Bryce Quirk

Australian wealth management group Colonial First State (CFS) has launched the Centre Stage masterclass series, designed to inspire financial advisers to think differently about their approach to business, their teams, clients – and life in general.

CFS Chief Distribution Officer, Bryce Quirk said the Centre Stage masterclass series would provide high-calibre educational content that would give financial advisers new perspectives on how to build stronger teams and invigorate their businesses.

Mr Quirk said: “Despite the headwinds Australia’s economy is facing, advisers are optimistic about business conditions, the outlook and future revenue growth in the advice industry.^[1] Demand from clients for quality financial advice continues to grow, with 2.6 million Australians intending to seek advice within the next two years.^[2] That’s why now is a great time for advisers to think about the best way to position their businesses for the future.

“At CFS, we believe in the power of great financial advice. Our masterclass series will help advisers to build practical skills that will empower them to drive change in their businesses and make it easier and more efficient to deliver advice to their clients.”

A focus on performance, storytelling and innovation

CFS created the Centre Stage program by partnering with high profile Australian thought leaders who have an inspiring story to share and important lessons to convey.

The program will focus on three key themes: creating a high-performance culture; using storytelling and authentic communication to deepen client relationships; and embracing innovation in advice businesses.

The first CFS Centre Stage masterclass in the series will be presented by Next Evolution Performance Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Vanessa Bennett, whose workplace strategies help to develop high-performing people by using neuroscience to optimise productivity, profitability and energy – without the risk of burnout.

“In my masterclass, I will discuss what we mean by high performance – and why it’s so important to have a high-performance culture in your business in order to increase profitability,” Ms Bennett said.

“The more effectively an adviser can set up a high-performance culture, the less time they will need to spend leading their team. The team will be happier and more productive, and the flow on effects in improving outcomes for clients will be massive,” she added.

The next speaker in the Centre Stage series is Sam Cawthorn, CEO and Founder of Speakers Institute and Speakers Tribe, bestselling author of 11 books, and the 2009 Young Australian of the Year, who will share his messages of resilience and using storytelling to influence, motivate and inspire others.

Mr Quirk said the masterclass series was part of CFS’s ongoing commitment to the growth and development of the advice industry.

“The partners we’ve chosen offer a fresh take on topics like connection, innovation and performance. The insights they share transcend industries and will provide advisers with practical steps they can take in areas such as attracting and retaining quality talent, deepening client relationships, and invigorating their businesses through innovation,” Mr Quirk said.

The CFS Centre Stage masterclasses are delivered as short videos that can be accessed free of charge and on-demand, so advisers can watch at a time that suits them.

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[1] CoreData Adviser Pulse Check Survey, Q4 2021
[2] FPA, Money & Life Tracker Report, September 2021

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently described burnout as an ‘occupational phenomenon’ and updated its definition to, ‘a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed’.

“Many people equate high performance with working harder,” Ms Bennett says. “This can create a great deal of workplace stress, which can ultimately lead to burnout. We believe that high performance is not about working harder, but about making the most efficient use of personal energy. It is about taking a neural, mental and physical approach that combines neuroscience, psychology and sports training principles.”

A neural approach is about using brain science to perform in the most efficient way possible. “Every brain functions in its own unique way and once you understand a bit more about how your own works, you can start working with rather than against what’s natural for you.”

She says part of this is understanding personal pace. “Working at your natural pace allows you to be as productive as possible with as little effort as possible. It includes working to your natural attention span and using your personal energy efficiently, which is likely to reduce stress.

“Attention spans vary. Fast-pace people, those who naturally operate quickly, tend to focus for quite short periods of time. People who naturally operate at a slower pace tend to focus for longer periods of time. One is not necessarily better than the other and, interestingly, one is not necessarily more productive than the other. It’s just the natural attention an individual needs to apply to a task in order to produce results.”

