Leadership in schools can be a volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) process. As such, it’s often the case that the best leaders are those who are masters of self-management - calm under pressure, flexible of mind and great at prioritisation.
How do you attain such skills?
One way forward might be research emerging from elite athletics. Researchers Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz developed a tool called the personal energy audit, which could be a critical first step for all leaders in their pursuit of systematic and sustainable leadership effectiveness.
What is a personal energy audit?
A personal energy audit is a structured process for assessing how a person allocates their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy during daily activities.
No longer seen as a soft, wellness activity, the process has its roots in positive psychology, organisational physiology and performance science.
Why might a personal energy audit work?
The theory suggests that energy-aware leaders are much better equipped to manage their four sources of energy and leverage the following benefits:
Physical - improved stamina and resilience, as well as reduced fatigue and physiological stress.
Mental - improved focus and cognitive clarity, as well as reduced decision fatigue and analysis paralysis.
Emotional - improved stability and empathy, as well as reduced reactivity and irritability.
Spiritual - improved alignment and purpose, as well as reduced apathy and value-conflict.
The apparent benefits don’t stop at individual level, energy-aware leaders build trust with their teams through predictability, modelling the importance of rest and recovery, protecting the energy of others and more effectively matching high-value tasks with high-energy moments.
How does a personal energy audit work?
Step 1: Define the parameters
The first step is to decide how long you will be conducting the audit over and which categorisation and rating scale you will use.
You typically need to run your audit for a minimum of a week so that sufficient insights can be collected for analysis.
Categories often include types of activity (meeting, teaching, planning, exercise, etc) and forms of energy (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual).
A common rating scale is -5 to +5, where zero is balanced, negative numbers indicate depletion of energy, and positive values signal an energising effect.
Step 2: Track activities and energy
All significant tasks and events must be recorded and then rated in terms of their impact on energy levels. This can be done electronically in a file or physically in a journal, and the result will be an extensive list of items and their energy impact.
For example, your list may include:
One-to-one meeting with line manager: +4
Phone call with a parent: -1
Team planning meeting +2
Accuracy and honesty are key during this process, as misattribution or bias-driven scoring leads to ineffective analysis and then naturally to inaccurate choices about future energy management.
Leaders looking for a deeper understanding of their energy flow can also record their energy levels before and during activities, as well as indicate which of the four energy sources were most affected.
This micro-tracking also highlights the subtle shifts that occur within activities as levels of challenge and energy fluctuate.
Step 3: Analysis
At the end of the data collection phase, you need to analyse the activities and energy ratings to identify trends and patterns that could inform your future energy management plan. Useful insights include:
Highest energising activities.
Highest depletion activities.
Highest energising people.
Highest depletion people.
High energy periods of the day/week.
Low energy periods of the day/week.
Step 4: Create an energy management plan
Once you have your analysis findings, the final step is to explore ways to minimise or even remove items that deplete your energy and systematically boost the frequency of your energising activities.
This may mean scheduling regular contact with energising people, blocking out time for energising activities or rearranging high-value tasks so they align with your high-energy periods of the day or week.
Leaders must be cautious during this stage as over-optimisation can leave little room for the messiness of leadership, and the misdiagnosis of root causes can lead to the removal or reduction of the wrong things.
Counteractive measures include the inclusion of an energy “buffer” that ensures there is always something left in the tank, and the use of trusted peers to act as “energy mirrors” who can add objectivity and alternative perspectives to your audit analysis and management planning.
My experience
Integrating the energy audit into my own leadership has been a revelatory experience and one that has uncovered a specific pocket of high energy and focus just before lunch, an unhelpful ripple of low energy onto others in the late afternoon and the discovery that regular 10-minute low-stakes, quick-win activities allow me to maintain a more even energy flow during the day. What will yours show up?
Chris Baker is school improvement and teaching and learning lead at Cabot Learning Federation
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