Is your contagious energy positive?

Researchers and leaders have looked for the secret to successful leadership for centuries. Dozens of new books each year promise to deliver the answer. We decided to examine this question empirically, and when we did, we found that the greatest predictor of success for leaders is not their charisma, influence, or power. It is not personality, attractiveness, or innovative genius. The one thing that supersedes all these factors is positive relational energy: the energy exchanged between people that helps uplift, enthuse, and renew them.

Here’s what leaders need to know about positive relational energy, which we’ve found to be the most underutilized yet powerful predictor of leadership and organizational success.

The Importance of Positive Relational Energy

In our work, including interviews with thousands of leaders and employees, an upcoming book, and two decades of research on positive leadership, we’ve looked at people in terms of their networks of relationships: communities, organizations, and families. We’ve observed that certain relationships within those networks are extraordinarily life-enhancing and uplifting. The result is extraordinary performance. In particular, there’s usually one person at the center of these networks who’s responsible for most of the forward motion — not to mention well-being — of all the rest. We call them positive energizers.

Energizers’ greatest secret is that, by uplifting others through authentic, values-based leadership, they end up lifting up both themselves and their organizations. Positive energizers demonstrate and cultivate virtuous actions, including forgiveness, compassion, humility, kindness, trust, integrity, honesty, generosity, gratitude, and recognition in the organization. As a result, everyone flourishes.

The pandemic has taken a significant toll on the well-being and energy of so many. Positively energizing leaders are more crucial than ever. Positive energy, however, is not the superficial demonstration of false positivity, like trying to think happy thoughts or turning a blind eye to the very real stresses and pressures overloaded employees are experiencing. Rather, it is the active demonstration of values.

You’ve met people like this. They’re like the sun. These people walk into a room and make it glow. Everyone becomes energized, enthused, inspired, and connected. These incandescent people are positive energizers. Other members of these networks are depleting: the ones who leave the others feeling de-energized, demoralized, diminished, and uninspired. You know the ones — they sap your energy every time. We’ve given them the name de-energizers.

In our analysis of these energizing and de-energizing individuals in the work environment, we were especially interested in studying the energizing effects of leaders, because leaders are the single most important factor in accounting for an organization’s performance. These studies gave us tremendous insight into the secrets of every successful leader.

Numerous studies run by our group and our colleagues show that positive energizers produce substantially higher levels of engagement, lower turnover, and enhanced feelings of well-being among employees. This is partly because at the cellular level of brain activity, cortical thickness is enhanced through exposure to relational energy, hormones such as oxytocin and dopamine are increased, and at the cellular level in the body, inflammation is reduced and immunity to disease is enhanced. In organizations, superior shareholder returns occur, and in some of our studies, outcomes exceeded industry averages in profitability and productivity by a factor of four or more.

Here’s what differentiates positive relational energy. Physical energy diminishes with use. Running a marathon exhausts us. We need recuperation time. The same is true with the use of mental and emotional energy. We become fatigued and need to recover. The only kind of energy that doesn’t diminish but actually elevates with use is positive relational energy. We rarely get exhausted, for example, by being around people with whom we have loving, trusting, supportive relationships. Positive relational energy is self-enhancing. The ability of leaders to engender relational energy is in fact so powerful that it gives energizers an extraordinary advantage. They can turn around failing companies, resolve seemingly doomed situations, and revitalize disengaged and burned-out employees.

Assessing Relational Energy

Here’s how we identified energizers: We asked members of hundreds of organizations — from mom-and-pop startups to multinational corporations — this question: “When I interact with this person [person X] in my organization, what happens to my energy?” In other words, each person was asked to rate themselves on a scale from very positively energized to very de-energized when they interacted with another person in their enterprise. Each member of a senior team, for example, rated their interaction with every other member of the senior team.

We were astonished by the results of this research. When leaders display positive relational energy, it catapults performance to a new level. More specifically, positive energizers:

  • Are themselves far higher performers than others
  • Positively impact others’ performance, so that other people tend to flourish in their presence
  • Exist in greater numbers at high-performing organizations than at average-performing organizations

When the leader is a positive energizer, the organization has greater:

  • Innovation (the number-one attribute that CEOs look for across industries and countries)
  • Teamwork
  • Financial performance, including productivity and quality
  • Workplace cohesion

And when a leader is a positive energizer, employees have greater:

  • Job satisfaction
  • Well-being
  • Engagement
  • Performance
  • Relationships with family

What Makes Positively Energizing Leaders So Successful?

There is a botanical term for these results: the heliotropic effect. That’s the phenomenon whereby plants naturally turn toward and grow in the presence of light. In nature, light is the life-giving force; photosynthesis occurs only in its presence. Human beings have the same inherent attraction toward life-giving and life-supporting energy. This form of energy is what you receive — and give — in relationships with others.Decades of research shows that this positive relational energy nourishes us and makes us come alive. For example, research by UC Irvine professor Sarah Pressman shows that the need for positive social connection is so great that the lack of it is worse for your health than smoking, obesity, or high blood pressure and reduces longevity. In contrast, positive social connection can not only lengthen our life, but also strengthen our immune system and lower rates of anxiety and depression.

In organizations, these effects are magnified through the leader. That is, leaders’ relational energy has an outsize effect on employees, more so than almost any other relationship at work.

Consider, for example, Ashley Bernardi, founder and CEO of media relations firm Nardi Media. She saw her business revenue double in the span of two years, from six to seven figures — despite the economic upheaval of the pandemic. Bernardi had made one change in who she was when she was leading, and it’s something anyone can learn.