Ms Bennett says working at a natural pace also involves understanding when you are most productive, so that you can use your personal energy effectively. “It could be as simple as reserving low energy tasks – for example, sorting emails – when your personal energy is low and tackling more complex tasks when your energy level is higher. This translates to a better use of energy, because you are working at a pace that suits you.”

While she recognises that in a work environment this it is not always possible, all of the time, she says people often have more control over it than they think they do. “If you can work in this way, even for as little as an hour or two a day, it can make a big difference because it will mean you won’t be spending energy unnecessarily.”

The mental approach is about having a mind set for high performance and this, Ms Bennett says, boils down to three things

• Personal accountability
• Deciding what you are going to change, accept and remove from your life
• Making sure that your beliefs are aligned to your goals

“Taking personal accountability may mean using neuroscience to build new neural pathways to short-circuit negative pathways that have become a habit.”

The Queensland Government recently became the first in the world to use neuroscience to help stop people speeding. The campaign was designed by a behavioural neuroscientist and includes exercises which are aimed at changing driver behaviour by helping them to focus their attention on their driving rather than operating on auto-pilot.

“Sustaining high performance is also about being physically fit and healthy. This means not only paying attention to things like eating well and training, but also self-care; treating yourself as a priority, spending time doing things that make you happy and renew your energy and – much underrated but very important – getting enough sleep.

“Avoiding burnout is possible – but it requires a willingness to use our brains and our bodies to work for us, rather than against us.”

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Vanessa Bennett

The intersection of psychology and neuroscience demonstrates there is a lot that people can do to prevent mental health problems, according to Vanessa Bennett, CEO of Next Evolution Performance.

“Around half of all Australians will experience a mental illness in their lifetime,” Ms Bennett says. “However, in the same way that you don’t usually go from being physically fit and well one day, to being debilitated by illness the next, you don’t usually go from enjoying mental health to suffering mental ill-health overnight. It’s therefore reasonable to assume that many more than half of all Australians are either suffering a mental health problem or are somewhere on the spectrum away from enjoying mental health, and that’s too many.”

Ms Bennett says research reveals that each of us has a different level of natural mental fitness depending on a range of factors, including:

• genetic predisposition
• our experiences as a child and as an adolescent
• our innate reaction to physiological stress
• the way we naturally process information and the way we learn to process information

“However, despite any predisposition to mental health problems, there are a variety of tools we can use to help build our own mental fitness as well as the mental fitness of the people around us,” she says. “The biggest super power we all have is what we call attentional control.”

Attentional control is the ability to focus attention on helpful rather than unhelpful thought processes. “This is arguably the most powerful way to use neuroplasticity to increase mental fitness and therefore avoid mental health problems.”

Ms Bennett says we can train our brains to avoid mental ill-health, in the same way we train our bodies to avoid physical ill health and the tip is not to wait for a bad experience before starting that training. “That’s like waiting until marathon day before starting physical training,” she says. “We need to build mental fitness to help us cope with life’s challenges in advance of them happening. Prevention is better than cure.”

The World Health Organisation defines mental health as: a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.

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Vanessa Bennett

The Banking Royal Commission has brought down a set of recommendations, most of which look likely to be adopted by the Government, regardless of who wins the next federal election.

If adopted, these recommendations may force many financial services companies to introduce significant changes to their business models, within challenging time frames and this is likely to profoundly impact the mindset of financial services professionals.

Compounding this problem are other industry changes, the overall perception of the industry and the fact that all these issues must be juggled alongside the demanding day-to-day tasks of running financial services businesses.

“At a personal level, when first faced with having to deal with all that, people can feel overwhelmed,” said Next Evolution Performance (NEP) CEO, Vanessa Bennett. “It is never easy to cope with significant change, particularly when it is imposed and largely outside our control. It takes a lot of time, effort, energy and money.”

Ms Bennett said neuroscience indicates that when people feel overwhelmed, the amygdala – the part of the brain that detects danger – often overrides the rational thinking pre-frontal cortex, responsible for taking action.

