The stories we tell ourselves and others drive the way we gather and spend energy.
Jim Loehr’s new book, The Power of Story: Rewrite Your Destiny in Business and in Life (2007), stresses that faulty storytelling drives the way executives gather and spend their energy. Tell yourself the right story, and the dynamics of your energy will change. Stories you tell will either create or sap your energy.
A perfect example is the old story about two shoe salesmen sent to Africa. The first one telegraphs back to company headquarters: “Situation hopeless: No one wears shoes.”
The second salesman reports: “Situation ideal: Everyone need shoes!”
Which story generates energy? Change your story, and you change your energy.
Full Engagement Versus “Presenteeism”
Depleted energy may be one of the reasons more than two-thirds of employees feel less than fully engaged at work (The Gallup Organization, 2004).
Companies incur unnecessary costs — approximately $350 billion a year — as a consequence of unengaged people who simply show up for work. Some have dubbed this phenomenon presenteeism: the act of showing up for work in a fog. These workers aren’t absent; they just go through the motions. But they’re missing in action, and their impaired performance actually costs more than absenteeism.
Four Principles of Energy Management
The following principles from Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz can be applied to corporate executives and employees at all levels:
- Energy has four dimensions: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. You must draw from each one.
- Energy is best managed when there’s oscillation between stress and recovery. Stress, in this case, refers to “positive stress,” which allows us to stretch ourselves when using our talents and skills. But it must be balanced with recovery and rest. Unfortunately, most of us don’t know how to do this.
- Pushing beyond our usual limits heightens our strengths. Building mental, emotional and spiritual capacities is similar to physical training that improves our strength or cardiovascular levels.
- Creating replenishing rituals and stories sustains and expands our energy. This is the key to bolstering our energy reserves.
Energy Flows from Stories
Your personal energy can reward you with wealth, innovation and fulfillment. The concept is best expressed as follows: “If you believe you can, you can. If you believe you can’t, you can’t. Either way, you’re right.”
Let’s be clear: You cannot achieve everything you want in life with a simple wish and a bold statement. But through storytelling, you energize yourself and others by stating your desired purpose, what you know to be true and direct people to hope-filled action.
Ask yourself again: What stories am I telling myself and others that help energize purpose-filled action?
3 Ingredients of Good Stories
All good stories have purpose, truth and action. This is why stories must be rewritten many times over: to correct faulty assumptions and misperceptions. Here are several questions you must answer when creating an energizing story:
Purpose |
Truth |
Action |
1. What is my ultimate purpose (or my company’s ultimate mission)? 2. What am I living/working for? 3. What is my defining principle and goal? 4. What makes me do what I do? 5. What is the one thing I would do, even if I had to walk through fire? 6. What would I work for, even if there was no pay? 7. How do I want to be remembered?
|
1. Is the story I’m telling true? 2. Is this my story or merely what I believe it should be? 3. Is it grounded in objective reality? 4. What assumptions am I making? Are any of them faulty? 5. What am I white-washing to make myself look better? 6. Is my private voice in synch with my public voice?
|
1. What actions will I now take to make things better? 2. Which habits do I need to eliminate? 3. Which habits should I begin to breed? 4. Am I an observer or a participator? 5. Are my actions filled with hope—the belief I will succeed and that the change I seek is realistically within my grasp? 6. Does this story inspire others to action?
|
How Stories Help
When you ask yourself these basic questions about what you do and how you conduct yourself, you begin to identify your story’s dynamics. This will help you write several versions: your old story and a new one.
First, write down your current story. After hard and honest work (and many rewrites), you’ll produce a story that accurately reflects the way things have been going in your life.
Next, discard this story and recast it as your old story. It’s time to replace it with a new, forward-moving story. Use the following questions to evaluate faulty elements in your old story—issues and behaviors that will no longer serve you well in the future:
- Will this story take me where I want to go in life (while at the same time remaining true to my deepest values and beliefs)?
- Does the story reflect the truth as much as possible?
- Does this story stimulate me to take action?
If stories determine your destiny, achieving one of your own design requires commitment, honesty and energy. This requires editing your stories for as long as you’re alive.