A health crisis in 2016 led her to change direction on how she was leading her company and team. After experiencing a debilitating form of Lyme disease coupled with postpartum depression that left her bedridden after the birth of her third child, Bernardi had a moment of truth. Her illness led to greater compassion and understanding for others. She realized that everyone shows up to work with the challenges they’re facing in their personal lives. As she healed physically and became a more compassionate leader, her business began to blossom. She dedicated time to creating her company core values — which include family and kindness — and made sure to set that example for her growing team and clientele. And for the first time in her life, Bernardi began to take excellent care of her physical well-being and emotional health: She regularly practiced meditation, breathwork, and yoga; took up running; prioritized good sleep; and, yes, even took work breaks and naps. She signed up for Yale’s Coursera course on the science of well-being.

As you can now guess, Bernardi is a positively energizing leader. As she tells the story: “When I learned to put myself first, I saw transformation happen in my life in the most powerful ways: I attracted like-minded team members who lifted each other up and aligned with my core values, one of them being kindness. Our business flourished.”

How Do Positive Energizers Do It?

There’s more to this than the need for employees to feel valued, respected, and engaged; we already know those things are important. When they get recognition, support, and encouragement, absenteeism is low, productivity and profitability are high, and quality and safety improve. But positive energizers catalyze all this and more.

Positive relational energy then becomes reciprocal. An energizing approach to others acts as a continual energy-boosting mechanism, which, in turn, produces an abundance of energy in the whole network. Energizers reproduce themselves, building networks of positive energizers around them, and that heliotropic effect expands to attract still more. To paraphrase the proven leader Dolly Parton: If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a positive, energizing leader. Many studies on positive leadership demonstrate that leaders focused on contributing to others are substantially more effective than leaders focused on personal achievement and success. Their organizations and their employees excel.

Can organizations flourish with leaders who deplete rather than generate energy? Of course — in the short term. But the empirical evidence is clear that positive energy is far more effective long term. Over time, employees become averse to de-energizing and life-depleting leaders, and that’s not a chance leaders can take during the Great Resignation (nor, we would argue, in economic boom times, either). That heliotropic energy will renew itself many times over, and inspire focus, trust, and sincere investment in your goals. Your employees will turn toward the sun.

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Are you paying to play or paying to win in your talent search? This McKinsey Article is worth the time.

No, you aren’t imagining it: workers are leaving your company faster than you can replace them. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 4.3 million people voluntarily quit their jobs in December 2021, slightly below a record high in November 2021.

Their departures have left a huge hole in the labor market. The number of current job openings (10.9 million) exceeds the number of new hires (6.3 million). And in our own recent survey of almost 600 workers who voluntarily left a job without another in hand, 44 percent said that they have little to no interest in returning to traditional jobs in the next six months.1

In the past, spikes in voluntary attrition often signaled a competition for talent, where in-demand workers left one job for a similar but better one at another company. This most recent wave of attrition is different. Most are leaving to take on very different roles—or just leaving the workforce entirely. They have been operating under extreme circumstances for extended periods and have been unable to find an adequate balance between work and life—so they are choosing “life” until they absolutely need to go back.

The competition for talent is different now, too. Employers are competing with the full array of work experiences available to today’s employees—traditional and nontraditional jobs and, in some instances, not working at all.2 To get in the game, companies must offer adequate compensation and benefits packages; that is the ante. But to win, they must recognize how the rules of the game have changed. While workers are demanding (and receiving) higher compensation, many of them also want more flexibility, community, and an inclusive culture (what we call relational factors) to accept a full-time job at a traditional employer.

Traditional employers must compete across all these elements. They will likely need to adopt entirely new tactics to find and attract “latent” talent—workers who aren’t currently looking to rejoin the labor market but who might come back if they get the right offer.

In this article, we look at the employees who left a job without another in hand, who returned and why, and how companies can begin to bring more workers back into the fold. Now more than ever, companies must redefine their attraction and retention strategies and build a value proposition that takes employees’ whole lives into account. The longer they wait, the more burnout they will create among existing employees, potentially leading to even more attrition.

Among those who quit, attrition was most apparent in the consumer and retail, healthcare, and education sectors—industries that have felt some of the greatest social and economic pressures during the pandemic.

Why are employees leaving?

Because they can. Leaving a job used to be anxiety inducing; it isn’t anymore. The cost of switching jobs has gone down significantly. There is much less of a stigma associated with showing a gap in your résumé. Because of the current labor shortage and the greater acceptance of remote work, employees in many industries are confident that they can find work anywhere, whenever they are ready. They have access to more information about the labor market than ever before—through word of mouth and social-media sites, for instance—so they don’t need to rely on the usual recruiting resources. They have seen friends and colleagues depart and survive, and they are confident that they can, too.

Because they are upset. Those who voluntarily left cited experiences with uncaring leaders, unsustainable expectations of work performance, and lack of career advancement as factors in their decision (Exhibit 1). Employees witnessed how companies furloughed or laid off their colleagues during business slowdowns. Those who remained resented being told to shoulder greater burdens and put in more time (sometimes with suboptimal resources) to help keep operations afloat.

Exhibit 1
Employees have left the workforce for a number of reasons, including lack of personal and professional support.

Because they are exhausted. Our research shows that poor mental health (burnout and stress), family-care demands, and reflections on purpose because of the COVID-19 pandemic played big roles in why some workers left their companies without another job in hand. Consider the couple who, after two years of stressful, isolating remote work in their respective jobs, realized they could get by on one income as a trade-off for spending more time with their children. Among those who quit, attrition was most apparent in the consumer and retail, healthcare, and education sectors—industries that have felt some of the greatest social and economic pressures during the pandemic.

