Managing your Energy
Everything starts with energy.
We can plan tasks effectively but if we don't have the energy to do them, they are unlikely to get done. At least, not to the best of our ability. The good news is that we can expand our energies and achieve more by growing and using our energies more powerfully.
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In Personal Leadership, we'll help you create the habit of using a simple tool to calibrate and check in with your energy. You'll reflect on which activities boost and bust your energy, then dig deeper to learn why.
By learning to understand and manage your energy, you can be more energised when you need it most.
Balancing your Life
When the world seems to be turning at breakneck speed or something knocks us out of kilter, it's easy to get caught up in the busyness or confusion of life. Without being conscious of it, we can quickly become out of balance.
Although we may not be outwardly aware of this, it will show up in a number of ways. These could include stress, reduced focus and inefficiency.
While we need to channel our energies at critical points, over-extending the imbalance can have a significant detrimental effect on our wellbeing and performance.
The Life-wheel helps you step back and reflect on critical aspects of your life, enabling you to identify ways to recover balance and align yourself more powerfully in pursuit of your goals.
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The Life-wheel © The Performance Learning Company
6Rs Framework
The 6Rs is one of our core frameworks. Developed by The Performance Learning Company, it works in tandem with the 6Cs of Accountability and is a brilliant framework for helping you explore your development journey.
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The 6Rs is not subject-specific. It will help you gain clarity in whichever area you are focusing on; hence, it is the core exploration framework in our development programmes on wellbeing, leadership and teaming.
As you work through the programmes, you will build your commitment and congruence as you align your purpose and values in support of your goals. Identifying the most important relationships and maximising their quality will support your journey, and understanding and drawing on your resources will help increase your courage and competence for the tasks ahead. Prioritising the actions and habits you need to build and practise will also help you to manage your capacity, reducing or eliminating activities that get in the way and deviate you from the path you wish to follow.
Reason
The reason we exist in whichever capacity we are exploring, e.g. as a person, as a leader or as a team. This may be termed your purpose or mission, or you might prefer to think of it as the legacy you wish to leave behind.
Results
Our results are what we need to achieve in order to fulfil our purpose; they include our current results and our future results. What is the overall vision and what are the milestones that we need to hit to achieve it? This may include KPIs in a professional sense so that our progress can be measured.
Responsibilities
The responsibility of how we choose to live our life or work in our team. This includes the values, standards and behaviours we choose to live and work by.
Roles
The roles we play in pursuit of our goals.What roles are required to achieve our results?How do they fit together and can you see how they align to the purpose?
Relationships
The relationships we develop on our journey.
What relationships do we require to achieve our desired results?
Which of our current relationships benefit us (and also benefit the other person/team/organisation)?
How do we get the best from our relationships?
What are we missing that we could get by forming new relationships (or improving existing ones)?
Who are the stakeholders involved in our journey and what outcomes do each require to ensure everyone is happy?
Resources
The resources we gather or collect on our journey. These can be personal resources that we can build into a bank and draw upon when required, such as our personal strengths and examples of our peak performances. Additionally. we can use 'best practice' resources that enable us to draw on the best of others, such as 'heroes' or mentors, to help us move forward. You may also choose to include the physical resources, such as the plant, machinery and colleagues that enable us to do our jobs to our best.
Reflection
Supporting the 6Rs is a seventh 'R' that permeates our programmes - Reflection.
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Learning is fundamental to our progress and success; therefore, we believe in always looking for opportunities to develop and maximise our learning. Once you have set your intentions and put your learning and hypotheses into action, reflecting on the process is a fantastic way to keep learning in order to improve next time. And, of course, it's free!
3-2-1 Reflection
Throughout the programme, you will use a simple 3-2-1 reflection framework that encourages you to reflect on:
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Key insights you have gained from the module
2
Key actions you will now take
1
BIG Question which,
when answered, will
make the biggest difference for you
Gibbs' Reflective Cycle
Another powerful reflective framework that we encourage you to use is Gibbs' Reflective Cycle. Our slightly adapted version is explained below.
1. Description: what happened?
This should be a factual account of what happened for the task/project/time period you are reviewing.
2. Feelings: how did I/we feel?
This is the emotional account of 'what happened', focusing on the feelings in play rather than the facts of what took place.
3a. Evaluation: what worked?
For the task/project/time period you are reviewing, what worked or went well?
3b. Evaluation: what didn't work?
For the task/project/time period you are reviewing, what didn't work or go to plan?
4. Analysis: what sense does it make?
Why did what happened, happen, e.g. why did x go well but y went wrong?
5. Conclusion: what did I/we learn?
What have we learned, either from what went wrong or what went right, and indeed from the experience as a whole, that can benefit us in future?
6. Action plan: what will I/we do now?
Given everything we have learned from our review, what actions will we now put into practice to help us improve, or what will we do next time we are in the same position/working on this kind of project again that will help us get a better outcome?
It is advisable to set a regular cadence for reflective reviews. A weekly review is usually a good starting point, and you can choose to increase the frequency if you find that it would benefit you. You can also experiment with using multiple review models simultaneously; for example, you might choose to use a daily scrum review supported by a weekly Gibbs review.
