The Power of Full Engagement is another extremely important book that I recommend from the deepest part of who I am and what I live and stand for.
As I expect you to become the best that you can be, it goes without saying that, you must know how to perform at your greatest potential.
Therefore, I choose to review The Power of Full Engagement, because not only can it make you become very powerful, but also it is a vitally important piece of the multiple intelligence jigsaw puzzle.
So…
Let me begin…
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The Power of Full Engagement
For more than 30 years, the writers of The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, worked with world-class athletes, often transforming these athletes’ poor performances into their highest levels of achievement.
However, unlike any other company, Jim and Tony’s organisation never spent any time working on an athlete’s technical or tactical skill.
Instead, they would only focus on helping their athletes to manage their energy more effectively in relation to whatever it was that the athletes were trying to achieve.
As a result, the organisation was hugely successful and its word of mouth reputation began to spread.
They then started working with other professionals in high performance roles and, today, their corporate clients include the likes of
- Merrill Lynch
- Hyatt Corporation
- Pfizer
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Energy & High Performance
As you would expect after more than three decades of work, Jim & Tony’s organisation had made some profound discoveries about the relationship between managing energy and high performance. The majority of which, are listed below:
- Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance
- Energy is the X factor that makes it possible for people to ignite their talent and skills
- The performance demands of most people in their everyday lives far outweighs that of any professional athlete
- Performance, health, and happiness are grounded in the skilful management of energy
- The skilful management of energy makes it possible to achieve ‘Full Engagement’
- Full Engagement is the challenge of great performance, and transforms you into becoming extremely effective personally and professionally
- To be fully engaged, you must be (1) Physically energised, (2) Emotionally connected, (3) Mentally focused, and (4) Spiritually aligned with a purpose bigger than your immediate self-interest
- To achieve great performance you must manage your energy more effectively in all the four dynamics of your life
There are four key principles that encapsulate all of the above, which Jim and Tony argue are critical for building the ability to live a productive and fully engaged life:
PRINCIPLE 1
Full engagement requires drawing on the four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual
PRINCIPLE 2
Because energy capacity diminishes both with over-use and with under-use, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal
PRINCIPLE 3
To build capacity, we must push beyond the normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do
PRINCIPLE 4
Positive energy rituals – highly specific routines for managing energy – are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance
So…what does this all mean for you?
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Reject the Old Ways of Thinking About Time & Energy
To perform at your highest level, you have to abandon the following 6 old ways of thinking:
- Managing your time without taking into account, first, how tired or energetic you usually feel
- Staying within your comfort zone without regularly leaning towards your edge
- Approaching your life like a marathon by always pacing yourself without often exerting great force or energy
- Treating all downtime during the day as wasteful and unproductive
- Behaving as if external rewards (e.g. money, status) will allow you to produce your highest levels of performance
- Behaving as if self-discipline and a positive win at all cost attitude alone will allow you to truly lead
In contrast, high performance requires you to apply the following 6 new ways of thinking about your time and energy…
- Understand your energy levels; manage them, and then decide what to do with your time. This will allow you to become more efficient and productive
- Time and time again, push yourself in relation to whatever you are trying to achieve so that you will continue to stretch and develop
- See life as consisting of a series of sprints, because the energy you will need to perform with your greatest effort will not last for a very long period. Moreover, you will need to rest, more than the average person, in order to recover fully
- Realise that your downtime is in fact very productive in terms of renewing and restoring your energy levels
- Realise that you will achieve your highest level of performance only by doing the things that resonates from the deepest part of your soul without the need for external reward
- Setup a system, a personal way of functioning, which causes you to be productive without having to think about it. It is not about self-discipline or positive thinking because the system you setup should take care of itself. It must become your habits, your built-in way of being positive, and managing your energy levels artfully
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How to Manage Your Physical & Emotional Energy
The energy that vibrates within you is simultaneously physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, with no area being sufficient by itself.
Therefore, you have a complex energy system that you have to manage skilfully in order to perform at your best. However, your physical and emotional energy are the most fundamental:
- Your physical energy is measurable by its quantity, which varies from low to high
- Your emotional energy is all about the quality of your feelings, which are either negative or positive
Below is a diagram that the writers use to show these dynamics:
In essence,
- The higher the amount of physical energy that you possess, the more capable you become during your performance, likewise, the lower supply of energy you have then the less effective you will be
- The more unpleasant (negative) your emotions, the less masterful you will be whilst performing, in the same way, the more joyful (positive) you feel the more brilliant you can perform.
The Power of full Engagement argues that maximum performance is only possible in the High/Positive quadrant of the diagram, which means feeling High/Physical Energy combined with Positive/Emotional Energy:
- Invigorated
- Confident
- Challenged
- Joyful
- Connected
Nevertheless, to consistently maintain a level of high performance, you must skilfully manage your energy by fluctuating between the High/Positive and Low/Positive:
- Relaxed
- Mellow
- Peaceful
- Tranquil
- Serene
The Low/Positive is an essential area that will enable you to recover physically and feel renewed, but you must stay out of the High/Negative and Low/Negative by any means necessary.
Question: How much time do you spend personally and professionally in the High/Positive?
Anytime that you spend in the negative quadrants will stop you from truly unleashing your talent and skill. Therefore, if you are in this situation, you must seek to change your circumstances as quickly as possible.
Intriguingly, the writers assert that the leading organisations of the future will be those that have the most employees, who function within the High/Positive quadrant of the energy diagram.
I found this argument very logical, and extremely interesting for the following reason:
Today most companies still actively encourage their employees to perform within the High/Negative quadrant.
However, a few exceptional and leading software companies such as Google, have a reputation for creating a radically different work environments for their employees that falls in line with the High/Positive section.
Google’s overarching philosophy is “to create the happiest, most productive workplace in the world,” I wonder whether this is one of the main reasons why they have managed to become the world’s dominant internet search engine.
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Conclusion
It took me more than 2 months, working continuously throughout Christmas and the New Year (2014/2015), to complete this book review.
The reason is that The Power of Full Engagement, in my opinion, is extremely significant. And in order to begin writing, I had to re-evaluate at least 20 years worth of my knowledge and past experiences.
Since I was 14 years old, I always sought to be fully engaged, as shown within a sketch that I drew more than 10 years ago (below):
- Physically energised
- Emotionally connected
- Mentally focused
- Spiritually aligned with a purpose bigger than myself
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The result is that today, I still live according to a concept called the 5 Intelligences, which I adopted in 2004:
- Spiritual Intelligence
- Mental Intelligence
- Financial Intelligence
- Physical Intelligence
- Social Intelligence
Before reading The Power of Full Engagement, I always thought about how I would successfully teach others how to achieve self-mastery within all areas of their lives.
Thankfully, the writers have already covered some of the most crucial parts of this process, saving me from having to carry out a tremendous amount of work.
As a starting point, therefore, I strongly encourage you to visit their website www.performanceprograms.com/self -assessments/personal-development/energy-profile/ and take an energy profile as soon as possible.
The profile will allow you to detect immediately areas in your life where you can drastically improve your energy levels, which in turn is highly likely to enhance your performance.
To perform at an even greater level, I further recommend that you consider combining the knowledge that you gain from The Power of Full Engagement with the following three books:
- The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
- The 8th Habit
- Getting Things Done
I will end this review by saying that some information in life is so important that your awareness of its existence should not be reduced to chance, or a need for good fortune.
The Power of Full Engagement, in my view, falls easily into this category of knowledge, and it would be tragic if you, now, do not use it to its full effect.
Until next time…
Keep mining information…
Keep-it-moving!
Tom…tommyoffe@yahoo.co.uk