The following interview with Tony Schwartz is a condensed version of HR.com's live, one-hour webcast. To access the archived interview, please click here.
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Tony Schwartz is president and founder of The Energy Project, a company that helps organizations and their leaders build and sustain capacity by learning to more skillfully manage their energy. Tony has spent 30 years studying, writing about and teaching people how to change, grow and perform more effectively in all dimensions of their lives. His most recent book, The Power of Full Engagement, co-authored with Jim Loehr, was a number one Wall Street Journal bestseller. It also spent four months on the New YorkTimes bestsellers list and has been translated into 21 languages.
As president of LGE Performance Systems for four years, Tony developed the full engagement training system and co-authored The Making of the Corporate Athlete for The Harvard Business Review, an article that has received worldwide attention.
Tony began his career as an award-winning journalist. He was a reporter for the New York Times, associate editor at Newsweek and a staff writer for New York and Esquire magazines, as well as a columnist for Fast Company magazine. He is also co-author of the number one worldwide bestseller, The Art of the Deal, with Donald Trump. You can learn more about Tony and The Energy Project at www.theenergyproject.com.
Topic: Energy - The Secret Ingredient for Maximizing Performance
KE: I´d like to begin by having you tell us why you and your colleague, Jim Loehr, wrote The Power of Full Engagement.
TS: At a time when so many people are suffering from a personal energy crisis, we wanted to take the principles around energy that we had learned from our work with athletes and corporations and help people manage energy in the broader world. This personal energy crisis is a silent crisis because productivity in the corporate world continues to rise. The problem is the toll that it is taking on individuals over time and on the sustainability of productivity and performance.
KE: The title of your book is The Power of Full Engagement. Recently, I have had a lot of material come across my desk on how to more fully engage employees. I even saw one company that purported to have a training solution that would drive engagement. I´m pretty sure you can´t drive another person to be engaged, so I am wondering what your view is. Why is it such a hot topic right now?
TS: I certainly agree with you that you can´t literally drive engagement, but there are things that you can do to change it. First of all, we know that there is a crisis where demand is exceeding people´s capacity. In terms of engagement and how fully committed and passionate and focused people are about their work, we know that the levels of engagement are, according to Gallup data, stunningly low. We also know that high engagement drives performance and retention and drives down healthcare costs. Engagement is a key, measurable marker of how people are doing and how an organization is doing in motivating its people. I believe that with a focused and disciplined approach, it is possible to fire people´s own desire to get more engaged in their workplace.
KE: In your book, you talk about moving beyond competencies to capacity. Why do you think there is so little attention paid to energy in business?
TS: Because we are obsessed with the urgent. People tend to focus on what someone can do for them right now in this moment. We have an inclination to think that as long as you have a particular skill in your toolbox that´s enough. What we have discovered is that capacity is more fundamental than competency or skill. You can have a person with enormous talent and skill but if they can´t bring it to light under the crucible of pressure, what good is it? Capacity, what you have in your reservoir, is what makes that possible.
KE: I love your description of living life as a series of sprints versus a marathon. I´m wondering how you came up with this comparison. Do you have any data to support it?
TS: Let´s admit that this is a counterintuitive idea. We are saying something that is fairly radical in corporate America. We are trying to ennoble the idea of renewal and recovery. Not because we are fighting for people to have happier lives, even though that is the byproduct, but because companies are not that interested in work life balance unless it is driving performance.
At The Energy Project, we are very focused on performance. For 20 years we worked with world-class athletes to try and understand what made it possible for them to perform under the highest levels of pressure. We discovered that athletes are geniuses at the management of energy. As the technology of performance has improved and gotten more complex, these athletes have begun to train in intervals. They spend as much time effectively renewing and recovering as they do expending energy. We came to realize that this was an example of how performance-oriented individuals instinctively aligned themselves with the natural rhythms of the universe.
I say we are oscillatory people in an oscillatory universe. We have brain waves and the brain, if operating properly, moves between high frequency brain activity during the day and low frequency brain activity at night. If it is not working that way, you are either going to be over stimulated or exhausted. Your heart rate is meant to move between higher and lower speeds depending on the demands placed on you. If you think about it, fitness is actually defined as the speed of recovery. The fitter you are, the faster you recover. That means that if you train recovery you are getting fitter. We are not out there teaching people to become great athletes, but the fact is that in order to be effective in your work, you need to have gas in your tank. Human beings are multi-dimensional, complex energy systems.
