S1E15 - Energy & Visibility – Leaders Set the Temperature

In this episode of Leadership Matters, Glenn and Terry unpack the second amplifier that cuts through every part of the Vision to Results framework: energy and visibility. Visibility isn’t about being seen—it’s about how people feel after spending time with you. And energy isn’t hype or noise—it’s the emotional currency that fuels belief, momentum and progress.

Together they explore how leaders unintentionally drain or elevate their teams, why “busy” is not a leadership strategy, how hybrid work changes the game, and why visibility of progress matters just as much as visibility of the leader.

The final provocation: If your people’s energy mirrored yours this week, what would they look like?

Transcript

Welcome to Leadership Matters, a podcast created by Leadership Consulting that helps leaders take a vision and deliver results. My name is Glenn Price, one of the directors at Leadership Consulting, and I'm joined today by my business partner and co-host Terry Reynolds. And this is the last of 14 episodes, 12 of which were focused specifically on the drivers that give you the best chance of taking a vision and delivering a result.

And on the previous episode, we talked about the first element, if you like, we call them amplifiers, which we named clarity and communication, how that cuts through absolutely everything. It's the lifeblood, if you like, of the framework. This particular episode is taking a look at the importance of energy and visibility, which also cuts all the way through. And in the vision to results book, say, look, leaders don't just set direction, right? They set the temperature. And we often talk about visibility like it's showing up, right? we're doing the town halls, we're doing the videos, we're doing the walk arounds. But I don't think visibility is about being seen. It's more about how a leader creates a feeling. It's how they connect with people at an emotional level, because I reckon people can tell when a leader switched on versus when they're just going through the motions. this is the right thing to walk the floor.

Right. And energy, if that's the second piece, then that's the contagion of leadership. You're either fueling the system or you're or you're draining it. And so for me, visibility is not just walking around. It's it's the connection that you have with people and there's different levels of that. And energy, I think, is can you still talk with the same passion and enthusiasm and drive about your strategy and vision on day three sixty five as you did on day one when you launched it at the Leadership Conference. Yeah, look, I think that's really interesting, Glenn. I think that I know of people that, you know, walked the corridors and I think that, you know, it's another tick box. I've been out to see the troops. I have touched the common man. Yes, I've been out there, talked to everybody, et cetera. But I think that, you know, our team's a smart people. They know that there is nothing genuine about that it's purely just doing it because you need to do it. I think that there's a demonstration of care. You need to demonstrate authenticity. And that is that the questions that you communicate and ask your team, you're genuinely interested in what the responses are. You want to feel the temperature. You want to be able to know what's going on, feel close enough that people can connect with you. The old open door policy and all of that.

I think you need to get out of your office and actually go and talk to people. It's interesting. was in a setting up for a board meeting with a customer a couple of weeks ago and I noticed that the CEO wasn't there and it was within sort of 10 minutes, five minutes to go. And so normally we'd be aligning and prepping up for what we wanted to get out of that day. But the office I was seated in had a glass window and I could see where the CEO was. He was talking to one of the junior salespeople.

And when he came in and sat down, he shared the story of, I just sat and connected with this person and I thanked them for their work on this latest bid. I went, what part of that gave you the most energy? And do you know what? I was very lucky after the meeting to connect with that person that the CEO had spent some time with. And they were blown away that their CEO had spent 10 minutes really connecting.

And so that for me definitely is the visibility part. I think the other part of visibility, although connected to leaders, is another communication thing. And that is we talked about the importance of having a dashboard of measures that matter, or people covet what they see every day. So get it up on a wall and go, this is the strategy, or this is the progress we're making. Make sure that the progress that we're making against those base camps is visible to every single person.

I tend to find that exec teams, it's really visible because it's in a weekly or fortnightly deck and then operational leaders, they might do something on a monthly and quarterly basis. But when I'm talking about visibility of our progress, I want it to go all the way down to somebody working in a BPO call center that's serving a customer. And they know that their job mattered because it helped that thing progress or it's, you know, somebody that's dealing with an internal customer and they're able to, so right at the call phase.

That strategy, the action plan to help people continue their level of belief and desirability, I think it needs to be visible. And they need to see themselves reflected in that progress. And I think the only way that people can do this is that they've got… …they've created space to be able to do it. See, some people, again… …and I've worked in these types of organisations where being busy is a badge of honour.

