Tony Schwartz

Energy is defined in physics as the capacity to do work, so more energy means more capacity.

In a world marked by relentlessly rising demand and complexity, leaders face a capacity crisis.

To operate at their best, humans require four separate sources of renewable energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

As a leader, you’re most fundamental role is to serve as a Chief Energy Officer by mobilizing, focusing, inspiring and regularly renewing the energy of those you lead. 

In this keynote, you’ll have a chance to assess how effectively you are managing your own energy across the four dimensions. You will understand what it takes to expand your capacity, build resilience, and fuel sustainable well-being and high performance.

To that end, you’ll  be introduced to “The Energy Quadrants,” a framework for understanding the four different ways you can feel across any given day, and the impact that each one has on your your effectiveness and on those you lead.

You’ll also learn why balancing the expenditure of energy with intermittent renewal is the key to sustainable high performance. Finally, you’lll have an opportunity to build a highly precise experiment in systematically building your capacity in one of the four energy dimensions.

Takeaways:

• Greater self-awareness around how you are managing your energy in all aspects of your life.
• Why intermittent renewal makes it possible to get more done, in less time, with more absorbed focus, in a more sustainable way.
• Understanding the different ways you feel and show up in the Performance Zone, the Survival Zone, the Burnout Zone, and the Renewal Zone.
• The keys to serving as an effective Chief Energy Officer for those you lead.

Tony Schwartz is the CEO of The Energy Project and a longtime thought leader who introduced the concept and practice of managing our energy into the corporate world twenty years ago. Tony has written two bestselling books about this work, The Power of Full Engagement and The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working.  His Harvard Business Review article “Manage Your Energy Not Time” was recently selected as of the five most influential HBR articles of all time.  

The world is crying out for a different kind of leadership and a different level of humanity.
To become a transformational leader in a fiercely complex and troubled world, the first
challenge is to become a bigger human being. That requires seeing more, feeling more, andavoiding less. It means actively challenging the blind spots, biases, fixed beliefs, habits, andfears that hold each of us back, mostly invisibly.

Only by understanding yourself more deeply can you bring the best of who you are to the mostvexing challenges you face. A whole leader draws not just on the mind, but also on the heart,the body, and the spirit.

To live a more whole life requires building a bridge between your inner world and your outerworld. Our most difficult struggles originate inside us, but they’re also the gateway to ourdeepest wisdom and the fullest range of our resources. “The only way out,” wrote Robert Frost,“is through.”

Instead, we invest endless hours getting things done, without taking sufficient time for
reflection, rest, and renewal. We keep countless plates spinning, celebrating breadth rather
than depth. We rarely stop to ask ourselves “Is the best life I’m capable of leading?” and ‘Am Ithe best leader I could be?”

Our intrinsic and essential goodness is a birthright that many of us don’t even recognize we
have. Imagine the leader you could be if you were consistently able to access your wisest,
calmest, and most open-hearted self. Instead, even the most senior leaders struggle silentlywith a core fear: that they’re not good enough.

Paradoxically, the more energy we spend defending our value, the less energy we have to
create value. When you have the courage to embrace all of who you are -- – including the partsyou wish you didn’t have – there is nothing left to defend. Only then are you freed to takebetter care of yourself, and better care of others.

Leadership isn’t about exercising power. It’s about using your influence to fuel, inspire,, and
advocate for others. When you commit to your own growth, you simultaneously serve the
growth of those you lead and influence.

Takeaways:

• Better understand the unconscious forces that drive you as a leader, because you can’t change what you don’t notice.
• Recognize the role that your internal “defenders” play in the choices you make as a leader, and in the rest of your life.
• Learn what it looks like to draw simultaneously on all four sources of your intelligence: mind, body, heart, and spirit