“Unfortunately the amygdala hasn’t evolved to distinguish between a sabre tooth tiger and a possible threat to our business,” she said. “The amygdala asks one question all the time – ‘am I safe?’ The moment it senses danger it takes over, sometimes to such an extent that we give more energy to being stressed and anxious than to working through the challenges and problems. Productivity takes an instant and serious hit at the very time we need it most.”

When this happens, Ms Bennett said the brain needs to be immediately reset and the quickest way to do this is via diaphragmatic breathing – breathing deeply with the diaphragm, rather than taking short sharp breaths with the chest.

“After learning how to deal with short-term responses, we need to think longer term. We need to decide whether we can change anything and if so, how, what we are prepared to accept and what we simply have to remove from our lives.”

If the Banking Royal Commission recommendations are implemented, people may feel as if they are not in control of a major part of their business lives. This can wire the brain to be problem rather than solutions driven.

“If, for example, our brains are wired in such a way that we truly believe that the only successful way to run a financial services business is the way it was run prior to the Banking Royal Commission, then we will also believe that any other way will ultimately be unsuccessful,” Ms Bennett said. “The interesting thing that neuroscience tells us is that we can’t cut existing wiring in the brain, but we can create new wiring by challenging beliefs.”

Ms Bennett said the key is to question what might be possible if a belief were untrue, look for evidence that it is untrue, actively choose to create an alternate belief – in this case, that success is possible – and then act as if it is already true.

“We are certainly not suggesting it is easy, especially given the level of change facing the industry, but a changed mindset can help people better cope and begin working towards solutions, rather than feeling totally overwhelmed by the challenges.”

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Now in its 14th year, the Award recognises emerging talent in the financial advice industry who provide quality advice, excellence in client experience, contribute to the financial literacy of their clients and demonstrate a commitment to ongoing professional development.

The 2018 AFA Rising Star of the Year Award finalists are:Rachael Bursell – Finance Your Future

• Andrew Debono – Announcer Group
• Sam Jewell – Rising Tide Financial Services
• Jacinta Martin – Altitude Financial Management
• Rebecca Pritchard – Wealth Enhancers
• Ryan Skeen – Zella

Phil Kewin, AFA CEO  said, “We are delighted to be able to recognise some of the best and brightest talent in our profession. These individuals will be the future leaders of our industry and will help our industry evolve through a period of change.

“It was a hard task to pick only six finalists from such a strong group of applications. They have all shown exceptional work with clients and are all innovating in their practices to provide quality advice.”

ANZ Wealth Head of Sales, Don Sillar, said, “We are very excited about the calibre of this year’s professionals. We are constantly impressed year after year by the industry’s best new advisers and 2018 brings no exception.

“This year’s program has a great pool of talent and we are honoured to be in the company of these professionals. They have already made great contributions to the industry through client service, outstanding advice and community engagement. It is important we support these advisers for the future of the advice industry and we look forward to helping them develop both personally and professionally.”

This year’s judging panel included:

• Phil Kewin – AFA CEO
• Don Sillar – Head of Sales, ANZ Wealth
• Jenny Brown – Founder and CEO of JBS Financial Strategists
• Vanessa Bennett – CEO Next Evolution Performance
• Patricia Garcia – Director and Financial Adviser WB Financial
• Matt Hale – Director and Senior Financial Planner Rising Tide

Finalists will attend a full day ‘Personal Breakaway’ workshop run by Slipstream Coaching on 12 September in Sydney, covering business, financial and personal objectives and ID profiling to help identify drivers and values.

The winner will receive quarterly, personalised coaching from experienced Business Coach and qualified financial adviser, Phil Little for 12 months.

The Award winner will be announced at the AFA National Adviser Conference at Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast on 10 October 2018.

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Help your team maximise their performance.