You need four different types of energy. You need physical energy, emotional energy, the energy of the mind, and the energy of the human spirit. You need each of these separate but interconnected sources of energy in order to be effective in the workplace as either an individual or a leader. You need quantity, quality, focus and force. In order for those to be there for you, you need to manage the rhythm of your expenditure and recovery of energy.
We live by one primary rhythm in the universe and that is day and night. During the day we are supposed to be awake and active and during the night we are supposed to be renewing and recovering. First of all, very few of us have that part right. Most people in the corporate world are sleep deprived.
There is another rhythm where we move from a period of high arousal to a period of low arousal. The body, if you listen to it, asks you for a break every 90 -120 minutes. We override that rhythm at our peril. If people are operating effectively and are following the natural demand of the body, it pays for them to take a form of recovery every 90-120 minutes. That doesn´t mean that we want people to work for 90 minutes and rest for 90 minutes. As I said earlier, the fitter you are, the faster you recover. It is about the quality of the recovery and not the quantity. You can get a tremendous amount of recovery in a short period of time if you do it right.
Going back to the comparison between a sprint and a marathon, a marathoner is someone who is expending energy over a long period of time without seeing a finish line. We have been told in our work lives to conserve our energy because we are running a marathon. Those of us who are marathoners are conserving energy without knowing it, so we are never fully engaged. We suggest living life as a sprinter. Think of your life as being lived in 200 yard or 400 yard increments. At work you are running 90-120 minute sprints where you are fully engaged and focused. What you can accomplish in a shorter period of time is extraordinary.
KE: There is no question that our society and a lot of organizations reward the notion of overwork. In your book you talk about overwork as an addiction. What is it about our values and beliefs that reward this ultimately damaging behavior?
TS: We live in a bottom line world, particularly in North America. When you talk about profit as your only motive, instead of an important end that needs to be mediated, what you do is put a premium on the idea of overwork. The winner becomes the person who works the longest. The fundamental flaw is that the people who are the most effective are not necessarily the people who are putting in the longest hours. However, there is a crude assumption out there that that is the case, so we reward people who maximize face time and we punish people for any other behavior. If you are not at your desk putting in long hours then you are seen as lazy. We lose sight of the actual key, which is how that person is performing. I´d rather have someone who is a brilliant performer who puts in half the hours, than someone who is a mediocre performer but sits at his desk for 17 hours. We ought to focus on what helps people to perform in a sustainable way and not on who puts in the highest number of hours. We are at the end of that rope. People don´t have any more time; they have been stretched to the absolute limits possible. The reason our work has gotten such great receptivity is because managed energy can be expanded over a lifetime, but the number of hours in a day cannot.
KE: Can you give us some ideas and recommendations that we can put into practice in our lives?
TS: We are talking about energy as multi-dimensional. It is very easy to think that this is only about physical energy. Having said that, physical energy is fundamental and does directly influence your ability to manage your emotions, your capacity to focus and the degree to which you stay passionate and engaged.
There are three behaviors that I feel have the most powerful impact on your physical energy. The first one is building a break into your day at least every 90-120 minutes. If you are working for longer than 120 minutes at a time you are operating at a sub-optimal level. The second thing is to eat five or six meals a day, including breakfast. You need to regularly refuel your body every three hours. You can´t eat the same portion sizes, but you want to eat smaller meals to keep your food intake steady throughout the day. The third behavior that impacts your physical energy is exercise. From an energy perspective it is not simply a way to increase your physical energy, but it is also a way to powerfully recover mentally and emotionally. I don´t know of anything more powerful for recovery than to push your heart rate up. Many people say that their energy level drops around 3:00 pm or 4:00 pm every day. People who exercise in the middle of the day don´t usually experience this same drop in energy. They refuel themselves at midday, they burn off the mental and emotional stress, they build their physical capacity and they walk back into work feeling a lot better.
KE: Those are some great recommendations for managing physical energy. What about emotional energy?
