You maximize the collaborative potential of a team by maintaining an environment that supports creative energy. And you do that by optimizing the natural relationship between energy and ideas.
Consider, for example, professional sports teams such as those in the National Football League. Players at that level all have amazing skill and experience levels and they are all naturally talented athletes. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be playing. So, what makes the difference in games at that level? It certainly has a lot to do with energy and how they are able to optimize that relationship between the energy and the ideas we might think of as knowledge, skills and so forth.
I think we have all experienced the challenges of working on teams – challenges that can have teams working below their potential. Things that can get in the way include: self interest, judgment of self or others, unmatched skill levels, loyalty issues and ideas of fairness. Notice that all of those have to do with ideas as the driver and decision maker or guide.
The most effective relationship that I have seen between energy and ideas is the one where energy is the guide and ideas are naturally created and organized in a way that unfolds from that energy. And the energy that I am talking about is resonant energy. You and your team experience that energy as a common feeling that your work with an entrepreneur exiting a business just feels like the right thing for you to be doing. In other words, the work resonates with you and you are in the game you love.
When you approach your work from that energetic place, the most useful ideas will tend to come forward naturally in that collaborative environment. People in the XPX community tend to be like those NFL football players in that they have great knowledge and skills. There often isn’t any great advantage of one person’s skills over another, so the scales tend to be tipped in one’s favor by optimally handing that relationship between energy and ideas.
Here are three tips for supporting that optimal relationship:
- Think of potential as present opportunity to be recognized and engaged, rather than a future standard to be achieved – energy only exists in the present moment
- Be clear on the difference between the energetic game that you are playing and your rules for playing that game – rules & ideas change while the common resonance of the team doesn’t
- Be comfortable with a philosophy of discovery rather than control – entrepreneurs don’t like to be controlled, they like to discover what works
Here is my thought for you: know what the most effective guide (resonant energy or North Star) for you and your teams is. Don’t lose your connection with it. It is your energetic foundation.
I think the opportunities today are unparalleled in history and at the same time, you are required to respond to change like a sailor continually adjusting for the changing wind. As each day goes by, evolving awareness of the energy of the team, the entrepreneur and the market becomes not only more critical but also more thrilling if you are fully in your game.
I encourage you to take some time to check your own energy, the energy of the team and the energy of the entrepreneur. Most if not all of the challenges you face can be handled by optimizing that relationship between energy and ideas.
Here is a quote about the cause of failure from one of the foremost experts in mythology, Joseph Campbell.
“Every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid in the end to a restriction of consciousness.”
Based on my experience and research, a restriction of consciousness is always caused by ideas subverting energy. Engage in your game at the level of your potential – a level where energy is the guiding and deciding factor.
An expert in the entrepreneurial mindset and the creative process, Ted Case is the creator of 10,000 Year Thinking®, a dynamic model for today’s forward-thinking entrepreneurs and leaders, and CEO of Expanding Dynamics, where he provides coaching and workshops for entrepreneurs and teams.
Ted spent 25 years developing businesses in the food industry and the last 15 years as a coach/trainer working in entrepreneurial development and leadership.
Originally posted by XPX Global on March 25, 2014 at 1:38pm