Insights From The Power of Full Engagement
by Vic Wiens
The title of this article comes from the title of the book, The Power of Full Engagement*, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. Full engagement is the opposite of burnout, which we explored briefly in last month’s newsletter.
Loehr and Schwartz present a comprehensive system for avoiding burnout and achieving full engagement. Jim Loehr is the chairman, CEO, and co-founder of LGE Performance Systems, which developed its expertise through helping professional and Olympic athletes achieve phenomenal results in a competitive athletic environment. Over time these performance principles were applied to the business environment with equally impressive results. Tony Schwartz is the president and founder of The Energy Project, which focuses on igniting a fire in the hearts of organizations and their leaders. Their Loehr & Schwartz full engagement system is summarized in the following chart.
The Power of Full Engagement |
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Old Paradigm |
New Paradigm |
- Manage time |
- Manage energy |
The Power of Full Engagement system is based on four principles:
Principle #1: “Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.”
Principle #2: “Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal”.
Principle #3: “To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do”.
Principle #4: “Positive energy rituals – highly specific routines for managing energy – are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.” These positive energy rituals are behaviors, fueled by deeply held values, that become automatic over time.
At the heart of the power of full engagement is the concept of “working out” and resting each of the four dimensions of our being, the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Burnout, then, is not the result of too much stress but of uninterrupted stress and imbalanced stress.
I read The Power of Full Engagement for the first time in September 2006 and have been trying to apply the principles to my life. What I am finding is that my current “ruts” are very deep and it is not so easy to live by these principles. Loehr and Schwartz also address this difficulty through their three-step change process they call Purpose-Truth-Action.
As with so many things in life, it is much easier to understand what to do than to do it. For this reason, we must very carefully choose the changes we will focus on making. Choosing a good mentor can also make a very big difference if you need to get out of a deep rut. Vic Wiens Consulting has designed its mentoring program to be a catalyst for you to experience The Power of Full Engagement.
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