The 7 Levels of Energy Leadership

by | May 8, 2020

nicoa dunne
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Energy Leadership™ is the ability to lead oneself and others based on a common understanding of seven energetic levels of perception. The concept of Energy Leadership™ was developed by Bruce D. Schneider in his book called Energy Leadership: Transforming Your Workplace and Your Life from the Core. Energy Leadership™ puts you in touch with the missing link between your ambitions and your ability to achieve them.

What’s really unique about Energy Leadership™ is that it isn’t a personality test, but there is an assessment you can take to determine your overall E-Factor. The Energy Leadership Index (E.L.I.) is a unique assessment that enables participants to get a snapshot of their perceptions, attitudes, behaviors, and overall leadership capabilities. It reveals what specific filters you’ve developed over your lifetime and how those filters are influencing the results you’re achieving both at work and at home in all of your relationships as well as your relationship with yourself.

In a way, it’s actually a snapshot of you, and how you show up in the world.  I call it “your way of Being”. It also shows the effects of stress on your life and gives you the ability to target areas where you can shift your energy to be more successful, more satisfied and more fulfilled in all areas of your life.

Key Benefits of Energy Leadership

  • Understand your current perceptions 
  • Increase self-awareness
  • Identify areas for growth
  • Create a roadmap for change
  • Identify and work through blocks to achieve results
  • Understand how to reduce your stress at work and at home
  • Find a greater sense of control and satisfaction

I require all my clients to take the ELI assessment. By seeing and understanding what your average resonating level is, and how you can use the awareness of those seven levels of energy to get what you want out of life results in  less stress and greater happiness and fulfillment.

So Energy Leadership™ is a concept that I also have coined as the “Six Sigma of Self-Awareness”. Six Sigma is a process improvement tool established as a common language within organizations to train employees to engage consistently in a culture of continuous improvement. 

I see this tool also as a common language, not only for you as you observe who you are and how you show up in the world, but also for the way you lead yourself and others. Now let me be clear here. You do not have to be a direct leader of others to use Energy Leadership™.

Energy Leadership™ is foundationally about self-awareness and self-leadership. How are you having conversations with yourself? What are you making your world mean? How are you choosing your language and your emotional meaning to get the outcomes you seek?

That can happen internally—and does happen internally most of the time—but it also offers you the choice to say, “How is this person showing up with me, and what are they making their world mean? What is their perception of this situation? Which energy level are they seeing through? How might I partner with them more effectively to validate where they’re coming from and still move forward with them to get what we want?”

The questions you ask when you learn Energy Leadership are:

  1. What do I want?
  2. How is what I’m doing getting me what I want?
  3. If I’m not getting what I want, am I willing to try a different way?

What I love most about this methodology is that it reminds me that I’m a normal human being. It tells me that my choices and perceptions of the world are based on everything I’ve learned.

There is no identical experience for any human being. So what we learn over our lifetimes is subjectively influenced, which means when we begin to observe ourselves, we can start asking these questions: How does this belief serve me? How does this interpretation serve me? How does this assumption serve me?

Energy Leadership™ becomes that tool. By giving you access to seeing your world at one of 7 choices at any point in time – am I the Victim, the Fighter, the Caregiver, the Opportunist, the Visionary or the Creator in this situation?  I can look at those perception choices and say, “If I were to see if from one of these seven levels and make it mean this, would that get me what I want?” And this isn’t about being selfish. This is about being strategic. Strategically intentional in how I can and will see the world to move forward with greater ease and more powerful results. 

Let me give you a simple example: If someone cuts in front of me while I’m driving, am I going to react from a Fighter (level 2) perspective? If I have that stress tendency to knee-jerk-react, then I may yell at the person—I might put up a hand gesture even. 

If I’m in an anabolic or higher energy level space, can I see myself having this experience and then consciously choose a response at level 4 energy, the Caregiver? “Oh, I hope they’re okay. Let me slow down, so they can get where they’re going safely.”

OR, Maybe I don’t make it mean anything at all, and I simply keep my energy in focus somewhere else viewing this person from a level 7 or Creator perspective where I simply Am. 

I’m in and out of these energy levels, again, like the stock market moment to moment throughout every day! Am I going to be aware and conscious enough to choose to make it mean something that serves me or make it mean something that will cause me to be stressed out? That’s the challenge and the opportunity we face daily, and it is completely doable with awareness and practice now that a tool like this offers concrete awareness of perceptions and how to shift them. It is always up to me to choose to practice responding vs. reacting and this tool offers me all the options I need to successfully do so.

If you’re interested in learning more about Energy Leadership™ and the seven levels of energy, please contact me here. I am an Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner (ELIMP™)  and a seasoned, certified lifestyle coach, happy to partner with you in your Life By Design.

Happy designing!