Why Is Your Energy Low

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects of leadership and management. It addresses some of the most common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction. So let's dive straight in to this week's episode.

I was recently asked a question on one of my leadership training programs and immediately realised that it's a question so many of us ask ourselves from time to time in our careers. So if in the past or right now, you find yourself wondering and thinking about what you need to do to manage your energy and stay motivated, then today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is for you. I'm not actually going to dive straight in and give you a list of tips and tactics to help maintain and manage your energy and motivation. Instead, I'm going to start with and encourage you to ask yourself and reflect upon a slightly different question, which is why has your energy and motivation dropped? And the first thing to say here is that it does and it will. Right? We are all human. Despite what you might see online and what some of the online gurus might be saying, there are very few of us who maintain a 10 out of 10 energy and motivation level at all times. Right? It is just very, very rare. We're all human. It's okay if our energy dips a little from time to time. It certainly happens to me. So why has your energy and motivation dropped? I've got four possible reasons to share with you. They may resonate and of course the reason for you might be something entirely different, but here they are. Number one, it might be that you are not seeing the progress that you expect and want on some of your key projects and goals. So the simple fix here, which I'm sure you'd recommend and suggest to someone in your team if they came to you with this challenge, is simply to break down that big project into smaller bite sized chunks so you see the progress on those little mini sub goals. So that's reason number one, with a little tip for you. Number two, the second reason is your energy and motivation might have dropped because your energy has Dropped. Right. You might just be tired. It might just be that you need a break or a holiday. That could be a decent chunk of time. Or it could simply be a long weekend or two to help re energize you. Okay, so that's the obvious one. The third reason your energy and motivation might have dropped is because you need a change. Have you been doing the same project, the same job for a long period of time and you just need to mix things up a little bit? It could be you need to find a new project to work on that's going to reinvigorate you. It might mean it's time for a new job or role within the same organisation, or it might be time for a new job in a new organisation. So that's the third reason you might just need a change. And the fourth one is you might not be truly playing to your strengths. Or right now you might be working on projects, tasks or activities that don't align with your strengths and therefore you are finding them quite tiring or draining. Okay, so if that's the case, well, what are some of the potential solutions? It may be that you could delegate certain jobs that you're doing to other people who might find them more energizing, where it fits more with their skills, motivations and interests. And if that's not possible, then it might just mean you need to try and take a different approach to the same challenge. So, for example, sales is a natural part of my work as a business owner. It's not something that I particularly enjoy or find particularly energizing. So I've got to find different ways to approach that, that really does play to my strengths and the things that I enjoy. So I can do that by taking a very strategic approach to it. I can do that by doing a taking a little and often strategy where a couple of days a week, I dedicate small amounts of time to that particular activity, which works for me, as opposed to trying to sit down for an entire day once every two weeks to do a whole load of work on sales and marketing. Another example of this, because I think it's really, really key about how we can take a different approach. How we can take an approach that is much more energizing is let's say you're in a role where right now suddenly you are really having to focus on and do a lot of relationship building. But that isn't something that comes naturally to you and it isn't something that's energizing for you. But if you are energized by strategic thinking and being very strategically minded then you could use that to your advantage so you could focus on what are the key relationships that I really need to develop and maintain ie take a strategic approach then come at the task. That way it's not suddenly going to make the task of relationship building for you 100% enjoyable but it will make it just that little bit more enjoyable.

So that's it for this episode of.

The Leaders Kit Bag. Other than to say if this final tip I shared with you around trying to find a way of really playing to your strengths and is of interest to you then do check out the Strength Scope page of my website which I'll link in the notes for this episode where you can find out how you can really take a strengths based approach for you and your team.

That's it for this episode.

As always look after yourself, look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead and until next time lead on.