How to manage energy, attitude, and staff development as a leader

Executive overview

Leaders constantly project energy that affects those around them — but most never deliberately manage it. Controlling your energetic state before entering a conversation or meeting is a skill, not a personality trait.

Three listener questions surface practical answers: how to harness and project the right energy, how to handle a leader who publicly undermines the team's sense of purpose, and how to build a personal development curriculum for your staff.

The core insight: deliberate energy management — pausing to reset before high-stakes interactions — is one of the highest-leverage leadership habits.

Managing your energy and presence

• Deliberately set your energy level before walking into any environment — home, meeting, or difficult conversation.
• One practice: mentally place the day's baggage in a "bucket" before entering a new context; use a physical trigger (e.g., a hook or bucket in the garage) as the cue.
• Before a phone call or meeting, pause to consider where the other person is coming from and meet them there.
• When someone is escalating with anger, avoid matching their energy — remain centred, listen, and deflect rather than mirror.
• Calm is not always the right energy; passion and excitement are also needed, especially when rallying a team around meaningful work.
• Flow (Csikszentmihalyi) describes the state of peak engagement — lose track of time, fully absorbed. As a leader, create conditions where others can experience flow.
• Relevant resources: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; Real Magic and The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer; Power vs Force by David Hawkins.

Handling a leader who publicly undermines meaning

• Reframe "wrong" as "hard" — the manager's view is a different perspective, not a moral failure; this enables empathy rather than confrontation.
• Consider the burden of doing work you believe is meaningless: that reframe creates a productive emotional starting point.
• If you choose to address it, do so privately. Ask open questions: what was the intent, was it planned, what were you hoping to achieve?
• Most likely it was unscripted and unintentional — that doesn't excuse it, but it shapes the conversation.
• Don't try to engineer the outcome in advance; the conversation must feel authentic or trust collapses.
• Assess the cost: how much trust exists, what's the risk if it goes poorly?
• Regardless of the conversation outcome, use your one-on-one time to highlight success stories and point people to the meaning in their specific work.
• You don't need a formal response to neutralise the damage — consistent, individual recognition of meaningful wins is more durable.

Building a staff development programme

• When doing individual coaching sessions, be directive: pick one specific resource per person per cycle rather than handing over a library.
• Match the resource to the conversation — a specific podcast episode, a single chapter — not a whole book or show.
• Frame it as an assignment: "Listen to this before our next meeting. Let's discuss."
• Longer-term goal: build personal knowledge management (PKM) capability in your team so they discover, curate, and share resources themselves rather than depending on you.
• PKM cycle: seek → make sense → curate → create → share. When team members contribute back, knowledge compounds.
• This creates a culture of lifelong learning rather than a top-down curriculum.

Recommended resources by topic

Foundational books

• Start With Why — Simon Sinek (purpose and the "why")
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen Covey (broad personal effectiveness)
• Getting Things Done — David Allen (time management)
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — Patrick Lencioni (team building)
• Raving Fans / Gung Ho — Ken Blanchard (already on Ian's list)

Online learning platforms

• Lynda.com — expanded beyond software into leadership, time management, business; supports team accounts and assigned courses.
• Dale Carnegie Online — live (not on-demand), short-form sessions (1–2 hours), broad leadership topics.
• Udemy — large course catalogue, variable quality; vet courses before recommending; often low cost.

Podcasts

• Productivityist — Mike Vardy; practical productivity.
• This Is Your Life — Michael Hyatt; broad personal development; curate specific episodes rather than recommending the whole feed.
• Career Tools — Michael O'Shane and Mark Horstman; career and workplace effectiveness.