OUR BLOG

LEADERSHIP

Who Should Be On Your Leadership Council?
When Service Firm Leaders Perfect Deliberation, They Reignite Growth
Five Reasons Service Firm Leaders Should Score Their Business Monthly
What Should You Expect From Your Service Firm Leadership Team?
Do You Have A Leadership Team Or A Leadership Council?
Ten Traits Of Organizationally Healthy Professional Service Firms
To Grow Your Professional Service Firm, Prize Culture Over Strategy
TP35: The One Tipping Point Mid-Size Service Firms Must Address To Keep Growing
Seven Reasons Most Mid-Size Service Firms Don’t Grow Very Much
Five Reasons Mid-Size Service Firms Need A New Leadership Operating Model
How Leaders Can Address The Growth Tipping Point For Mid-Sized Service Firms
Five Reasons Professional Service Leaders Should Prize EQ Over IQ
Why Mid-Size Service Firm Leadership Teams Need Collective Objectives To Grow
How To Grow Your Mid-Sized Service Firm: Jealously Protect Your Focused Energy
Why Professional Service Firms Should Consider Circle Of Seven Mentoring Networks
How A Leader’s Energy Field Impacts Team Productivity
Don’t Trade Misery For Money: How Professional Service Firms Can Leverage The Great Resignation
Strong Personality Vs. Strong Person: The Makeup Of A Leadership Council
Custer Or Marshall: Why Mid-Size Service Firms Must Choose Their Leadership Model
To Grow Your Mid-Size Professional Service Firm, Define And Defend Your Values
If You Want To Grow Your Mid-Size Service Firm, Establish A Formal Leadership Council
Want To Grow Your Professional Service Firm? Focus On The One
If You Want To Grow Your Midsize Professional Service Firm, Align Your Leaders
Why Midsize Service Firm Leaders Must Think Like Entrepreneurs To Grow
How To Grow A Mid-Size Professional Service Firm Today
Why It's Important For Great Leaders To Tell Great Stories
How Great Leaders Persuade Using Word-Pictures
How The Say-Do Ratio Influences Trusted Advisor Status And Profits
Why Service Firm Leaders Should Nurture The Entrepreneurial Instincts Of Their Top People

SALES

Five Strategies For Midsize Service Firms To Break Through Revenue Plateaus
How Pro Service Firms Can Fix The ‘Drop Everything — Chase Money’ Problem
Prospect, Originate, Navigate: How To Fill Your Professional Service Pipeline
To Grow Your Mid-Size Professional Service Firm, Think Carefully About Your Promise
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 7
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 6
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 5
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 4
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 3
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 2
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 1
How Mid-Size Service Firms Can Acquire Great New Clients On LinkedIn
Five Ways The Consultative Sale Improves Profits
How To Win The Complex Service Sale Consistently
Do You Choose Clients Or Do They Choose You?
How To Market & Sell Professional Services Today
How To Break The Grip Of Rainmaker Culture
How Content Impacts The Service Sale
How To Know When Prospects Are Ready
How To Pull Prospects Into Conversations
Nurture Organic Relationships Online
How To Build Relationships With Jaded Prospects
Do Prospects Want To Buy Or Be Sold?
Close Deals Faster Using Proof Statements
How To Get Mindshare With Busy Decision-Makers
How To Get Great Prospects Leaning In
How Digital Marketing Creates Sales Funnel Velocity
Digital Marketing Perfect For Complex Sales – Part 2
Digital Marketing Is Perfect For The Complex Sale
Your Best New Client Is Looking For You
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 3
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 2
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 1
Do This to Fill Your Sales Funnel
What You Must Do To Acquire New Clients
An Audience Of One
How to Attract New Ideal Clients
Are You A Content Marketer Or A Thought Leader?
Consider The Source: Theorist Or Practitioner
Why Pain Points Are Not Enough