TS: Everything I just said in the physical realm, also affects our emotional energy. Additionally, there are two things I would point out. The first one is something we call "realistic optimism." We know that if we ask people how they feel when they are performing at their best, they always come up with the same adjectives - satisfied, challenged, interested, focused, engaged and passionate. People expect to feel that way when they are performing at their best. What people don´t always realize is that if they are not feeling that way, then they are not performing at their best. Realistic optimism means telling the most hopeful and empowering story about any set of facts you have in front of you. It is about finding the most hopeful lens in which to interpret a difficult situation. However, optimism alone can be stupidity. If you are driving at 110/mph toward a brick wall, you don´t want to be optimistic that you are not going to hit it. What you want to be able to do is take a situation and make a habit of looking at it in the most hopeful way.
As a leader there is another great way to emotionally influence other people that is incredibly simple and incredibly powerful. That is to praise people in highly specific ways. One of the things that we push people to do is to praise or appreciate someone every day. Every morning I take time to write someone a personal note. This makes me feel better and it has a stunning impact on people. People are unaccustomed to being valued and appreciated and are so inspired when they are.
KE: In a webcast I did recently, I asked the audience how often they felt scattered or unclear in their priorities. I was a little surprised that just under half of them responded by saying they felt that way 40% to 59% of the time. Obviously a lot of people are struggling with mental energy. Can you give us some ways to manage that?
TS: What we are talking about here is the energy of focus. What you want in order to be the most effective performer is flexible energy. Flexible energy allows you to be narrowly focused and absorbed in a task. It also gives you the ability to step back and look at the big picture. We have a tendency to focus on the urgent all the time. We are constantly in triage. If you ask most people what they do when they first go into work, almost everyone will say they answer e-mail. The result of that is that you have turned your agenda over to someone else. That is a big decision to make. One of the ways that you can regain control in your own life is to make choices that reflect your agenda and not someone else´s. A classic example of shifting your attention from the urgent and reactive to the important and reflective is to start your day with an activity that you previously decided was the most important. I recommend that people write down, before going to bed, the most important and challenging thing that they can do the next day. Instead of that difficult thing rebuking you from your inbox all day, you have started the day with success. No matter what happens the rest of the day, you still have that in your pocket.
KE: Spiritual energy is the fourth energy that you discuss in your book. I´m wondering if you can describe for us what you mean by spiritual energy and also give us some tips on how to manage it.
TS: Let me tell you what spiritual energy is not. It does not mean anything religious. Some people interpret it through a religious lens, but we are talking about it in the context of the human spirit, the driving force that motivates people in their lives. The energy of the human spirit is derived from actively seeking to express your own potential and in turn, helping others to express theirs. What grows out of the human spirit is a clearly defined purpose that serves a greater good. The energy of the human spirit really kicks in when we get to the point where our own needs and fears can give way to a focus on serving others.
The management of spiritual energy has to start at the level of awareness. We are so driven by events that instead of driving ourselves, we lose touch with what is important to us. From an awareness perspective, it is worth asking yourself this question every day, "I know what I am getting, but what am I giving?" The answer should be real and concrete. There comes a point where you need to ask what you are giving back. It is a very powerful human and leadership behavior to frame the question as part of your daily awareness and practice.
KE: You pose a question in your book that really resonated with me. "Is this life I´m living worth what I´m giving up to have it?" That is such a powerful question as it relates to the difference between value and virtue.
TS: There is evidence that suggests there is very little difference in people´s reported levels of happiness, despite wide variations in income levels. The person making $25,000 and the person making a million dollars report very little difference in their happiness level.
People are working without thinking why it is they are doing what they are doing. When you ask yourself, "Is this life I´m living worth what I´m giving up to have it?" you are required to wake up and pay attention to the choices you are making. If you have any doubts in your life about this, find a quiet place and ask yourself the question. Is the answer acceptable to you? What do you have to change to make your response different?
KE: How can we apply what you´ve said today to helping our organizations better manage the energy of their constituents?
TS: If we don´t treat people as a whole and we don´t allow people to have their needs met in all dimensions - physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually - we do so at our peril. We do so at the cost of making it impossible for a person to reach his or her potential, perform at a high-level and do so in a sustained way.
If you´d like more information about the work Tony Schwartz is doing, we encourage you to visit their website,
www.TheEnergyProject.com, or email Tony at
tony@TheEnergyProject.com. Also, you can click here to purchase Tony´s book,
The Power of Full Engagement.