Following on from my our last discussion of self-responsibility – the more control people think they have in any situation, the more engaged and positive they will be. This has been shown to lead to a greater mind-set for high performance. Because let’s face it, there is at least a little control freak in most of us.

It will also have the win-win impact of freeing up your time. If you don’t give your team control to make decisions they will constantly feel the need to run everything by you, which can take up more of your time than really necessary.

So here are some tips to give more control to your team to increase everyone’s productivity……..

1) Let the team work as close to their natural pace as possible

We’ve discussed this in previous blogs and I can’t stress how much this impacts productivity and performance. By allowing fast paced people to jump around between tasks, and by keeping interruptions to a minimum for slower paced people, everyone will get through their to-do list more quickly. It will also feel easier which allows them to leave the office in the afternoon feeling ready for life rather than exhausted.

2) Teach people to manage their energy rather than their time

When people manage their energy rather than their time, things also feel easier. This also keeps “bad stress” down and gives a feeling of control back to people. And if you as the leader aren’t managing your energy instead of your time, your weaknesses in productivity will be compounded to your team.

So help your team to categorise their tasks as “heavy, medium and light” and move between tasks depending on how their energy is at the time. And of course if you manage fast paced people, encourage them to break down their heavy tasks into smaller bite-size chunks. They are more likely to procrastinate if they see the task as one big energy-draining task instead of a few smaller ones that can be done at different times.

You will find that deadlines become a thing of the past as tasks will get done way before they are due.

3) Give your team “enough rope to hang themselves”

Your role as a leader is to back your team. So let them make decisions and give them the tools to make good decisions. Sometimes they won’t make the decision you think is right but they may get a good learning experience from of the situation which will help everyone for next time.

Often it’s good to think about how bad is the potential downside of making the wrong decision versus what is the potential upside of the learning experience. If a lesson is learned by making the small mistake then let them make the mistake and figure it out for themselves.

4) Give them control of internal meetings

Many advisers find that internal meetings can be time consuming especially when there is preparation involved. Often it’s a great opportunity to empower staff to co-ordinate much of the preparation including setting the agenda and also chairing the meeting. They will increase their productivity in other areas by feeling more in control and you will have less on your to-do list.

5) Give them control of performance appraisals

Often people take a back seat in performance appraisal discussions leaving the leaders to feel as though they need to be coming up with the ideas for the career progression of others. Try taking the approach that the career progression is the responsibility of every individual in the business and not just the leader.

So staff should never be giving any “energy credits’ to not being happy about their career development if they haven’t been pro-active about coming forward with ways they can “step up” to help the leader and the business, and obviously utilize their strengths in the process.

6) Leaders should ask questions instead of provide answers to give the team more control

And another follow on from the last blog on self-responsibility is to make sure that people have been given the control to come up with the solutions to any issues, rather than just the problems themselves.

One of the best ways to do this is to ask questions rather than jump in and answer every question that is asked. Even a question from the leader like “What do you think we should do?” will start to break their habit of coming to you for solutions. When they know they will probably have a question thrown back at them they are more likely to think through options for solutions before they come to you.

An interesting exercise is to try to go for a week with only asking questions and not providing any answers. It will certainly feel clunky and quite frankly a little frustrating, but it will bring awareness to how often you provide answers instead of helping other people to think of their own solutions.

A closing note:

Trust is needed when you consider the concept of handing over control. Even if you find that difficult to do, you may just need to jump in and behave as though you trust everyone in your business to be able to “step up”. You will generally find that people will surprise you to the positive.

And remember, people may not do it exactly the way you do it or anywhere near as well as what you do it but consider the long-term benefits of additional productivity and engagement that will be gained for you and your business.

So go ahead and harness your inner control freak and capitalize on the inner control freak of others who work with you.

Vanessa Bennett is the CEO of Inside 80 Performance in Australia. She helps leaders and teams achieve sustainable high performance.

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Understanding the “change, accept, remove” principle can lead to better performance.