Right? Running from one meeting to the next, to the next, to the next. Well, if you're doing that as a leader, you cannot demonstrate visibility through that because you're always on a team's call or you're in an office with them in a meeting, et cetera. You have to create the time to be able to do this, I think, purposely. Because otherwise, if you just leave it to the, when I get time, I'll do it. I think that the average leader out there's probably not going to find the time to be able to do it. They may not rate it as that important. Or they do it and it's simply optics. Yeah. Right. So I did the walk the floor and I ate lunch in the common area so that people… And the conversation isn't with the team about how busy you are, you know. It shouldn't be about how busy I am. How's it going? don't ask me. I'm flat out… You wouldn't want my job.

You wouldn't want my job. All of those types of things. It's just like these are not the types of conversations you want to have. You want to come across as in control, quite relaxed, focused, but genuinely caring about the people that you're talking to. Well, it's that care piece. think in the book we say visibility without connection is just noise and it's that connection that shows genuine, authentic care. Whether that be, I would say visibility is as important with your customers as it is with your team members and colleagues, That availability that we talked about. Let's move the conversation from visibility and talk about energy. We often say that energy is emotional currency. Tell me more about that. Well, I think at the end of the day, we're talking about it really sets the tone and the mood within the organisation itself. People are going to see a stressed out, fast talking, fast walking type individual and generally that's going to set, it's going to get people going, my God, I don't want your job. you want… So what you've said is that when a leader hits the floor or the lift door opens or walks to your office or is on site or in your facility, whatever, that there's a level of energy that that leader brings. Now, I've certainly met some that we call energy vampires. You literally watch the room. They motivate a room when they leave, right, is the old gag.

But what I don't want our listeners to think is that in order to add positive energy, you need to be bouncing off the walls and high fives and claps and sort of this artificial bravado is that I've seen people bring the correct energy by being very calm. I've seen other leaders at what was required for the maturity of their strategy was actually a bit of drive and grit and a little bit of almost extraversion needed to be there. But I don't want people to think that energy is all high energy. It's the right energy that matters. Yeah, but also, you know, people might get energy from you based on your knowledge on something, your technical capability. Completely. All of those types of things impact your innovation. All of those types of things impact people's perception of you and they put it down to going, get energy from you just talking to you. walk out, we've all had leaders like this, you walk out of spending time with them feeling fantastic. And they're not jumping up and down on their desk or anything like that. It's just that the conversation that you have gives you energy. You're completely clued in, they're sharing information with you. You feel important, the most important person in that room. Sometimes even with a tough conversation.

Yeah, I remember a leader that I really respect once giving me some 360 feedback. And he chose the right energy level to do that. Now, it was a stomach punch for me at the time, but my connection and intimacy in our relationship went out with somebody I trusted. And that energy actually changed the way in which I started leading people from that point. I can point back to that moment and go, I made a conscious decision to do something different.

Hey, what daily signals do you think leaders send? Like in that example, it was a conversation with me. I wouldn't say it was a regular conversation. But if I said what regular daily signals do leaders send? Sometimes unconsciously, right? But they shape organisational energy because I don't think this comes down to one person. When you start going, hey, that's the culture of an organisation. There's this buzz, this heartbeat that's there. There's drive and grit and momentum and culture is I think an output, not an input. It's the result of all the behaviours that are happening. But I think that starts with leaders setting expectation of behaviours or ways of working and then holding people to it. They bring that, they signal that level of energy. What have you seen with the leaders that you've worked with? Yeah, no, definitely. I've seen leaders set the tone around expectation, outcome, quality of you know, whether it be the customer interaction or the employee interaction, I've seen the availability of time, then making sure that they're available for people. All of those types of things I think impact the way that the organisation feels. I mean, we often say, you know, that fish rot from the head. It's a terrible saying, but it's very, very true because all you need to do is look at the leader, you look at the executive team and you get a very, very good feeling as to what the tone, culture, whatever word you want to use has been set within the organisation. Yeah, the team almost mirrors the energy, right, of that particular leader. Yeah. Both good and bad. And not so good. And that's why the calmness, the deliberateness, all of those types of things, I think you consciously need to be aware of going, do I need to put across to my team? How do I need to be? What's the signal I want to send? What do I want to send?

