4 minutes
When you manage your energy with intention, you not only elevate your own effectiveness, you empower your team to thrive.
Energy is one of the most powerful elements in leadership, yet it’s also the one most leaders underestimate. We often focus on external elements when we think of great leadership such as developing a strategy, coaching employees, or facilitating meetings. But the way you manage and project your energy has a big impact on your effectiveness as a leader and the results of your team.
Managing your day isn’t just about managing time—it’s about directing your focus and energy to the right things, so you operate at peak performance and facilitate results in your role. By knowing your peak energy times, you can align them with your most important key result areas so you’re tackling critical work when your mind is sharp and your focus is strongest, rather than forcing it when you’re drained. In addition, the energy you project to others sets the tone for team performance.
Below are five ways to manage your energy for working and leading at your best:
1. Protect Your Core Energy
Leadership requires stamina and resilience—and that starts with your personal well-being. A great night’s sleep, regular exercise, and intentional renewal are foundational to leading at your best. When you’re depleted, your focus and memory suffer, and it’s much harder to regulate your emotions under pressure. Protecting your core energy ensures you can show up with clarity and intention.
2. Be Intentional with Your Focus
It’s easy to let your day get consumed by back-to-back meetings, emails, and “urgent” tasks. But leading from a constant state of reactivity drains your effectiveness. Block time for your most important priorities (I call these “Productivity Sprints”), and treat that time as non-negotiable. How you direct your energy determines whether you’re merely busy, or truly impactful.
These sprints aren’t for checking email or tackling busy work; they’re for focusing on your key results, the areas of your role that move the needle for your team and credit union.
For leaders, that means carving out space not just for strategic projects, but also for the core responsibilities of leadership: coaching your employees, developing your team, and providing clarity and direction. If you allow tasks and reactivity to dominate your day, you end up neglecting the very things that strengthen culture and performance. How you direct your energy determines whether you remain stuck in the cycle of “busy” or step into the more intentional, impactful role of influential leader.
3. Know and Leverage Your Peak Energy Times
We all have natural rhythms. Most people aren’t at their sharpest at 4 p.m.—yet many leaders save their most important work until the end of the day. Align your high-energy hours with tasks that require deep thinking, decision-making, and focus. Save lower-energy times for administrative work. This simple shift maximizes both your productivity and your leadership presence.
4. Notice the Energy You Bring to Others
Energy isn’t just about how you feel; it’s also about what you project. Every interaction carries energy, and your team is reading it whether you realize it or not. When you walk into a meeting, are you engaged, focused, and prepared, or do you appear rushed, distracted, and overwhelmed? While it’s normal to feel busy, taking a pause to set an intention before each interaction and meeting can help you show up more present and prepared. Your energy in those moments can change not just the meeting, but how people experience you as a leader. Be intentional with the energy you want to project to your team and colleagues, so you are viewed as professional, prepared, and intentional.
5. Model Energy Boundaries
Being approachable matters, but being available 24/7 isn’t sustainable. You can read about why I don’t like the open door policy—it’s a practice that is keeping leaders in reactive mode and draining energy. Set healthy boundaries around your time and presence, and communicate them to your team. By modeling this, you normalize balance and recovery, which strengthens not only your own energy but the team’s overall resilience. You can be both approachable and supportive without being constantly available.
Great leadership isn’t just about what you do—it’s about the energy you cultivate and project. When you protect your core energy, focus your efforts, align with your peak energy times, bring intentional energy into relationships, and model boundaries, you elevate both your impact and your team’s performance.
Laurie Maddalena, MBA, CSP, CPCC, is a professional speaker, leadership consultant and founder of CUES Supplier member Envision Excellence LLC in the Washington, D.C., area. Her mission is to rid the world of bad management practices and help organizations create cultures where people love to come to work. Maddalena facilitates management and executive training programs and team-building sessions and speaks at leadership events. Prior to starting her business, she was a human resources and organizational development executive at a credit union in Maryland. Contact her at 240.605.7940 or laurie@lauriemaddalena.com