Of the almost 600 employees we polled who voluntarily left a job without another in hand, 47 percent returned to the workforce in either traditional or nontraditional work arrangements.

Why are some employees returning?

Because they want to. It’s complicated, but for reasons relating to the state of personal health and finances, outreach from people in their networks, dissatisfaction with start-up experiences, and so on, some employees have started to return to traditional employment. Of the almost 600 employees we polled who voluntarily left a job without another in hand, 47 percent returned to the workforce in either traditional or nontraditional work arrangements. Almost a quarter of the returnees took up nontraditional work, while 76 percent went back to traditional employment. The latter group cited workplace flexibility, adequate compensation, and reasonable expectations about performance as top factors in their decision to return (Exhibit 2). Only 21 percent went back to work in the same sector and assumed roles at a similar level as those they left.

Exhibit 2
Workers who have returned to traditional employment cited flexibility, compensation, and sustainable performance as top factors.

Are they back for good, or just for now?

Our research shows that 25 percent of the employees who voluntarily left and then returned (to both traditional and nontraditional roles) are at least somewhat likely to leave their current employers in the next three to six months. They know that other opportunities are out there—particularly in this strained labor market. And they say that if professional development, workplace flexibility, support for mental and physical health, and other needs aren’t being met at one company, they will look for the right conditions elsewhere (Exhibit 3).

Exhibit 3
Returnees to the workforce cited a lack of career development and inadequate total compensation among top reasons they could leave again.

What if you subsidized cleaning services instead of gym memberships? Or what if you invested in on-site childcare services that would allow employees to eat lunch with their children?

How do you bring them back—and keep them?

Companies’ general response to the employee exodus has been to do more of the same—using short-term Band-Aid solutions to address labor shortages. For instance, some big-box retailers are offering to pay store workers daily, rather than weekly or biweekly, to make jobs more appealing. Other companies are paying extra to keep disengaged employees on board, even if productivity is taking a hit, simply because they need workers.

Companies won’t be able to justify and sustain these moves for the long term, however. To start to repair relationships with employees, companies must take a different approach, focused on the following core principles.

Pay to play: Revise compensation and benefits

Business leaders can’t just write one big check after another and expect that to keep employees in the fold. But that’s what many are trying to do. In one financial-services company, for instance, during the pandemic, leaders increased salary ranges by 15 percent to try to keep employees from leaving, but attrition levels stayed the same. That’s because the company had not addressed concerns about untenable hours and high-pressure assignments in the middle of a global pandemic. Nor had it acknowledged the churn going on within the industry.

Companies will need to restructure compensation packages in ways that will attract and retain disillusioned employees. There is no one right way to do this; a lot depends on context, and some trial and error may be involved. Business leaders will need to ask themselves certain questions: What do the market rates look like? Given prevailing rates, does it make sense (for, say, the big-box retailers mentioned earlier) to pay workers daily—or will that just encourage short-term stays and greater attrition? Companies must remember that pay transparency is at an all-time high. If current employees find out that the company is offering higher pay to new hires or otherwise changing pay practices to lure new employees to the company, they may request raises of their own, which could drain the organization of resources needed to fight other fires—possibly prompting even more departures.

As part of their discussions about compensation, companies should also consider which benefits employees would need to find the work–life balance that they say is critical for their return. What if you subsidized cleaning services instead of gym memberships? Or what if you invested in on-site childcare services that would allow employees to eat lunch with their children? Companies must assess standard compensation against the types of relational factors that employees say they want—such as mental-health services or various forms of flex time—and find the right balance.

Play to win: Make your workplace sticky

Compensation and benefits reviews are just the first step; companies must also invest in building “sticky” workplaces—listening to employees, anticipating and addressing their concerns, fostering psychological safety and a sense of community, and measuring outcomes. Rather than conducting only exit interviews, for example, has your company implemented “stay” interviews, asking people in the most critical roles how they are doing and what they need to continue in those roles?

Based on responses, companies might introduce new types of scheduling, staffing, and hiring innovations—for instance, why not establish a midday shift for workers, or allow people to assemble their own teams for projects rather than assigning them to ready-made squads? One retailer has simplified its application process for new candidates, hoping to decrease the time to hire and quickly expand its workforce. Other businesses might want to let job candidates test out roles for a limited period or directly interview potential colleagues in those areas of the company that interest them most.

Over the past two years, some companies have tried other relatively simple sticky compensation-related moves, including offering “well-being” bonuses to employees or providing extra days off for professional development or mental-health breaks. One theme park and entertainment company has offered to pay 100 percent of the tuition costs for employees seeking higher education.3

In this new competition for talent, employers should acknowledge the different roles that compensation can play, as both a hygiene factor and a source of motivation. Individuals may be looking for a certain range of pay when considering a job offer. But once that threshold has been met, cultural factors can make a company more attractive to join and, ideally, provide more incentive to stay. Focusing only on compensation or only on cultural factors won’t stem the tide of attrition. Business leaders must pay constant attention to both.

Stack the deck: Expand your talent pool

In most companies, talent acquisition teams focus on enticing, screening, interviewing, and hiring candidates who fit the traditional definitions of a job applicant. To compete successfully for today’s workforce, however, they must think more creatively about candidates: What about the nontraditional workers who aren’t even on their radars? These might include students, “boomerang” employees—those who return to a company after leaving—and others currently doing part-time or contract work or leading their own one-person start-ups.