It makes sense conceptually that a business will be far more productive if staff are taking responsibility for as much as possible, and going above and beyond the call of duty, rather than pointing the finger with an attitude of “that’s not my job” or “it wasn’t my fault……”.

And obviously there are many points in between these two extremes, so if you are not at a full self-responsibility culture – here is some food for thought to improve your team’s performance and therefore bottom line for your business.

Where are your staff spending their energy credits?

In previous blogs we have discussed the concept of energy credits. Remember that energy credits are maximized when every part of “Brain, Body and Belief” are working together well. As a business leader you want to make sure your staff are coming to work with as close to their maximum 100 energy credits as possible.

Once they come to work with their energy credits, it’s important that you are helping people to spend them wisely. Spending 30 energy credits on something that should only take 10 isn’t the smartest way to improve your bottom line.

Complaining, negativity and blame all take energy credits and stop you from actually fixing the situation. If you are giving energy to feeling annoyed you aren’t giving energy to constructively fixing the situation. As a business leader you want your staff to be directing their energy credits constructively – not complaining around the water cooler.

And people’s brains are wired for defense so it’s important to make your staff feel safe. If anyone in the business is being negative or complaining – this can perpetuate through other staff members and lead to defensive behavior rather than constructive behaviour.

3 simple decisions to give your staff for any situation

Let’s face it – in any business there are always going to be things which don’t go according to plan and therefore have the potential to derail people and result in frustration and negativity – potentially a big drain on energy credits.

In his book “The Power of Now” Eckhart Tolle explains that in every situation, regardless of whether it’s work-related or not, you really only have three choices around how to deal with it:

1) Change the situation

This is where you empower staff to think constructively about what changes they can make to ensure the same unwanted result is not repeated next time. This is not about laying blame on anyone. It’s more about looking at the processes involved and where changes need to be made.

It’s about people owning the situation and firstly considering what they could have done to prevent the situation. For example rather than pointing the finger and saying that another person didn’t get the information to them on time, it’s realizing that they could have gone to the other person a few days before due date to see how that person was going with the information and if they needed any help to ensure the deadline was reached.

2) Accept the situation

This means full acceptance of the situation and that everyone involved has accepted that it is ok for this situation to occur again. Full acceptance means that there will be no negative chatter or commenting in the kitchen behind people’s backs.

3) Remove yourself from the situation

This one is easy – If someone refuses to either constructively change the situation, or accept the situation, then they are very welcome to remove themselves from the situation – ie leave the business. This may sound harsh but everyone has choices and the more control you give someone in a situation the more that everyone wins.

Where people are working with you because they feel they do not have any other choices – there is an argument to suggest that you may not want them working with you in the first place.

It’s important to set the culture that you want to have people working with you who really want to be there. This is a far more positive and productive situation for your bottom line.

Are you rewarding self-responsibility behaviours to make them more likely to occur again?

Explaining the “change, accept, remove” model to staff and rewarding them for showing examples of using this model to resolve situations and change mindset is a big step to encouraging a culture of self-responsibility and high performance mind-set.

When staff know that they are going to be rewarded and not reprimanded for putting up their hand and suggesting something they could have done to help a situation everyone is far more likely to come up with constructive ways to consistently enhance your business.

Rewarding constructive behaviour is far more beneficial than reprimanding sub-optimal results!

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Body, Brain and Belief

In 2014 we explored the foundations of high performance. We highlighted that in order to maximise your performance you need to maximise your energy. And your energy comes from three broad categories – Body, Brain and Belief.

This year we are going to focus on the “belief” aspect. We will look at practical tips to help you and your teams to improve your mindset for high performance.

Know why you do what you do (your “why”)

One of the foundation steps in creating a high performance mindset is to know why you do what you do. It’s important to know this at the business level, at the leadership level and at the individual level.

In his book “Start with Why” Simon Sinek discusses that while it’s important to know “what” you do and “how” you do it, the most successful companies perform by having a strong connection to “why” they do it. And when your staff and clients know and engage in your “why”, keeping clients and staff becomes much easier and therefore more profitable.