MARKETING

How To Market Managed Services - Part 3
How To Market Managed Services - Part 2
How To Market Managed Services Today – Part 1
Why Service Firms Need A Multichannel Digital Marketing Strategy
Does Your Website Attract Ideal Clients?
Why Service Firms Need The Ultimate Digital Marketing Stack
The Myth Of The Time-Starved Service Buyer
Do You Choose Clients Or Do They Choose You?
How To Market & Sell Professional Services Today
Why You Need A Generous Brand
How Content Impacts The Service Sale
Are You Measuring Your Time Funnel?
How To Get Mindshare With Busy Decision-Makers
How To Get Great Prospects Leaning In
How Digital Marketing Creates Sales Funnel Velocity
Five Digital Marketing KPIs
Do Your Users Experience Content Regret?
Content Registrations Are Not Enough
Is Your Website Open For Business
How To Build A Great Digital Marketing Plan
Digital Marketing Perfect For Complex Sales – Part 2
Digital Marketing Is Perfect For The Complex Sale
The Value Of An Idea Driven Website
Who Benefits From Your Content?
Your Best New Client Is Looking For You
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 3
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 2
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 1
How To Get The Greatest Value From Content Marketing
Why You Should Absolutely Give Away Your Best Ideas
Do This to Fill Your Sales Funnel
What You Must Do To Acquire New Clients
An Audience Of One
How to Attract New Ideal Clients
Are You A Content Marketer Or A Thought Leader?
Consider The Source: Theorist Or Practitioner
Why Pain Points Are Not Enough
How To Nurture Ideal Prospects

REGISTER FOR BLOG

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

HOW A LEADER’S ENERGY FIELD IMPACTS TEAM PRODUCTIVITY

AN ENERGY FIELD IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE AROUND A LEADER

Originally published on Forbes.com

A professional service team’s performance is usually a reflection of the team leader’s energy field. Over the years, in coaching hundreds of service teams, I’ve noticed that every team leader projects a unique energy field. No two leaders have ever had the same one. In my experience, a leader’s energy field is the number one factor that determines team performance.

An energy field, simply put, is what it feels like to be around that leader. It’s invisible, like a forcefield, but it’s incredibly powerful. If you want to increase your team’s performance and productivity, I recommend that you enhance your energy field. What’s the link between a leader’s energy field and team productivity? In a word—trust.

An effective energy field fosters trust while an ineffective energy field erodes trust. When a team trusts their leader, they’ll go through hell and high water to ensure the team wins. But when a team doesn’t trust their leader, they’ll do the minimum possible to keep their jobs. Trust is the ultimate determinant of team productivity. Strong team trust, along with a dash of good strategy, will produce outstanding results.

How Can You Understand Your Energy Field?

I find that leaders are often unaware of how they came to have a certain energy field, how it impacts team members and what they can do to improve it. So I’d like to put forward a key concept. An energy field is created during interaction, usually personal encounters, but it can also be through written communication.

Your energy field is the cumulative effect of how team members feel after interacting with you over time. If they consistently feel encouraged, focused, supported, uplifted, clear about what to do next and certain about how to handle complex situations, then your energy field is working well. But if they frequently feel deflated, talked down to, unsupported, discouraged or confused about next steps, then your energy field could use some work.

What Contributes To Your Energy Field?

Over the years, I’ve come to identify four factors that give rise to energy fields:

  • Verbal communication
  • Nonverbal communication
  • Positive behaviors
  • Negative behaviors

Verbal communication has to do with the actual words leaders use. Most leaders I’ve coached are quite careful with the words they choose because they know that team members are prone to hear a subtext—a set of messages they didn’t intend to send. But the biggest mistake I’ve seen is unwarranted confidence that a message sent is a message received. Often this is not true.

One of the biggest reasons team members struggle to hear a message is because they’re interpreting nonverbal cues. While a leader is focusing on the words, the team is focusing on the leader. They’re reading the leader’s tone of voice, pitch, pacing, facial expressions, body posture and attitude. Nonverbal cues communicate just as much, if not more, than the message.

