By Brad Fern
All employers, from Amazon to the corner convenience store, pay their employees for the same thing. They pay people to direct their energies toward a task, a mission, or vision. Those energies come in three forms: cognitive energy (thinking), emotional energy (passion and collegiality), and physical energy (showing up and getting it done).
One of Immunity to Change coaching’s central goals is to identify and reclaim wasted or misdirected energies. We often waste energy by having to avoid something we’re afraid of. We waste energy by putting on airs, by getting caught up in unnecessary interpersonal conflicts, holding grudges, coveting power or control, and so on. Humans are finite creatures with a limited amount of energy to spare. So, it is vital to get conscious of how we waste energy and to reclaim it for the sake of the individual, the team, and the firm.
“In an ordinary organization, most people are doing a second job no one is paying them for. In businesses large and small; in government agencies, schools, and hospitals; in for-profits and nonprofits, and in any country in the world, most people are spending time and energy covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations.
We regard this as the single biggest loss of resources that organizations suffer every day. Is anything more valuable to a company than the way its people spend their energies? The total cost of this waste is simple to state and staggering to contemplate: It prevents organizations, and the people who work in them, from reaching their full potential.”
From an Everyone Culture, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
Efforting: Low Hanging Fruit
In the process of discussing wasted or misdirected energies, the conversations often turn toward the subject of something called “efforting”. Efforting is a term used in some coaching circles to describe one particular way people allow their energies to be wasted. It’s difficult to describe, but people tend to know it when they experience it. Efforting tends to steal energy incidentally and often does so in social situations.
You know that you’re efforting when you fawn over someone, when you speak with someone and find yourself trying too hard. You might be overly talkative, for instance, or you may smile more than your level of happiness should necessitate. You may be self-conscious and, therefore, feel obligated to act overly sincere or overly concerned. You may cling to a conversation even though there is nothing more to say, or you may feel so uncomfortable with silence that you nervously fill lags in the conversation. It can be especially exhausting to effort in group situations because you may feel pulled in so many directions.
It is easy to identify who is the alpha individual in a conversation by looking at who isn’t efforting. Alphas say only what they mean to say and pay little unnecessary attention to how they appear. They are more interested in what they see and are not overly concerned with how they are seen. In other words, they tend to not waste energy trying to impress, and paradoxically they tend to impress more. “The eye you see is not an eye because you see it; it is an eye because it sees you.”
Like almost everything, efforting has its time and a place. It is often wise, for instance, to accommodate a client with extra effort or for the sake of clarity, and so on. Generally speaking, however, efforting is just one more way that individuals give away power and waste energy. The costs or consequences of efforting range from minor energy loss, as mentioned, all the way to damaged credibility and loss of respect.
Change
The key to efforting abatement is to remove the self-imposed spotlight. Efforting tends to be shame-based or insecurity-based. Shame and insecurity compel us to self-monitor too much. The eventual goal is to be comfortable in your skin and to feel secure enough to forget about yourself and to listen, observe, and inquire.
The first step is to identify the circumstances in which you find yourself wasting energy. (With consciousness comes choice.) Is there a pattern, a certain theme or circumstance in which you find yourself efforting? Is there a certain type of person who compels you to try too hard, or is it a certain rank of person?
The second step is to monitor your physical feelings, emotions, and self-talk during the times you find yourself misdirecting your energy by trying too hard. Write down your physical sensations, emotions, and—most importantly—write down what you’re telling yourself; your “self-talk”. Figure out what negative thing you’re imagining would happen if you stopped sacrificing your own ego strength to accommodate others?
The third step is to systematically experiment when you find yourself in the trigger circumstances. For example, when you feel compelled to try too hard or to speak too much, see what happens by allowing silence. If you find yourself smiling more than is appropriate or doing a lot of obligatory head nodding, stop it and document what happens. Investigate whether your worst fears come to fruition or if you were merely afraid of a paper dragon?
Finally, share your experience with a neutral other. Find someone who has no skin in the game and talk about what you’ve learned. A good friend, a trusted relative; find someone who will listen and let you talk it out. If you prefer, get a hired gun. Life coaches, executive coaches, and therapists are trained to help recapture wasted energies.
The subject of efforting may seem trivial, but with the demands that businesses put on executives, it is essential to plug as many energy leaks as possible.
Brad Fern is a certified Immunity to Change coach, certified Leadership Circle Coach, and in-house executive coach for Sullivan Cotter, the preeminent trusted advisor to healthcare and other not-for-profit organizations. He is also a licensed psychotherapist.