Even more important, talent acquisition teams must find ways to attract latent workers—those who are not in the workforce at all, and not actively seeking a traditional job at a traditional employer, but who might return with the right offer and under the right conditions. Maybe they are burned out and on an indefinite break. Maybe they left the workforce during the pandemic to take care of their kids but are considering a return now that schools are getting back to normal schedules. Based on our conservative calculations, this untapped source of labor could be as many as 23 million people.4

It is incumbent upon talent acquisition teams to identify and woo these potential candidates—and to do so quickly. The longer these workers are sidelined, the more training they will need to get back up to speed with certain skills (Exhibit 4).

Exhibit 4
Latent workers and those in nontraditional work roles cited meaningful work, flexibility, and adequate compensation among top reasons to return to traditional employment.

To reach nontraditional workers, companies must actively lower the barriers to entry and rethink requirements for certain roles. For example, do candidates really need an advanced degree to fill a critical role, or will a certificate of specialization or an apprenticeship suffice? Consider one possible cohort of nontraditional workers: those who have had run-ins with the law. Many states now have “ban the box” policies that require companies to remove any questions about convictions or arrest records from job applications and to delay background checks until later in the hiring process.5 For some companies, this change—along with the existence of organizations such as Homeboy Industries, which provides placement services and support for former gang members looking to reenter the workforce—could help them access nontraditional talent.

To reach latent workers, companies must be willing to change their approaches to hiring. Instead of using the same old online hiring platforms and keeping their searches local, talent acquisition teams should think creatively about their referral programs—for instance, launching a personalized “phone two friends” campaign, asking existing employees to recruit within their networks—and acknowledge that the best candidates may be outside the immediate radius of the company’s headquarters.

Even before doing any outreach, employers should consider the critical skills that the company requires and determine the universe of potential candidates inside and outside the company who possess these skills. Is that universe shrinking or growing—now, and five years from now? How many tasks could be automated? One financial institution performed such an analysis and realized that salespeople were spending the bulk of their days processing orders and managing documents rather than pursuing actual sales.6 With this information in hand, business leaders could redefine and reassign roles in a way that would not only be more meaningful and manageable for overworked employees but also create more value for the company.

The new competition for talent is not just about employers competing with one another to find the best workers; it’s about employers acknowledging the many choices that today’s workers have and finding effective ways to compete against all those options. The old playbooks won’t work. Even for those companies that end up figuring out how to bring some people back, there will be inevitable setbacks (and further waves of attrition) if they can’t figure out how to retain those workers.

By following the principles offered here, however, companies can start to build a true capability in attraction and retention, transform themselves into destination workplaces, and meet the ever-changing needs of this and next-generation workforces.

By Aaron De Smet, Bonnie Dowling, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, and Bill Schaninger

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Are you doing these things to build and maintain healthy culture?

In my experience, the right team culture is critical to every business’s success, so every business leader wants to know how to create it. In reality, I’m convinced that none of us can create culture directly, but instead, we can create an environment where the desired culture emerges. You do this by driving values and letting values shape behavior, until, eventually, the behavior defines the culture.

I believe you must start by being a role model for strong personal values and purpose, as well as having empathy for others, sustainable energy, and self-awareness. The next step is to effectively and continuously communicate through multiple channels, including walking the talk, email, and really listening to feedback. Be sure to encompass all your constituents, especially customers.

The behaviors that you need to inspire for the right culture to flourish can be summarized by the following principles:

1. Create and maintain a sense of energy and purpose.

Many leaders do this today by supporting and promoting a higher-level purpose beyond profits, such as helping the disadvantaged, sustaining the environment, or embodying Conscious Capitalism. Remember that actions speak louder than words, and your evident leadership role is the key here. 

Whole Foods, for example, has built their business with a commitment to natural and organic foods, and has a culture of loyal employees and customers, resulting in 500 stores worldwide. As a result, they were acquired by Amazon for $13.5 billion. 

2. Team members must feel motivated and enabled.

That means they must believe in what you are trying to do and feel they have the right tools, training, and reward system to do the job that needs to be done. Your role is to provide this enablement through listening to their needs and offering personal coaching and mentoring as required.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, attributes much of his success to building a motivated and enabled team. He is always open to the ideas of his team — even if he doesn’t agree that an idea will work, he’ll say so, but often support and fund it anyway.

3. Always maintain the very best talent for your team.

I find that many business leaders are “too busy” to focus on talent, so they hire available family members or the first candidate without regard to talent, experience, or dedication. Of course, even the best talent needs communication, training, and support to create the culture you need.

In my experience, a level of disagreement among highly talented team members is a sign of healthy team culture. It allows a business to survive and win in this age of multiple disruptive trends. Sometimes the last thing you need are people who always say “yes.”

4. Foster collaboration rather than competition.

With the financial constraints on every business today, it is easy to convince marketing and development that they are competing for resources, rather than working together to offer the best solutions for customers. Even within teams, the culture must be collaborative rather than win-lose.

5. Relationships are key to happiness and productivity.

This must start with you really getting to know your team members, as well as partners and customers, and letting them get to know you. You can then facilitate relationships between team members, as well as with people who can help. Everyone and your business will benefit from this culture.

6. Celebrate every success and include the whole team.

In addition to individual rewards and bonuses, take the time and effort to include all teams in a public recognition of even small successes, including failures that resulted in learning. This fosters a positive team culture and communicates company values that are important for everyone.

7. Commit to delivering a positive customer experience.

You can’t build a positive team culture, while taking obvious shortcuts on your solution quality or customer service. Stick with what you know best, and show your team how to do it better than anyone else. Your team culture will coalesce to support your direction and drive business success.

Today, your team and company culture are more important than ever in driving strategy and value, not the other way around. With the internet and social media, your culture is no longer just an internal thing — it extends broadly to customers, investors, and vendors.