To help leaders master their use of nonverbal cues, I like to engage them in an exercise. I give them a couple of common scenarios and a pre-drafted message. This allows them to focus 100% on delivery. Then I video-record them delivering the message. On playback, we review together how their nonverbal communication can be improved so the actual message—the words—are better received.

An energy field is also defined by positive and negative behaviors. Some positive behaviors that foster trust include:

  • Having a formal process by which you get to know individual team members
  • Setting aside one-on-one time with each team member at least once a month
  • Taking the time to clarify what someone meant when you’re unsure of their message
  • Soliciting input from all team members during meetings so everyone’s voice is heard
  • When arbitrating a dispute, giving each person up to seven minutes of uninterrupted time to state their side of things
  • Whenever possible, handling issues with teammates privately

Some negative behaviors that erode trust include:

  • Being too busy to routinely meet one-on-one with teammates
  • Being brusque instead of patient, especially when your schedule is overloaded
  • Coming down hard on people for innocent mistakes, where the punishment exceeds the “crime”
  • Publicly reprimanding teammates in front of their peers. This is not only embarrassing for them, it creates resentment against you
  • Making judgment calls before all of the facts are in, especially as it relates to who bears responsibility when things go wrong
  • Repeatedly discounting the input and perspectives of individual teammates

How To Enhance Your Energy Field

If you want to improve your energy field, here are some things to try:

  • Limit team size. I’m a big believer that most teams really can’t have good team dynamics if there are more than seven to 10 people on the team. I know this can lead to operational and governance challenges. But in my experience, it’s so worth it.
  • Have a formal strategy for getting to know your people beyond just their professional life. Get to know them as people. I help my client team leaders develop a set of questions for these sessions that respect employee privacy policies while also fostering trust and intimacy.
  • Make time for teammates every month. These often serve as a pressure relief valve where teammates can talk about little things that have disgruntled them over the last month. As leaders, much of the time, our job is not to solve problems but instead to simply listen.
  • Take the time to listen and clarify that what you heard is what someone meant to say.
  • Bite your tongue. Far too often, the first thing we want to say could be the most damaging. The more nuanced our responses, the less damage we’ll do.
  • Improve your nonverbal communication. Consider the exercise I noted above where you video-record yourself delivering a message. This can be uncomfortable, but you might just identify one or two simple things you can change that will improve trust.

A leader’s energy field is a huge determinant in how much their teammates trust them. When a team trusts their leader, they’ll bend over backward to see the team win.

About The Author

Randy Shattuck is a seasoned entrepreneur who works hand-in-hand with senior leaders of mid-size professional service firms to grow revenues, acquire clients, open new markets, increase profits and effectively position their brands.

OUR BLOG

LEADERSHIP

Who Should Be On Your Leadership Council?
When Service Firm Leaders Perfect Deliberation, They Reignite Growth
Five Reasons Service Firm Leaders Should Score Their Business Monthly
What Should You Expect From Your Service Firm Leadership Team?
Do You Have A Leadership Team Or A Leadership Council?
Ten Traits Of Organizationally Healthy Professional Service Firms
To Grow Your Professional Service Firm, Prize Culture Over Strategy
TP35: The One Tipping Point Mid-Size Service Firms Must Address To Keep Growing
Seven Reasons Most Mid-Size Service Firms Don’t Grow Very Much
Five Reasons Mid-Size Service Firms Need A New Leadership Operating Model
How Leaders Can Address The Growth Tipping Point For Mid-Sized Service Firms
Five Reasons Professional Service Leaders Should Prize EQ Over IQ
Why Mid-Size Service Firm Leadership Teams Need Collective Objectives To Grow
How To Grow Your Mid-Sized Service Firm: Jealously Protect Your Focused Energy
Why Professional Service Firms Should Consider Circle Of Seven Mentoring Networks
How A Leader’s Energy Field Impacts Team Productivity
Don’t Trade Misery For Money: How Professional Service Firms Can Leverage The Great Resignation
Strong Personality Vs. Strong Person: The Makeup Of A Leadership Council
Custer Or Marshall: Why Mid-Size Service Firms Must Choose Their Leadership Model
To Grow Your Mid-Size Professional Service Firm, Define And Defend Your Values
If You Want To Grow Your Mid-Size Service Firm, Establish A Formal Leadership Council
Want To Grow Your Professional Service Firm? Focus On The One
If You Want To Grow Your Midsize Professional Service Firm, Align Your Leaders
Why Midsize Service Firm Leaders Must Think Like Entrepreneurs To Grow
How To Grow A Mid-Size Professional Service Firm Today
Why It's Important For Great Leaders To Tell Great Stories
How Great Leaders Persuade Using Word-Pictures
How The Say-Do Ratio Influences Trusted Advisor Status And Profits
Why Service Firm Leaders Should Nurture The Entrepreneurial Instincts Of Their Top People

