jen briggs

Last year was quite a year for me. I took on a role as a turnaround CEO for a brewery, and there were multiple critical issues. It was my first experience in a turnaround, and it was a productive one from a professional perspective – being a leader in a time of distress is different than being a leader in a time of abundance or even relative abundance.

One aspect of life that is the same in times of abundance or scarcity is having enough energy to accomplish professional and personal goals. Energy management is always top of mind for me. Still, the idea of energy as a system only became clearer during a time that demanded intense focus, time commitment, and purpose. A mentor of ours at New Belgium Brewing would describe prioritization like a snow plow; sometimes, things must fall off to the side to make sure you create the path. It is an easy metaphor, and it can be easy to fill up a plate of priorities in times of relative abundance. But, when times are constrained, the snowplow effect is real, and there is a risk that work-based urgent and important are indistinguishable and human needs fall apart.

However, businesses are human communities, and everything I believed about social-emotional health was only magnified in 2022 – finding time to exercise, meditate, and laugh became even more important. Without being centered, it can be easy to become panicked. And panicked leaders are not leaders.

Being centered has a soft, passive ring to it. In this case, being centered only gave room for more clarity. To accomplish goals, you need both clarity and energy. And, there is no time like high pressure and stress to get really clear about what gives one energy.

My energy management technique:

Some time ago, I read an article about minimalistic journaling. A technique resembling a scoreboard for easily marking things that matter. But how do you decide what matters? At the end of the day, I would jot down what was happening on particular days of accomplishment. Why was it a good day? What caused me to feel like I accomplished something? It is easy to feel like a failure on any given day during periods of distressed intensity. But success and failure are often relative to what you are trying to do.

I found themes that were critical for me. Some are aspirational, some are reflective, but all are about creating the energy needed to meet the moment.

1. What do I want to remember the day for? This is reflective. Not all days are bad, and time plays tricks on our memory. This helps center the day’s reflection around something meaningful for that moment. 
2. Number of days alive. This is a reflection from my coach. Our time here is not infinite, and we have an obligation to try to live our best lives. 
3. Sleep. Yes, obvious. But, sleep can be aspirational, and it is such a critical part of my energy map that it is important to give myself a score. 
4. Fabulous. This one may be corny, but it is one word that encompasses a personal aspirational feeling. Good hair day? Style on point? You get the picture.  
5. Challenge. Having a daily intellectual challenge is important. Hard times are sometimes routinely hard. The routine is draining. However, if I can build in an intellectual challenge, hard becomes energizing.
6. Healing and spiritual. This is my connection to grace. Typically for me, through mediation, but it can also be a walk through nature. Water and trees are vital to me. 
7. Coherence. This is more than a connection with people; it is a connection to a whole. It is the process of becoming one for a particular purpose.
8. Kinetic. My body needs to move. Days of sitting behind desks suck the life out of me. And, no leader can lead from behind a desk. Leadership is an activity in motion. Also, general health. Making sure to move. 
9. Joy. In leadership positions, we can take ourselves too seriously, or serious situations can make it seem that we should not smile. This is wrong and especially wrong in hard times. We need levity. We need to smile. 
10. Pleasure. This can take multiple forms, but it is an event or activity that helps us connect to the essential satisfaction with life’s gifts. 

These are my 10. I have a simple scoring system that is negative (-) to meh (~) to positive (+).

At the end of the day, it takes only a few minutes to score the things that give me energy. More importantly, as part of my healing and spiritual practice the next morning, I can use what I’ve learned to have a more aspirational start to the day, learn from the past, and set intentions. Life really is more about progress than perfection.

To put this in practical terms, I have had to let people go, shut down businesses, and conduct downsizing over the course of my career. These are horrible experiences, and a layoff is one of the top stressful things leaders do to employees. Having the right energy not to make a bad situation worse is important. The day of a layoff cannot be about the leader; it is about the business and trying to use whatever support tools you have to help people take the next step. Leaders without the right energy can appear robotic, and overuse management speak. Leaders with the right energy can look people in the eye and try to balance compassion and realism. In negative situations like this, there won’t be days that look like good days, but there will be days that you can breathe. To breathe – you need energy. And, to have energy – you need to breathe.

Your energy plan, reflection, and aspirations may differ for different life phases. As I reflect on my ten elements for my energy management, they are uniquely mine for this period of my life. I think back to raising my three children as a single parent, the perpetual pressure to advance my education, and being both a caregiver and financial provider. If I had the foresight to do this during that period, my ten would have been different.

This is not a soft, naval gazing activity. If you are in a leadership position, your energy sets the level for others. Even in good times, leaders need to make quick, daily decisions that are rough. In times of distress, there is rarely a day where good decisions easily appear. You are often making the best of a sad set of choices. But one thing you can always work toward is improving how you show up in life. Being a leader means putting yourself out there. This is the energy management of leadership.