You are the key to all of these constituents working together to win, especially in an increasingly competitive world.

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Wow! All three of these can be slippery slopes for some executives. Did any of these make you uncomfortable?

An outside-the-box approach to workplace wellness

By 
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Hidden mental health hurdles put your business at risk. If you’re unaware there’s a problem, what you don’t know can hurt you. Alternatively, you (or your employees) might recognize symptoms and seek medical help, only to stumble in search of a diagnosis that’s unattainable.

Solving the puzzles of mental health can be tricky. Some pieces don’t fit neatly into the compartmentalized model of Western medicine. Humans are generally hardwired to organize complex ideas into standardized boxes. It gives us a sense of control, security and order. This perpetuates the belief that mental health issues are limited to the diagnosable … a mistake that can cost you productivity, profit and a whole lot more.

Mental health is not merely absence of mental illness

This awareness can help us make changes that boost productivity and profit, for sure. But more importantly, these changes increase enjoyment of our lives.

The following three issues are hidden from the mental health scope because they’re currently not diagnosable. This means they aren’t recognized by the DSM-5 (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition).

One major problem this causes for companies and employees is that mental health services often require a DSM-5 recognized diagnosis in order to receive insurance payment.

Thankfully, no diagnosis is necessary to support mental health habits and instigate change.

1. Social media addiction

One reason this might not yet be diagnosable is that the most recent version of the DSM-5 was published in 2013. Much has changed in both the online space and our understanding of human behavior since then.

According to behavioral addiction specialist Hailey Shafir, LCMHCS, LPCS, LCAS, CCS, “Research on behavioral addictions has found evidence for internet, gaming, and social media addictions. What we know is that these activities all trigger the release of dopamine, a powerful brain chemical that causes the ‘high’ most people feel when they take an addictive drug. Over time, repeated use can create ‘addiction pathways’ in the brain, making it much more difficult for a person to control, cut back, or stop their use.”

In other words, social media and addictive substances trigger our brains’ reward systems in the same way.

Shafir adds, “These platforms are actually designed to be addictive in nature. Recent research has proven that getting ‘likes’ and comments on social media causes the release of dopamine, which is further proof of its addictive pull.”

Many people’s social media behavior could fit into the “addiction” category (compulsive or obsessive use). However, the word addiction is fraught with negative connotations. It can put people on the defensive, pushing them to justify or hide their actions.

The average employee spends 12% of their working hours using unproductive social media applications, as per the job search website Zippia. More than half of companies surveyed have a social media policy in place, yet 30% of their workers admit to using social media on the job in an effort to get a break from a stressful workday. (In comparison, 40% of employees who work at organizations without these types of policies use social media during the workday.)

I’m no math or finance expert, but it’s easy to get a general idea of lost productivity and profit resulting from these statistics. Consider an employee working 40 hours per week and earning $30 per hour. Twelve percent of their working hours equates to 4.8 unproductive hours per week. This one employee’s non-work related social media use costs you almost $7,500 per year in lost productivity hours (not to mention resultant revenue loss).

2. Gray-area drinking

At least two of 11 criteria listed in the DSM-5 must be met for a diagnosis of “alcohol use disorder.” One of these criteria is Drinking that often interferes with taking care of your home or family, or causes job troubles or school problems.

There were many points in my own 30-year alcohol use journey where only this one applied. Even though I was “undiagnosable,” my work suffered. I never lost a job or clients over it. I was present and never drank before or during work. It was the mental fog and exhaustion caused by drinking the night before that muddled my performance.

Looking back on those times in my life through a better-informed lens, this isn’t too surprising. Alcohol use disrupts our sleep patterns, causing feelings of anger, sadness, mental exhaustion and stress. Alcohol also increases levels of the stress hormone cortisol. These adverse effects happen even with occasional use. In addition, excessive alcohol use can worsen or trigger other mental health struggles, including depression and anxiety.

It’s difficult to quantify the exact profit loss caused by alcohol use, but it is a known problem. Addiction costs companies $442 billion a year in health care costs, lost productivity and absenteeism, according to nonprofit advocacy organization Shatterproof. That figure, however, doesn’t specifically include losses fueled by undiagnosed alcohol users.

This particular mental health hurdle is a paradox. It’s hidden by incessant normalization of alcohol use alongside a stigmatization of users. Alcohol is revered as a tonic for soothing frustrations and celebrating life events. We joke about secretly sipping wine from our coffee cups to survive Zoom fatigue. Yet stigma continues, rooted in the false belief that there are only two camps: diagnosable “alcoholics” in one and “normal drinkers” in the other.

What’s seldom understood is that the line between these is wide and blurred.

3. Burnout

Instead of jumping into the popular blame-game conversation, let’s get one thing clear. Burnout can stem from a variety of circumstances, including work environment, neurotype and the two previous issues listed above. Perhaps the most recognized and relatable, though, is work burnout. A report from Mental Health America, “Mind the Workplace,” states that “Most employees are experiencing the early signs of burnout” with nearly 83 percent of respondents agreeing with the statement, “I feel emotionally drained from my work.”

Whether burnout is a result of work or rooted elsewhere, two facts remain.

First, you and your people are your greatest assets in business. Burned-out leadership and/or employees wields direct blows to both productivity and profit.

Second, it’s another undiagnosable mental health hurdle. Harvard Business Review asserts that the psychological and physical problems of burned-out employees cost an estimated $125 billion to $190 billion a year in healthcare spending in the U.S. alone.

