How to Be a Positive Energizer

Who in your life lights you up when you are with them? With whom do you feel completely at ease and seen? With whom can you fully express yourself?

These people are the positive energizers in your life, who encourage, energize, and empower you. There are people in our lives where this occurs consistently, while with others, it fluctuates. Both are significant.  

Being a positive energizer means transferring positive relational energy from one person to another. It is the top way highly vital leaders share their energy.

What’s the impact of being a positive energizer?

From a leadership perspective, being a positive energizer has the greatest impact on performance: it is three times more impactful in leadership than information and influence. When leaders positively energize others, it not only improves how others perceive them, but also increases their overall capacity to positively impact others.

From a relational perspective, it fosters high quality connections. When we are a positive energizer, both by giving and receiving energy, we build high quality connections founded in trust, where we create the space for each other to be seen, heard and acknowledged. Developing high quality connections occurs through mutual positivity, resonance, and reciprocal energy back and forth.

I often hear misperceptions about being a positive energizer. People think it requires showing up in a certain over the top way: overly outgoing, charismatic, always positive, which feels inauthentic to many. That’s not what it’s about. And, taken to the extreme, leading with delusional optimism or toxic positivity, which involves the pressure to be positive while suppressing and rejecting negative emotions and experiences, is harmful to teams and organizations. 

What it is actually about, according to Kim Cameron, one of the founders of Positive Leadership, is helping everyone flourish: “[Positive] energizers’ greatest secret is that, by uplifting others through authentic, values-based leadership, they end up lifting up both themselves and their organizations.” (HBR: The Best Leaders have a Contagious Positive Energy)

How could leaders be positive energizers in the workplace?

To motivate, uplift and invigorate those around you first requires you to have the energy to do so. Foundationally, it starts with building your physical, psychological and emotional vitality to have an abundance of energy to share with others.

Once you cultivate your vitality, then what?

As I discovered in a previous study, leaders high in vitality must choose to share their positive relational energy with others to positively energize them. And yet, this topic is not often a focus in leadership. Even leaders with the best of intentions might not know how to positively energize their teams.  

Strategies to be a positive energizer in the workplace:

Here are five concrete approaches, with experiments, for leaders to practice being positive energizers. For additional ideas, check out my Positive Leader blog. 

1. Being authentic

First, it’s essential to show up authentically.

Being in relationship with others as your authentic self is positively energizing in and of itself. Others can feel the difference when someone is genuine versus inauthentic.

Experiment by: Practice cultivating courage to show up as your full self. As much as you can, be true to your moral compass, integrity, principles and core values. However, it’s important to recognize that in leadership, there isn’t full permission for emotional authenticity. As in, it isn’t always effective to share your emotions in certain situations.

2. Importance of acknowledgement and gratitude

At the core of positively energizing others is caring for and showing gratitude for the human being in front of you.  Appreciate who they are and celebrate their humanity. Relational energy without care for another person isn’t very effective.

Research has shown that the more power a leader has at work, the less gratitude they are likely to feel and express. One reason is those expressing gratitude underestimate the positive impact it has on the receiver. This highlights the significance of being intentional about expressing gratitude.

Experiment by: Make space every day to reflect on and write down what you are grateful for about yourself and your team members. Yes, include yourself in your gratitude practice! Doing so will increase your overall appreciation and help you have more capacity for appreciating others. Proactively express your appreciation and say “thank you” to others in one-on-one or team meetings.

3. Power of listening and asking curious questions

When is the last time you felt fully heard? Unfortunately, it’s common for us not to be fully present or actively listen in conversations: we are often distracted, thinking our own thoughts or formulating a response. This results in not fully hearing the other person.

Actively listening, being fully present and asking curious questions to another person provides the opportunity for them to feel fully seen and heard, which is incredibly vitalizing.   

Experiment by: Practice asking curious questions and actively listening to the responses. Curious, open-ended questions evoke deep thinking and personal exploration whereas closed, information gathering questions are designed to draw out specific answers. Let go of wanting to hear a yes/no response and be open to exploring.

Try asking questions such as: What’s important about this to you? What did you learn? For more ideas, check out the Powerful Questions worksheet.

4. Promote Realistic Optimism

To energize others, lead with and encourage realistic optimism. “Realistic optimism is the tendency to maintain a positive outlook within the constraints available.” (Schneider, 2001) It provides a grounded view of reality while focusing more on the positive aspects of the present and future. It counters the unrealistic and damaging ideas of delusional optimism and toxic positivity.

Experiment by: Look at the unknowns of a situation and focus on the possible positive opportunities in the future. To do so, identify your current thoughts about the uncertainty and unknowns. Do you have thoughts that involve worrying, anxiety and a negative forecast? How could you shift those thoughts to give energy towards positive thoughts about the future?    

5. Create space for all emotions—positive and negative

As you show up in your full authenticity, then it gives others the permission to show up in theirs.

One of the most positively energizing actions you can take is allowing someone to express themselves fully, around both the positive and difficult. Creating the depth of care in relationship is what transfers positive energy.

Research about high-quality connections has found that they exist when another human being has the space to feel authentically.

Experiment by: Holding space for another requires a lot of energy, so first, as you practice this in particular, make sure you are maximizing your wellbeing and feel highly vital. Ask curious questions, actively listen, and provide them the space to reflect and respond, especially if someone is going through a challenging time.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” –Maya Angelou

How you make another human being feel in your presence matters and greatly impacts your leadership ability. By positively energizing and uplifting others, not only do you shine brightly, you create a positive ripple effect where others shine brightly too.