Today I want to talk about “Setting the Tone”. This is another leadership tip. But first, let’s talk about energy.
The most powerful energy in a room is going to determine what the energy of that room is.
If it’s angry energy, then the room is going to slowly become agitated.
If it’s upbeat energy, then the room is going to respond that way.
But we often leave ourselves on “default” and so ours isn’t going to be the most powerful energy in the room and we are going to absorb what is more powerful than us.
We do that in our businesses. We do that in our workplaces. We do that in our homes. And we don’t think about it. We just leave our car and walk in or get on that phone call and then we respond to what’s happening.
But it is our responsibility as leaders to have that powerful energy coming from us, to be projecting that out.
And we have to determine what that is going to be. How do we want our home to feel? How do we want to feel? How do we want our business to feel?
If we want it to be calm, then we develop calm energy in ourselves.
If we want it to be high energy, really upbeat, then we have to develop that.
If we want it to be compassionate and loving, we have to develop that.
How?
We take a few minutes and breathe before we walk into situations and then WE can be the most powerful energy in the room.
It’s not always easy. Sometimes we’re just not feeling up to it, energetically. I have many times been sitting in my car about to walk into a situation, like the grocery store, knowing I just want to put my hat on and run out with my stuff and not talk to anybody.
But that’s not me. That’s not who I want to be in the world. That’s not how I want to feel. That’s not how I want other people to feel when they’re around me. So I take a couple of breaths and I develop my Stacy energy for this moment. I get ready to be friendly and smile. I get ready to interact with people, make jokes, have a nice exchange. And I always walk out feeling great, because I projected that energy and I got more of it back.
And how does this look if it is a very specific circumstance? We’ve all been in the situation where someone says, “Okay guys, this is a really long agenda. So, it’s going to be kind of a long meeting. But we’ll get through it.” And the entire group is like, “Ugh. Shoot me now.”
But if you walk in with high energy and ready to tackle a long agenda and that’s what you’re projecting for everybody in the room, everybody will feel like, “Ok! We can do this!”
It’s just a matter of getting ready energetically yourself and walking in and setting the tone.
What if it’s a challenging conversation you might have to have? We can walk in on default saying, “Let’s see how this goes.” We’ve got our guard up. We want to make sure we tell them what we want to say and that they listen to us. But what is it that we want out of it? If we want to have compassionate communication, then we need to develop compassion within ourselves. If we want them to be open, we need to be open. So we have got to develop within ourselves that energy that we want to show up in that conversation so that we get the results that we want.
This is all just about being proactive. And that’s what great leaders do! Great leaders actually take the time, take a few minutes to develop the energy that they want to project so that that’s what they’re getting back and that’s what they’re seeing (instead of just reacting to whatever is out there).
Enjoy that. Take a few minutes to breathe next time you know you want a situation to go a certain way. Develop that energy within yourself and I can guarantee you’re going to have pretty amazing results, because we are very energetically powerful. When we are really mindful of it and proactive about it, we can have amazing results.