For All the Danny Downers
You want the people around you to feel up not down, hopeful not discouraged. All successful leaders energize others. But, what if you aren’t the energizing type?
Peter Senge said,
“Your primary influence is the environment you create.”
Leaders often neglect environments in favor of getting work done.
Tending personal environments:
Personal space has energy. Step in and it pulls down or lifts up. Danny Downer is a spiraling vortex of despair. An hour with him drains you. Hours later, you’re still climbing out of his dark hole. Or you’ve given up.
Edna Energizer amps people. An hour with her boosts you. Hours later, you’re half way up the mountain with energy to spare.
We’re all climbers.
All leaders impact “the climb” of others by establishing starting places. Energizing leaders elevate starting points; low energy leaders lower them.
Successful leaders elevate starting points.
Danny Downer:
- Fears offending others – lives to please everyone.
- Imagines obstacles that can’t be solved.
- Knows all the reasons nothing can change.
- Questions abilities.
- Focuses on resources rather than people.
Edna Energizer:
- Builds and trusts the team. Danny feels alone.
- Takes small steps without permission. She believes it’s better to get in trouble trying things than doing nothing and staying safe.
- Sees obstacles but imagines progress.
- Learns from failure.
- Expects herself and others to step up.
The difference between Danny and Edna is courage. Leadership requires courage. Danny’s a coward.
For all the Danny Downers:
- Admit it. You are darkness with legs. (If you’re tempted to say it’s not that bad, it is.)
- Confess it. Tell someone you’re a downer. Say, “I want to change.”
- Get help. Run – don’t walk – to energizing leaders and learn.
- Define energizing behaviors. Changing attitude helps but changing behaviors changes things.
Everyone feels the environment around you. Energize intentionally. The higher you start the further you’ll go.
How can leaders create personal space that energizes others?
Next week’s best leadership development opportunity is a free conference call with bestselling author, Doug Conant. Join me on March 27 at 1:00 p.m. EST.
5. Discover what energizes and renews you. Drink of much of that as you can.
KaPOW! Thank you Karin. I’m running out to find my Red Bull.
Great post, Dan! You’re absolutely right. You can energize your team with a long-term vision or by announcing little victories. But it starts with having the courage to do so.
Thank you Justin.
Love the celebration of short-term victories. Sadly, leaders don’t celebrate because there’s still a long way to go. Dumb strategy.
You’re absolutely right! Some leaders are really good at casting vision, but fall short because they focus on how far from the goal they are rather than how close they are getting.
Thank you for this motivating post! I recognize myself as Edna and it makes me feel confident to continue. I guess I am in the right path. Thank you again! We enjoy your posts, it helps us growing.
I love this: “You are darkness with legs.” That’s hilarious but not really since I know more than a few of these types!
I love your blog. Any chance you might push the entire post to your subscribers’ e-mail queue vice the teaser? Unable to consume as much as I would like.
Ok back the life lessons I have learned from the 12 Step Movements.
For me with my intellect it is vital and necessary to KEEP THINGS SIMPLE STUPID! Calling ME that not saying that to offend anyone else. KISS!
Then if I want to do something, ANYTHING there are three simple steps I take.
HOW
Honest, I check out where I am, where I would like to be and know any life based on self propulsion is doomed! I gotta have help! My own best thinking got me where I am, not where I intend on getting. I can’t get there based ne ME! Oh I am brilliant, insightful, massively modest but the sum of all knowledge dwarfs my little pea brain. Gotta be HONEST and realize though brilliant and modest, good person with good posture, I got to be a verb accumulating knowledge.
Open…..gotta be open for the solution to my task come from ANYWHERE! Like if I was basketball coach, high school lets say. I look first OF COURSE to Ole Roy! How can it be any better than a Carolina Basketball Coach who is also a Carolina Mountain Boy like me? What if the answer to my present question is answered by Coach K, you know that Coach of those spoiled private school brats!
How BAD do I want my solution? Bad enough to look for it WHERE IT IS or where I have to? Do I want it THAT BAD? Have to be open , like a parachute if I jump out of a plane. Works better when I pull the rip cord and OPEN it. We ALL want a sense of comfort and familiarity. Bottom line in this spiritual beings having a human experience experiment, all are not fed, all are not blissful, all are not free, all are not experiencing joy, whatever else that goes with those.
We like to think the way we have found some comfort and results with A strategy but then if we live long enough we find that worked for awhile has its limits and we GOTTA GROW. So be OPEN to jumping out of your comfort zone and get skippy with the new stuff you can learn outside your box!!!!!
Willing…….when the new shiny different ideas, strategies, techniques, WHATEVER comes about and presents itself ACT. First you have to be WILLING to act, then DO IT! Try is, try walking backwards with your eyes closed and think about the problem! Sitting down pondering always worked before but not now! Be WILLING to try something new and different. Try the new way long enough to see if it produces desired results.
Will sign off with one of my favorite quotes. Of course in AA Big Book the best darn manual on human realtions ever gifted to humanity. If you do not believe me READ IT(remember out of your box, get a suggestion, DO it) and if you are not willing then you have no right to express an opinion get it?
“There is a principle that is proof against all arguments that is bound to keep a man(woman) in everlasting ignorance, that principle is contempt prior to investigation” Herbert Spencer
Never ceases to send chills all through me when I read that!!!!!!!!!!
Everytime!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t be everlastingly ignorant, EXPLORE, be CURIOUS! Find stuff where it is not where you are comfortable looking! Stretch!
Live, love, laugh often and heartily!
Take a chance, read the first 164 pages of that AA Big Book from a generic point of view and see if you like it and something there is useful to you. It is online free, how simpler could it be? That Chapter 5 is a hum dinger! “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path”! The author years after was asked(Bill Wilson) if he could change anything in that book what would it be? He said he would have changed Rarely to Never! Pretty strong huh?
Ok thanks Dan have a great weekend!!!!! Loving The Secret of Teams EVERYDAY! Going to train a dude next week and sharpening my tools by reading over THAT book again this weekend!
Thanks again!
The Dude Abides!
Scott
Great post, I am going to repost this on my blog 🙂
And the change of attitude (distorted thoughts) is the catalyst to changing behavior in the right direction!
Great Post!
I would like to add that self-centered charisma is the water on a slippery slope for your team trying to be energizers.
Love this! As an Edna (at least an Edna wanna be 🙂 ) Energizer, this is spot on. Draw a line in the sand, keep strong boundaries and limit time spent with those Draining Danny Downers. Teams can’t build a five year plan (or any plan) with folks who are always looking back~~~or down.
Illustration: the work environment is a plain bottle of water, and we leaders should be the squirt of ‘Mio Energy’ that saturates the entire workplace. This is what came to mind. Love the post!
I always thought that if you surrounded yourself with people who have what you want (or are who you want to be) and had the courage to ask them what you can do to get where they are, and then had the courage to do what they tell you, you would be successful.
As you said in point #5: Define energizing behaviors. Changing attitude helps but changing behaviors changes things.
Thanks for the good thoughts, Dan. I can use this this afternoon.
Lynn Marie