Diagnosability is a big part of the equation. People can’t get effective medical treatment for a problem that’s impossible to diagnose. Burnout shares many symptoms with depression but doesn’t check all the boxes required for that diagnosis. You or your employees might bounce from one provider to another, scrambling for answers. The downsides to this include maxed-out company health benefits, loss of productivity while at work and more missed work due to medical appointments and/or unresolved symptoms.

Cultivate mental wellbeing at work

What if we could avoid these threats to productivity and profit by addressing the behaviors before they spiral into debilitating illness? It is possible through communication, collaboration and compassion for self and others.

Develop a company culture that supports stress relief and overall mental wellness. You might provide workday breaks for group meditation or yoga sessions facilitated by local or online providers. Meetings or team-building events could include activities that support mental health (physical activity, being outdoors, aromatherapy, volunteering). Even five-minute faux nap breaks can instigate dramatic upshifts to work energy.

These counterintuitive activities are proven to enhance mental agility, focus, innovation and happiness — the cornerstones of productivity at work.

Rigidly defined diagnoses are not requisites for change

Resolving any mental health matter, diagnosable or not, requires a multifaceted approach.

The most important thing is to not use workplace wellbeing techniques as a bandaid to cover up deeper issues. Rather, focus on emotionally intelligent leadership. When leaders and employees openly discuss mental health hurdles without judgment — and receive support to manage them — productivity, profit and people all thrive.

Would you benefit from CEO coaching?

 FirecrackerLeadership.com

I find myself defending my beliefs instead of looking for ways to challenge them. Who else will join me in inviting challenge?

When a reporter asked Bill Gates how would he define what he does for a living, he said simply, “I am a scientist.”

“I devote maybe ten percent [of my time] to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card. I’m a scientist.” (Scientific American, 1994)

A scientist. What does it mean?

Of course, you probably won’t find Mr. Gates strolling around in a lab coat, recording blood measurements of his favorite rat at 2 AM. It’s also unlikely that one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs is secretly an aspiring academic.

It does show, however, that Gates sees himself not as the hand-shaking, deal-making, profit-raking “businessman” figure we’ve been programmed to expect, but rather as a contemplative, rational man who credits his success largely to his mode of thinking.

But what exactly is his mode of thinking? What does it mean, to think like a scientist? Rational thought has been around for a while, and it doesn’t seem all that uncommon. How is Gates’s rational thinking different from everyone else’s?

The answer is probably not what you’d expect.

The myth of intelligence

It’s remarkably revealing how old movies show “nerds” as the sworn enemies to the “jocks.” The implication is that the two groups are somehow analogical: the latter have lots of muscle on the outside, while the former have muscle “on the inside.” (where “it matters.”)

It’s a pleasant construct, because it’s so simple. It explains everything. The athletes spend 8 hours a day on the court, sweating, building their bodies. The geeks spend 8 hours a day in the library and playing video games, expanding their minds.

It implies that intelligence is the mental equivalent of physical strength. That it grows slowly and linearly; that more always means better; that genetics play a major role. It implies that in order to get smarter, we need to treat our minds like a muscle.

Which isn’t necessarily wrong. An hour in the library won’t kill you. But it won’t automatically make you smart, either.

The winning mode of thinking

In a book called Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (rated “must-read” by Bill Gates, btw), author Adam Grant describes a fascinating pattern he noticed among top performers he had studied or had the privilege to teach.

He noticed that what separated the very best from the rest wasn’t some absolute measure of intelligence, like books read or languages spoken, but rather their ability and proclivity to spend time in scientific thinking mode, which is different from the other modes of thinking:

  • We enter politician mode when we try to persuade others of our ideas
  • We enter prosecutor mode when we try to attack the ideas of others
  • We enter preacher mode when we try to defend and spread our beliefs
  • We enter scientist mode when we’re looking for the truth

It’s not like the other three modes of thinking are inherently useless. No, there are times when we need to defend our standpoints and persuade others of our truths. But, as a general rule, top performers tend to converge towards scientific thinking, which is based on cool-headed analysis, hypothesis testing and empirical evidence. Scientists don’t debate; they discuss.

“The smarter they were, the harder they failed”

The author further argues that true intelligence is less about building the “mental muscle” and more about updating your opinions and beliefs on a regular basis. In a world where language isn’t a problem and pretty much all knowledge is available at a touch of a phone screen, it is much more important to foster the ability to think clearly rather than simply pack your head with information.

In fact, Grant points out that being hyper-intelligent (in a traditional sense) can actually make you more susceptible to bias. To quote the book,

Smart, or simply not dumb?

All of this is very different from how we normally view intelligence. Traditionally, we treat intelligence as a positive force that grows somewhat linearly, over time, with effort, like a tree.

But Adam Grant offers a new model, where intelligence is seen as a living, reiterating ecosystem in a constant flux of opposing forces — like a garden. Intelligence, in this view, is just as dependent on growing its strengths as it is on trimming its weaknesses.

The examples of this are actually quite simple and intuitive. Have you ever met someone who’s extremely smart and extremely dumb at the same time? I used to think these people were paradoxes.

Now I realize that they’ve simply let their egos take over, deciding at some point that they know “enough” to start ignoring all the things they don’t know. From what I’ve seen, it’s a steady downhill trend from there, as the world around them changes but their beliefs stay stuck.

The telltale sign of incompetence

In fact, people who are smart but driven by faulty beliefs will simply dig their own grave that much faster. They’ll be able to convince themselves and others around them that they’re right when they are, in fact, wrong. As a result, they will find little resistance even going in completely the wrong direction.

The good news is that scientific thinking seems to be the answer to this problem. The book provides sufficient evidence that “rethinking” is just as important as actual “thinking” in pretty much any area of your life. As one of the reviewers reminds us, “…the telltale sign of a lack of knowledge is, paradoxically, arrogance and overconfidence, whereas in those with actual expertise you often see the opposite: humility, doubt, and open-mindedness.”

