Leading From Within: Creating Sustainable Change From The Inside Out

In most corporate cultures, the focus is on “What’s wrong?” Very few of the world’s organizations are fed by creative and positive thinking that produces questions like “What’s right,” “What’s the opportunity here,” and “How can we make this work?” Yet these are the very questions that can produce thriving organizations with strong profitability and a cohesive, even fun, organizational culture.

The “what’s wrong” perspective leaves most employees and leaders today spending a great deal of time focusing on “problems” with their jobs, their growing list of responsibilities, and their colleagues. Not surprisingly, studies show more than half of the nation’s workforce would choose to quit if they could. (Spherion Corp., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Harris Interactive Inc., Rochester, N.Y, 2003). The average worker’s job dissatisfaction is not based on wages, workload, or long hours; instead, it is primarily due to “problems with leadership.” (Watson Wyatt, 1997, Gallup Organization, 1999).

Most staff members see their leaders as uncaring, uninspiring, and unfit to lead. Leaders are confronted with an endless flood of problems, and solving one problem merely clears the path for another to replace it. No longer simply focused on increasing profits, leaders must also answer to their bosses and their employees, resolve conflict, manage crises, develop effective teams, maintain customer satisfaction, review employee performance, develop succession planning strategies, keep on top of technology, deal with diversity, and stay abreast of societal changes and employee expectations. They must do all this and more, all while trying to remain healthy and balanced in their personal lives.

These pressures result in two common outcomes: The first is the “ostrich effect,” when managers bury their heads to disconnect from reality. This approach creates absentee leaders – people who are no longer actively involved in the challenges of day-to-day operations and are emotionally disconnected from staff members and their own feelings. They would rather avoid problems and hope they miraculously work themselves out than risk diving into conflict and creating an even more tense and undesirable working environment.

The second occurs when a manager takes on all challenges and tries to meet every demand. The result is burnout. Since 2003, those actively looking for a new job has ranged from nearly 40% to as high as 60% and higher.

Where do we go from here?

This is not an environment that employees or leaders want to work in. So how can the shift from “what’s wrong?” to “what’s right?” occur? The change actually all starts with one thing: Energy. That’s right, Energy.

To become great leaders and solve long-term management challenges, managers at any level within an organization must understand that transformation is not an overnight process but instead a continuous journey toward self-actualization – a process that includes learning how to help oneself and others accomplish more than what was believed possible.

Great leaders understand what drives people, and make shifts in themselves and others toward new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. These shifts, which stem from an understanding of how energy works, create the foundation for success.

Great leaders understand that a company’s best resources are human. Tapping into the core of what drives and motivates people is the secret to uncovering the source of power within the workplace. Understanding and positively influencing the leader’s own level of energy, as well the energy of their employees and their organization, leads to solutions for almost all challenges.

Many leaders are experts in problems; some are experts in problem solving; and a rare few leaders are experts who know it is not their job to solve problems, but to create an environment that prevents them from occurring.

The recently published book, Energy Leadership: Transforming Your Workplace and Your Life From the Core by Bruce D Schneider, Ph. D., founder and CEO of iPEC Coaching, shows how leaders can create such an environment – one that asks the “what’s right” questions that lead to organizational, and personal, success.

Sustainable change begins from within. Shifting leaders’ view of challenging situations and interactions ripples through their communication style and positively impacts their interpersonal skills and ability to lead when it’s needed most. Changing their perceptions to work for, instead of against, them, and breaking through internal and external blocks generates a synergy of physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual strength that produces extraordinary and sustainable results.

The principles of Energy Leadership show how someone can be at the cause, instead of the effect of life, creating the success that they and their companies deserve and desire, and revealing...the Leader Within.