How to determine your “why”

Whether it be from the point of view of the leaders who started the business or why the employee joined the business in the first place, it is important to make sure people have the tools to determine their deeper “why”.

From the standpoint of the leaders who started the business it’s important to ask “why did they start the business” And when they get that first answer, the next step is to ask “and why is that important” and then continue to ask that question of each answer until you get to a deeper reason. One financial planner I spoke with about started her practice s to help all females have access to financial security and when probed more about why that was important to her, it was to carry on her mother’s legacy and actively make a contribution to the financial well-being of as many women as possible so that they don’t have to suffer financially like her mother did.

That’s far more powerful than just “I provide financial advice”.

From the employee’s standpoint if the mentality of an employee is “because I needed a job”, that won’t be a very effective “why” to connect with and he or she probably won’t be a very engaged employee which will lead to sub-optimal productivity and therefore will adversely affect the bottom line of the business.

It is then important to help them think further about this by asking “Why did they need the job?” and once you get another response then repeat the process by asking “Why is that response important to them?”.

Once you start getting to responses which are more around deeper values rather than things like technical skills, you are tapping into the passion of what gets them out of bed in the morning. Once you have that it is important that it becomes a habit to remember this.

Connect employee’s “why” to the business “Why”

Once the employees are connected to their “why” they will generally start to show an improvement in their productivity quite quickly. When you can take it a step further and connect this to the “why” for the practice, the results will really start to improve.

When employees feel they are part of a bigger picture and are connecting to why you are all in business together engagement will then start to go to another level. Think about a company you know where you really love the product or service and therefore you feel significant brand loyalty to that company. Maybe it’s to a particular car, or an airline? Chances are it’s because the staff exhibit a high level of engagement. A large part of that engagement generally comes from the passion associated with the product or service they are providing.

Use the interview process to probe deeper as to your future staff member’s “why”

Many times in interviews we hear the standard question – “why do you want to work for us”. But if we can take this line of questioning a few layers deeper about the real “why behind doing what they do” you may even save yourself the pain of hiring someone who isn’t connected to you and the “why” of your business in the first place.

Relate the “why” to service to others

Of course given that financial planners are in a service profession, a “why” connected to a deep desire to serve others in a specific way will obviously be beneficial.

Relate even simple tasks to the “why”

All tasks, even administrative tasks such as addressing letters and envelopes without spelling mistakes, are more likely to be done well when you know your “why”. In many cases something as simple as spelling and grammar creates that first impression with a potential client. Many a client has decided to go elsewhere when their name has been incorrectly spelled.

If you explain the dollar value of potential lost revenue to the business and the effect it has on the ability of the business to live up to its “why”, it’s easier for people to see the bigger picture therefore be more engaged in doing a great job for themselves and for the business.

So try to start this year by focusing more on your why rather than the how and the what and notice the great results you will have in terms of employee and client engagement – and that can only mean good things for your bottom line.

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Understanding the foundations of high performance.

• What’s really holding you back from maximum productivity?

• How to plan your days and weeks for maximum output with less effort

• Have you planned for productivity (output) or hard work (input)?

So before we go onto some of the deeper issues concerning high performance, it seems like a good time to do a recap of some of those concepts, along with a few extra ideas, to cement the foundations.

So let’s recap…….

The key to improving performance and decreasing effort is to operate as closely as possible to your natural pace.

So many people focus on one-size-fits all ways to improve performance and productivity without focusing on ways to reduce the effort involved in doing so. Remember there is an inverse relationship between unnecessary effort and sustained performance. Think of it like this…..

Sustained performance = productivity – unnecessary effort

Now we are not saying that performance is effortless – definitely not!   It’s the unnecessary effort that brings down your results and this is where personal pace plays a big role.