The bad news is that it’s even more difficult than it sounds. Constantly seeking out (possibly) contradicting evidence, recognizing your own biases and proving yourself wrong is a lot more taxing and a lot less gratifying than simply learning a language or finishing a fat book. It’s an effortful lifestyle grounded in humility and self-reflection, where you get to be wrong much more often than you get to be right. It’s difficult, and it’s scary, and it’s damn exhausting.

But it’s not impossible. And it’s definitely worth it. Here’s how.

Why people cling to ridiculously idiotic beliefs

There’s a website called Mental Floss. It’s full of fun blog articles that are designed to entertain more than inform. But it’s the name of the website that I’d like to highlight, as it captures the idea of this article so precisely.

And the idea is that to build and maintain usable, practical, flexible 21st century intelligence, you need to have an equivalent of flossing for your thinking habits. A daily hygienic effort for your mind.

There is no clear-cut answer on what this could look like in your life, as scientific thinking is a wide-range lifestyle change and not a specific practice. The actual practices that would help you engage in scientific thinking depend entirely on the situation.

But author Adam Grant does give a few suggestions on how we can loosen up our convictions and allow our minds to start questioning themselves without undergoing agony.

One of the biggest reasons why people fail to update their beliefs is because… they simply get attached to them. People tend to define their own personalities via a set of opinions, rather than more abstract objects like values or goals. The opinions could range anywhere from “damn Mexicans taking our jobs” to “love is love” — if it becomes a part of your personality, it will be incredibly difficult to let go of.

The author masterfully notes that in such cases, when a person’s beliefs are questioned, they feel personally attacked (quote, “punched in the mind.”) Just remember the last time a family member overreacted to some fly-by remark of yours. Such people are not interested in having their beliefs invalidated, because, in their mind, they are their beliefs.

Solution to this problem? Don’t be that person. Don’t let opinions dictate your personality. Define your personality through something else — be it a parent’s love, ambition for success or devotion to God’s values — and your beliefs will themselves ask to be updated to better serve your goals.

The only way to become and stay intelligent

But the truth is, you won’t get very far with scientific thinking if you don’t learn to enjoy it. Just like any effortful habit, it only becomes truly pleasurable once it’s ingrained in your grey matter. It’s the moment when you start ignoring the pain of being wrong when the benefits of scientific thinking shine through.

And the benefits are glorious: every time you’re proven wrong, you’re actually getting smarter. Not just in an on-paper, I-just-read-a-book type of manner. No, when an incorrect belief or opinion is shattered, the impact is so systemic, you actually become a slightly different person, who happens to be slightly smarter.

Kjirste Morrell, an MIT PhD and one of the world’s most successful forecasters (she predicts political events ’n’ stuff,) relies solely on the clarity and objectivity of her mind to make her predictions. Her secret, as she disclosed in the book, is rigorously re-thinking things she thinks she already knows.

What sets her apart is that she’s actually found a way to enjoy it:

“There’s no benefit to me for being wrong for longer. It’s much better if I change my beliefs sooner, and it’s a good feeling to have that sense of a discovery, that surprise — I would think people would enjoy that.”

It’s a counter-intuitive way of living, but it is manageable. Like any habit, self-corrective thinking is mostly a matter of practice and consistency. Given time, people actually learn to enjoy being wrong — because they know they just came one step closer to being right.

In a way, only children retain the luxury of learning about the world without constantly having to unlearn things that are no longer correct. When you’re a blank slate, every drop of ink is meaningful information. As adults, however, we’re forced to tear out pages and rewrite entire chapters of our own minds, just to make room for a better story.

That’s the price of intelligence. That’s scientific thinking.

Would you benefit from CEO coaching?

 FirecrackerLeadership.com

I’ve started using this idea in all of my coaching sessions. What is your self-talk telling you?

You have the power to get through the hard times with a booster shot of positive self-talk. Self-talk is exactly what it sounds like: It’s how we talk to ourselves, our internal dialogue.

When our self-talk is encouraging, we function like athletes coaching ourselves to the finish line. That internal messaging can sometimes be just the push we need to continue fighting toward the end goal. However, when self-talk is disparaging or negative, it has the opposite effect. It reduces us to a less than motivated state, from feeling discouraged to completely giving up and quitting.

Your personality can also influence your self-talk. Optimists tend to be positive and encouraging toward themselves, and positive self-talk comes naturally. Pessimists notoriously criticize themselves and others. They tend to have a judgmental, negative filter when interpreting events and situations.

What happens when we support ourselves with positive self-talk?

Positive self-talk might seem like a fluff topic, but the impact has been documented in many research studies. According to the Mayo Clinic, positive thinking starts with positive self-talk. The health benefits range from lower rates of depression and pain to greater resistance to illness and even increased life span.

In addition to many health benefits, positive self-talk increases problem-solving, decision-making, creativity, and our ability to deal with hardship. We can quickly lower the impact of internal and external stressors by using our supportive internal coping skills when faced with distress or anxiety. Then our positive self-talk process becomes a soothing companion during upsetting situations.

A personal example

Recently, I had an experience that you can probably relate to. After months of long days trying to balance too many priorities, I sat down to record the final lesson of my updated online course, The Communication Protocol. I was exhausted and feeling run down, but I thought I could plow through it and make my deadline.

And then I lost my voice.

I could hardly speak for two weeks. I missed my self-imposed deadline, and my stress level increased with every passing day. I was frustrated and discouraged.

