Learn, Share, Grow - Being a Positive Energizing Leader

June 6, 2022

Below is a lesson from Harvard Business Review on how leadership with positive energy is most effective, as well as our key learnings.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

The Best Leaders Have a Contagious Positive Energy

by Emma Seppälä and Kim Cameron

April 18, 2022

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.

Continue Reading Here.

Key Learnings:

• Positive relational energy - the energy exchanged between people that helps uplift, enthuse, and renew them. The most underutilized yet powerful predicador of leadership and organizational success. 
• When leaders display positive relational energy, it catapults performance to a new level. 
• There is usually one person at the center of the networks of relationships (communities, organizations, families) who is responsible for most of the forward motion and well-being of the rest: positive energizers. 
• By uplifting others through authentic, values-based leadership, energizers they also uplift themselves and the organization. They cultivate virtuous actions such as forgiveness, compassion, humility, kindness, trust, integrity, generosity, gratitude, and recognition in the organization. 
• Energizers produce substantially higher levels of engagement, lower turnover, and enhanced feelings of well-being among employees. (Cortical thickness is enhanced, oxytocin and dopamine hormones are increased, inflammation is reduced and immunity to disease is enhanced.)
• Physical, mental and emotional energy diminishes with use and require recovery time. Positive relational energy elevates and is self-enhancing. 
• 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
• Heliotropic effect - plants naturally turn towards and grow in the presence of light, a life giving force. Human beings have the same Inherent attraction toward life-giving and life-supporting energy, which is what is given and received in relationships with others. Magnified through the leader in relational energy more so than any other work relationship. 
• There is more to it than employees feeling valued, respected and engaged; positive emotional energy becomes reciprocal and energizers build a network of positive energizers around them.