The closer you work to your natural pace – the easier things will feel and the less time things take to get done. For example if your natural pace gives you a focus time of around 45 minutes, working on 90 minute task will probably take you more like 105 minutes if you don’t take a break with a lighter task in the middle. That is an extra 15 minutes of lost overall productivity and you’ll probably feel more mentally drained than if you broke the task up into two intervals.

If you make this change four times a day – that is an extra hour of productive time with less effort per day and less stress! In accountant and lawyer speak – that’s an extra hour of chargeable time per day!!

Remember if you (or your staff) haven’t already done so go to www.inside80performance.com to calculate your pace.

Different paces need to be accommodated to maximise team productivity

Knowing your own pace is certainly useful to improve your own personal performance and reduce your effort levels, but what about when people of different paces need to work together?

Often it’s beneficial to have people with different paces working together, but if the concept of pace is not understood, it can lead to tension in the team which ultimately decreases the team performance and increases everyone’s effort levels – clearly the opposite of the desired result.

The more you know about the natural pace of those around you, the more you are able to understand how others like to work.

So for example if you are fast paced and distractions and interruptions are not a cause for stress, spare a thought for those slow paced people who might prefer to meet with you at a dedicated time instead of being interrupted every time you have your next “brainwave” that you would like to share with them.

Remember, in business it’s not “treat others how YOU want to be treated” – it’s “treat others how THEY want to be treated”.

Recovery is crucial for optimal performance

This is one of the hardest concepts to come to terms with – recovery will actually help your performance rather than hinder it. It is difficult to get our heads around this concept given we are mostly all brought up to work really hard and that recovery time is therefore considered lazy. Therefore many of us feel guilty for taking recovery time as we feel there is always something else we should be doing.

Remember the inverse relationship between unnecessary effort and productivity. Just like athletes – a small recovery enables you to “repair” so that you can take your performance to new heights after the recovery time.

If it helps, think of recovery as an important part of your productivity plan and schedule it.

Prioritising your most urgent task first is so old school.

Most people prioritise in a way where they focus on the most urgent task first and then focus on the next urgent task. This approach is inherently flawed and will actually decrease your productivity and increase your effort.

Managing your energy by mixing up your day between Heavy, Medium and Light energy tasks can help with your prioritization.

Hear me out on this one……What happens if the most urgent task is going to take three hours and you consider it a really heavy energy drain especially if you are a fast paced person? Well the task will probably end up taking you five hours and you will be too mentally exhausted to want to do anything after that. What an unproductive way to operate!

Let’s face it, we are all managing a number of different tasks which all need to get done by a certain time. Try categorizing your tasks into Heavy, Medium and Light and then work on each one for a length of time that is right for your natural pace.

By moving around between tasks according to your natural pace you will get more done way before the deadlines and it will also feel much easier for you. You have more control over this than you think you do. Go on give it a go!

Body, Brain and Belief – all three are necessary to maximise your energy and productivity

So many times when people think of high performance they are only focused on what happens inside the workplace rather than outside the workplace (often referred to as wellbeing). This can be a risky trap to fall into. It’s very difficult to improve your performance if you are tired – physically or mentally.

So the question of how to improve performance actually becomes a question of how to improve your energy.

Think of it in terms of maximizing your “Energy Credits” (ECs). Say the maximum ECs we can all wake up with is 100, think about where those credits come from. Broadly speaking…….

Max 100 ECs = ECs from “Body” + ECs from “Brain” + ECs from “Belief”

Quick reminder that “Body” is factors like fitness, nutrition and sleep. “Brain” is all about how you structure your days, weeks, months, meetings, inboxes etc and how you work to your personal pace. And “Belief” is mindset. A positive mindset has been proven to be associated with greater productivity, profitability and creativity. More about that in coming blogs!

Of course once you wake up with 100 ECs, it’s just as important to make sure you only spend 100 ECs. And if you are waking up with less than 100 ECs, then you have less to spend which means you can’t possibly be as productive as someone waking up with 100 ECs. You don’t need a PhD in Mathematics to figure that one out.