As soon as my voice returned, I recorded the lesson. But the process was emotionally exhausting. I had to take three breaks while recording to drink some hot water to soothe my sore throat and regain my voice.

I continued recording during those breaks. When I edited the recording, I could hear my exhaustion and distress, and as I was listening, I started to feel compassion for myself.

Then I heard my recorded self say, “You’ve got this! You can do this!”

Those unscripted and unplanned words came from the depths of my frustration and exhaustion, and they were intended purely to be encouraging and motivating. I needed to push myself to finish what I had set out to do.

After I heard those words, I noticed a distinct difference in my energy on the recording. As I continued to teach that final lesson, I sounded more confident and motivated. Those few, simple words got me to the finish line.

Are you ready to support yourself the way you support your team?

I’ve been teaching about positive self-talk for many years. I know it can make a difference in how we move through the world, support ourselves, and either motivate ourselves or tear ourselves down. But to witness the impact of my own voice and my unplanned use of positive self-talk was surprisingly powerful.

You might feel awkward or silly coaching and cheering yourself on. It might seem phony, or you might think it unrealistic that a few words could impact the end result. But they can.

Positive self-talk can help you get through the low points and regain confidence. And being supportive of yourself brings a more open and productive perspective to a situation. It does not minimize or ignore negative or unpleasant events. Instead, the intention is to seek a constructive outcome and feel supported along the way. Positive self-talk encourages you to move forward with a solution-seeking mindset.

What if I had been discouraging toward myself as I struggled to record that final lesson? Imagine if I had suggested giving up or questioned whether the project was worth the effort. What might have been different?

I can tell you.

A negative or disparaging comment at that critical moment would have given me permission to give in to my exhaustion and walk away from something very important to me. I was in no position, energy-wise, to argue with whatever direction my thoughts were taking me. I was simply going through the motions, hoping to complete the task and I am grateful that my self-talk led me to the finish line.

Our self-talk has a tremendous influence on our behavior. It is guided by our thinking — whether negative or positive. Listen. Pay attention to how you talk to yourself and notice if your words are motivating or critical. Then ask yourself if you would speak to a good friend or someone you care about the same way you speak to yourself. Use that as your gauge. It’s a great place to start making a change.

Would you benefit from CEO coaching?

 FirecrackerLeadership.com

Pick one and hone it…

I’m sure you will agree that not all business leaders are created equal, starting from the CEO on down.

But I have found the more challenging question to be what distinguishes the best leaders from all the rest, especially before they have been selected and tested in a new role. My own conclusion, after years of experience and consulting, is that leadership is largely about mindset.

Thus I was pleased to see the same conclusion in a new book, “CEO Excellence,” by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra, each a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company. After their research and discussions with many Fortune 500 CEOs, they detailed six mindsets they found most prevalent in effective and inspirational business leaders in large companies.

I believe these same mindsets are equally applicable to the entrepreneurs I mentor, and all of you small business leaders, so I offer you my summary of the authors’ conclusions, paraphrased here, with my own insights:

1. Be bold in vision, strategy, and resource allocation.

Leaders with this “be bold” mindset are willing and able to take radically unique direction-setting actions in the face of today’s pace of change and customer demands. You need to make it about more than money, focus on future possibilities, solve for the whole, and kill as much as you create.

As an example, Elon Musk, while best known for his success with Tesla electric vehicles, continues to make forays into other transportation alternatives, with SpaceX, Hyperloop, and others. He is known for his bold mindset, and an all-in commitment to his visions.

2. Get organization alignment through culture and talent.

Today even small businesses need complex organizations that work together in alignment, remote and online, including marketing, sales, delivery, and support. You need to build and maintain a team culture of engagement, accountability, and results, always looking for talent and new technology.

One of the primary keys to getting organizational alignment is to clearly communicate to all the mission, and potentially the higher purpose for the business. I recommend that you validate that alignment by asking team members the “Why?” question on a regular basis.

3. Make the team the star to do the heavy lifting.

With too many leaders I know, the mindset is making themselves successful, rather than the team. You as the leader need only to set the template and the tempo, like conducting an orchestra, and demand and reward disciplined execution of tasks that only the team can do. Keep the teams strong.

Another key to team performance is a regular reward program for teams, as well as individuals. Giving the team a chance to publicly showcase their achievements will allow the individual stars to shine as well. Praise for teams always works better than criticism.

4. Tap the wisdom of elders and the Board to help the business.

You must build a foundation of trust to get the relationships you need for honest communication, focus on the future, and real coaching on how to improve the business. In my experience, this will result in better contacts, advance warning on changes needed, and better performance.

Unfortunately, I feel that many business leaders see and treat their Board as a burden, rather than an asset. They don’t recognize the negative image they are conveying to peers and other senior leaders. Every business leader needs good “managing up” skills.

5. Focus stakeholder engagement on the big picture.

The best leaders don’t dodge stakeholder engagement, but always approach it with a mindset of highlighting the big picture, the higher-level purpose, and getting to the essence of issues. They demonstrate a personal resilience that enables them to show sound judgement during a crisis.

6. Boost personal impact through consistency and energy.

Your challenge as a leader is not only managing your personal effectiveness, but also generating energy in others by staying positive, being a role model, and giving hope. It’s important that you stay humble, don’t make it all about you, and maintain a small sounding board of advisors.

In this new age of rapid change, instant world-wide communication through social media, and public activism, business leaders need to tune their mindset and focus more to the “soft stuff” of the business, as well as the “hard stuff.”

Remember that your objective as a leader must now be much broader than pure financials – you can change the world, as well as your own legacy.

Would you benefit from CEO coaching?

 FirecrackerLeadership.com

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