We sometimes talk about those three circles, knowing, doing and being, don't we? And leaders know the right thing to do. And they do do the right thing occasionally when they're reminded or they find the time. But being energetic around the strategy and the progress, I think needs to, they're curated moments. I haven't met too many leaders that just do it off the cuff. They've thought, they're intentional and they're aware of the signals most of the time that they're sending and so they view it as an energy transfer. Once again, back to this analogy of batteries again, going, if you're having a hard day, use some of my energy, But done in a way that's palatable, that reflects brilliant culture. I was going to ask the question, what gets in the way and what sort of subtle behaviors from leaders kill energy?

I was going to just raise when you say that is I think to myself about hybrid working. And I think to myself, know, you've really, really got to think about going, how do I create visibility in a hybrid environment? Because we've, you know, many, many organisations are still two days off, two days at home, three days in the office, whatever the case would be. They're not off, they're working, but they're not in the office. I realise what I said then.

But the visibility part of it becomes a little bit more challenging, doesn't it? Well, it begs the question if the physically they're seeing you, right? So at least there's some level of visibility. My suggestion would be is that the first conversation that you should have is that strategy narrative and reward of progress so that your strategy in the progress we're making is visible. It's not about you being visible as the leader. So whether you're in a hybrid environment or whether you're in the office.

That's not, I saw my leader. I now have energy. That's not the point. The point is, do you know where we're up to with our strategy and how your role is valued within it? And you've got constant updates on that. And you're part of that dynamic conversation. I think from an energy perspective, when I'm executive coaching, I'm trying to get the execs to think about what they're doing in the 10 minutes before that call. Are they coming off a stressful call with the market or the street about the share price. And that's the energy that they'll bring into that call. they, have they just had a brilliant conversation with a potential new recruit, a talent magnet, somebody that's outstanding, they've got to change the game, and you're bringing them in and then you bring that energy. There's an Australian psychologist that studied this during COVID called the third space, and that's the space between the first team's meeting and the next one.

What are you doing in there to make sure that you're intentional in terms of your visibility and your level of energy and you're bringing that? Because I think you'd agree with me, people are going to get what you've got. If you're low… I remember leading a team in London for quite a few years and it was a typical London day, cold, sleety kind of weather. And as I came into the lift, one of my senior leaders came in at the same time.

And we're there in the London great coats and the suits. He unbuttoned his tie. He sort of shook the rain off his jacket and a huge breath out, a huge sigh and went, thank goodness I can just be normal again. And that caused me to stop and we went back down and grabbed a coffee and I went, hang on, you're about to walk onto a floor full of people where we're trying to energise them. And I appreciate that you've given energy to the customer. In fact, most of us are pretty good.

They're putting the mask on and giving the customer our energy. But how are you doing that? Do you have the same thoughts go through your head? How do you prepare yourself like we would for a customer for our own people? And actually even further extension, if you can put on that mask for both customers and employees at work, and then we get home with the people we love and we take that mask off, then they're getting a different level of energy as well. And so those three things need to be in balance.

So here are some top tips for leaders on how you can amplify the area of energy and visibility. Firstly, let's lead with frequency, not formality. So try to replace the occasional all hand speech or town hall with consistent micro moments of presence. Small frequent visibility beats big in for.

So here are some top tips for leaders on how to amplify energy and visibility. Number one, lead with frequency, not formality. We would encourage you to replace the occasional all-hand speech or town hall or Microsoft Teams meeting with consistent micro-moments of presence. Small, frequent visibility will absolutely be better than big, infrequent gestures that are seen as bit of like theater. 

Two, audit your impact. How do you know that we talked about this in the previous podcast? It's in the eye of the receiver. You might think you're inspiring and motivating people, but are you? Right. And so ask some trusted colleagues when I walk into a room or when I log into this meeting, what happened to the energy on this call or inside this room or inside this office? And then choose to act on the answer. 

Use energy as a diagnostic tool, right? Pay attention to the team energy levels after key interactions that you have with them. If people leave drained, clarity and execution will follow pretty fast. So there's an opportunity to go back and make sure that you add that level of energy that they need. 

And last of all, match your visibility to the moment back to what you were saying before. It's not just high fives and happy claps, right? Crisis's need presence, calm presence. Success needs amplification. Uncertainty needs reassurance. So know what kind of visibility and energy the system needs from you. and do it on purpose, with purpose. 

So that's the last amplifier, the first being clarity and communication, the second being energy and visibility, the cut all the way through the 12 drivers that help leaders take a vision and deliver a result. And the reflective provocation is if your people's energy mirrors yours, what would that reflection look like this week? We have one final episode which will wrap everything together for you and uncover some truths.