SALES

Five Strategies For Midsize Service Firms To Break Through Revenue Plateaus
How Pro Service Firms Can Fix The ‘Drop Everything — Chase Money’ Problem
Prospect, Originate, Navigate: How To Fill Your Professional Service Pipeline
To Grow Your Mid-Size Professional Service Firm, Think Carefully About Your Promise
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 7
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 6
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 5
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 4
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 3
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 2
How To Sell Professional Services Today – Part 1
How Mid-Size Service Firms Can Acquire Great New Clients On LinkedIn
Five Ways The Consultative Sale Improves Profits
How To Win The Complex Service Sale Consistently
Do You Choose Clients Or Do They Choose You?
How To Market & Sell Professional Services Today
How To Break The Grip Of Rainmaker Culture
How Content Impacts The Service Sale
How To Know When Prospects Are Ready
How To Pull Prospects Into Conversations
Nurture Organic Relationships Online
How To Build Relationships With Jaded Prospects
Do Prospects Want To Buy Or Be Sold?
Close Deals Faster Using Proof Statements
How To Get Mindshare With Busy Decision-Makers
How To Get Great Prospects Leaning In
How Digital Marketing Creates Sales Funnel Velocity
Digital Marketing Perfect For Complex Sales – Part 2
Digital Marketing Is Perfect For The Complex Sale
Your Best New Client Is Looking For You
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 3
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 2
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 1
Do This to Fill Your Sales Funnel
What You Must Do To Acquire New Clients
An Audience Of One
How to Attract New Ideal Clients
Are You A Content Marketer Or A Thought Leader?
Consider The Source: Theorist Or Practitioner
Why Pain Points Are Not Enough

MARKETING

How To Market Managed Services - Part 3
How To Market Managed Services - Part 2
How To Market Managed Services Today – Part 1
Why Service Firms Need A Multichannel Digital Marketing Strategy
Does Your Website Attract Ideal Clients?
Why Service Firms Need The Ultimate Digital Marketing Stack
The Myth Of The Time-Starved Service Buyer
Do You Choose Clients Or Do They Choose You?
How To Market & Sell Professional Services Today
Why You Need A Generous Brand
How Content Impacts The Service Sale
Are You Measuring Your Time Funnel?
How To Get Mindshare With Busy Decision-Makers
How To Get Great Prospects Leaning In
How Digital Marketing Creates Sales Funnel Velocity
Five Digital Marketing KPIs
Do Your Users Experience Content Regret?
Content Registrations Are Not Enough
Is Your Website Open For Business
How To Build A Great Digital Marketing Plan
Digital Marketing Perfect For Complex Sales – Part 2
Digital Marketing Is Perfect For The Complex Sale
The Value Of An Idea Driven Website
Who Benefits From Your Content?
Your Best New Client Is Looking For You
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 3
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 2
Why Service Firms Should Focus On Ideal Clients– Part 1
How To Get The Greatest Value From Content Marketing
Why You Should Absolutely Give Away Your Best Ideas
Do This to Fill Your Sales Funnel
What You Must Do To Acquire New Clients
An Audience Of One
How to Attract New Ideal Clients
Are You A Content Marketer Or A Thought Leader?
Consider The Source: Theorist Or Practitioner
Why Pain Points Are Not Enough
How To Nurture Ideal Prospects