So if you and your team are looking to improve performance, you need to focus on all three components.

Remember – you can have wellbeing without high performance but it’s virtually impossible to have high performance without wellbeing.

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Don’t be held back from being your best.

When people think of trying to maximise their productivity, the conversation generally tends towards things you can do differently in the workplace.  And admittedly, most of my recent articles have focused on the work aspect.

There is actually a lot more to your productivity than focusing just on what happens during the day at work.

Essentially your output will be maximised when your energy is maximised.  Don’t even think about trying to pretend to be at your productive best if you are lacking in energy.

Now we are not talking about anything “new age” here.  We are just talking about the strength and vitality required for sustained mental or physical activity.

In order to understand how to maximise your energy you need to look outside the workplace, not just inside the workplace.  At Inside 80 Performance we talk about three broad categories – Body, Brain and Belief.  

If you were to think of every possible aspect as to what gives you energy or what takes it away from you, most things would fit into at least one of the below categories.

Let’s look at each of these:

Body

Your energy from your body depends on the physical aspects of how you look after your body.  For example are you exercising? Do you eat enough nutritious foods to give you energy? Are you getting enough sleep?

Brain

This is the part which is incorporates most of the things which happen in the workplace.  For example, are you working closely to your natural pace?  Are you factoring in recoveries and lighter tasks as part of your broader productivity plan?  Are you managing your diary to help you to get the most amount done in the least amount of time or do you spend more time “looking busy”?  How do you manage email and meetings?

Belief

This features in all aspects of your life.  For example do you have any limiting beliefs that are preventing you from reaching your full potential in work and in life?  Do you have a high ratio of positive thoughts to negative thoughts or is your lack of positivity holding you back?  Do other people’s actions affect your feelings and ultimately your productivity?

Everything is related

The interesting thing about all of these is that they are all inextricably linked.  Think of all of these aspects like a windshield.  If a crack starts to appear in one part, you need to address it or it will start to spread to other areas of your life.

For example – some people may find cracks occurring in the “body” component – if you aren’t eating good fuel to sustain your day at work your energy will decrease.  And if your energy decreases – ironically you will crave more bad food that is high in sugar.

To take that further, if you are not eating right then chances are you won’t be able to do much physical exercise.  Lack of exercise is also a big factor in depleting your energy.  Once you are lacking in energy from not looking after your body properly it may extend to other areas – for example your belief.

Generally speaking your positivity goes up when you feel good physically so if you don’t feel like you’re in peak performance mode physically, chances are you will start to feel a little more negative.  Once you feel negative this can permeate through to your behaviour at work that can affect you and those around you.  It can reduce not just your productivity but the productivity of those around you.

Others may find their cracks appear in the brain component – lack of time management for their pace leaves them feeling exhausted, this then flows through to their mind-set and of course if they have bad time management then chances are they are not exercising as let’s face it, no one has time for exercise – you need to create it.

It is important to look at all components – Body, Brain and Belief

Every person is different.   People can be energised and conversely stressed by completely different things.  In other words the windshield cracks will be different for everyone.  Some people need to focus on their fitness and nutrition to increase their productivity and decrease their effort in the work place.

Others need to focus on their positivity while others need to focus on how they manage their work in relation to their natural pace, just to name a few more examples.

Once you have determined the source of what is actually draining your energy you can then focus on these areas to give you the biggest results.

There is no “one-size fits all” approach

It’s quite easy for anyone to come up with at least 100 ways to improve energy.  The better solution is to identify just two to three things that you can do to improve your energy.

Making changes takes energy and given that we want to increase energy we don’t want to spend any unnecessary effort trying to make changes that don’t yield big results for you personally.  Therefore it’s important to make sure that the few changes you identify will give you the biggest results for the least amount of effort.

After all, that is what productivity is all about.

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