Practice #6: Strategic Leaders Maintain High Levels of Energy & Focus

Life - Work-Life Balance
Written By Charles Moore

A few weeks ago, I had a realization: I’m exhausted.

But it wasn’t that I was physically tired—my love of napping prevents that. It was that I was creatively spent. After publishing Everyday Strategic Leadership and trying to think about a potential next project, it became painfully apparent that there weren’t any good ideas swimming in my mind. 

The root cause of that creative exhaustion was that the first half of this year included two extraordinary projects on top of my normal workload—buying a new house and leading an executive director search for the nonprofit whose board I chair. As a result, each day was overcast with a cloud of tasks, and my personal system became optimized around crossing items off the to-do list.  

The good news is that the solution set was straightforward. 

Rather than drinking the second cup of coffee to power through the afternoon, I adjusted my caffeine intake to enable more restful sleep. 

Rather than reading the standard fare of business books, I shifted to humor, fiction, design, and art to spark inspiration. 

And rather than allowing my plate to be 105% full as it was for most of the year, I put a temporary moratorium on anything new so that I’d have the space to let my mind wander. “That sounds interesting! Let’s talk about how we’ll work on it after August 1.”

In Everyday Strategic Leadership, the sixth practice of strategic leaders is that they maintain high levels of energy and focus. This practice comes last in order, but it could have been first because it is foundational to success. 

In executive coaching meetings, leaders typically start by describing problems for which they are struggling to find solutions. But I find that the problems aren’t always that hard. Often, the issue is that the leader is too tired or too task-saturated to think creatively or even see the obvious solutions right in front of their faces.

That is, they cannot access their intellectual gifts.

And if they can’t think straight on “normal” problems, what’s the likelihood that a tired mind has good strategic ideas or can inspire them in others?

All that said, everyone knows they should be proactive about their energy to avoid those situations, but it’s easy to let it slip. Even as someone who was writing about this very dynamic, I didn’t realize my energy was waning until I needed it and saw the gauge was on empty!

The biggest mistake I see leaders make is prioritizing work above their energy, health, and well-being on their to-do lists. They believe they can achieve more by prioritizing work. But in reality, if they exhaust themselves or if the rest of their lives are not functioning, it becomes a distraction from their ability to succeed at work. 

Strategic leaders recognize that their energy, focus, and well-being are critical assets, not afterthoughts. Burnout isn’t a leadership skill.

Charles Moore
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Practice #5: Strategic Leaders Build Their Power & Influence