul and prevent you from achieving other things and spending your time in better ways.
This, however, is not specific to our working generation. In the late 1790s, writer, street orator and French revolutionary Nicolas Chamfort was the first to write about swallowing a toad in the morning, saying: "It would be necessary to swallow a toad every morning, in order not to find anything in society more disgusting the rest of the day." One hundred years later this quote was attributed to Mark Twain, who wrote: "If you eat a live frog every morning, nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day." The concept this decade has broadened in the US and has been adopted by career self-help disciples, who believe the toad or frog is the worst or at least the largest professional task that must be accomplished at the start of every day. By tackling the frog early, an executive will be free of procrastination and experience more energy, allowing for more to be achieved each day.
McKinsey executives Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston conducted a five-year research program and assessed the drivers of 125 successful women from around the world to see what activities or elements contributed to their success. One of the elements they found in their research, published in 2011, is that successful women always know how to stay energised, and having energy means conserving it and also identifying what can zap it, too. Barsh and Cranston developed from their research the Centered Leadership Model, now a highly regarded human resources and leadership model used around the world by both men and women. It seems energy and frogs are closely aligned.
How do you go about identifying your frogs? It's easy if you tap into how you are feeling. Over the next few days, monitor your response to the people you are with and the situations that you are in, and take a register of those people and activities that wear you down. See how much more you can fit in and achieve once those frogs have been eaten. Also be aware of the people and places that give you the most joy, creativity and energy, and look to bottle them.
Claire Linton-Evans is a senior executive and author of the career bible for modern women, Climbing the Ladder in Heels – How to Succeed in the Career Game of Snakes and Ladders. Visit climbingtheladder.com.au
