The Invisible Skill

Today I want to talk about the single most underrated skill in professional life and it's not going to be what you think it's not going to be networking it's not going to be public speaking it's not going to be some technical thing you need to go take a course on it's energy it is the energy you bring into a room and I need you to stay with me here because I know it sounds a little bit soft and I know it sounds like something that you would embroider on some throw pillow but I've been thinking about this for a while now and I am increasingly convinced that the person who shows up every single day with a good attitude who's reliable who's positive who's ready to work that person is ahead of 95% of the room and it could be if you're working for a company it could be if you're building your own company the same rule applies it's not because of talent and it's definitely not because of connections it's not because of some master class they bought from some guru online it's just because most people cannot sustain that that energy that good energy for more than a few weeks and the ones who can become impossible to ignore and I've seen this play out over and over on the podcast I've done hundreds of interviews at this point some of my guests were very famous some had built companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars some had the kind of track record that really speaks for itself but some of the best episodes I've ever recorded came from people that I'd never heard of before they sat down I mean like I guess I heard of them but they aren't the big names right and the difference like what they brought every single time was good energy like guests who showed up engaged curious ready to actually go somewhere real in the conversation those were the episodes that performed and I've had guests with incredible resumes people you would recognize and you'd know their name and they sat across from me and they had delivered you know 45 to 60 minutes of this flat rehearsed corporate talking points just nothing it was going through the motions but then I've had first time founders with zero media training absolutely light up the room because they brought something that you can't fake they're they're happy they were glad to be on the podcast they were glad that they were able to talk about their business like it lit them up it gave them energy and you could feel it in the content you could feel it through the microphone now I've stopped being surprised by this because it's happened so many times the person with the best energy in the room tends to be the person who gets the most out of the room and that pattern extends way beyond podcast interviews and there's actual real science behind why this works so there was a researcher at warden named sigle barsade who spent years studying something she called emotional contagion and her findings were kind of wild you actually sit with them and understand them and learn what she was looking into she found that moods transfer between people in groups the same way that viruses transfer between bodies and when catch a cold so you catch the emotions of the people around you and they catch yours and most of the time nobody involved has any idea that it's happening it is completely unconscious now here's where it gets interesting so she ran these studies where she'd put people in groups and she would plant one person in the group with a very specific energy so it could be positive or negative or calm or anxious or whatever but when that one plant that one person carried positive energy the entire group cooperated more they made better decisions and they actually rated their own performance higher just by being around a positive person so one person shifted the whole room and when that one person carried negative energy it dragged everything down that meant worst mood worst decisions and worse output across the board so think about that for a second one person's energy in a room of people is contagious enough to change the outcome of the work that everyone does not their ideas not their strategy just that one person's energy and because most people's energy fluctuates based on whatever happened to them that morning the person whose energy stays level becomes the anchor and people orient around them without even realizing that they're doing it they become the stable point in the room and that's not a small thing this is a massive advantage that almost nobody is thinking about so what does this mean for us right what does this mean for you and me in real life so if you have a bad morning a stressful call something goes wrong you're in a bad mood and you think you can just power through it you think you can just hop onto the next call or walk into the next meeting and nobody will know the difference but they do they always do and your tone shifts and your patience gets shorter and your face is doing things that you're not even aware of and the people on the other end of that conversation are absorbing it all without either of you realizing that this is even happening so you're not just having a bad hour you're making everyone else around you have a slightly worst hour too and I used to think this was just life like bad moods happen you push through whatever but once you understand once I understood that my energy is literally contagious that it is affecting the people that I'm working with and the people that I'm coming home to whether I want it to or not I started thinking about it completely differently so I stopped just planning what I was going to do in a day and started paying attention to who I was going to be when I did it and that brings me to a framework that I think makes this really concrete because most people here bring good energy and they just think it means be positive all the time be a beat be the person who's clapping at everything that's not what I'm talking about at all I'm thinking about it as thermostats versus thermometers okay and once you see this distinction you'll start noticing it everywhere so a thermometer reflects whatever temperature is already in the room so if the team is stressed they're stressed if morale is low they match it right if they're reactive their energy is just a mirror of whatever's happening around them the thermostat sets the temperature so they walk into the room and the room adjusts to them not the other way around so when things go sideways they're the steady one the person everyone looks to without even realizing that they're doing it you can just feel the shift when they show up right something settles not because they're pretending everything is fine but because their energy isn't at the mercy of the circumstances now I've worked with both I've been both and the version of me that sets the temperature has built everything I care about the version that reflects it has wasted more time than I honestly want to admit and I want to be specific about what setting the temperature actually looks like because I think people picture some motivational speaker type bouncing off the walls that's not it here's what it actually is here's what good energy useful energy actually is you're in a meeting and the project is behind schedule everyone's tense the thermometer person walks in already stressed matches the room and now it's heavier than it was before they got there the thermostat person walks in acknowledges the problem directly and immediately moves the conversation towards what's next they don't ignore the tension they just don't let it run the room that's it that is the entire difference that's what a good leader is if you've ever been around a good level headed steady leader that's them and this is a massive advantage over time a non-business example Jerry Seinfeld spoke about this once and the idea stuck with me so someone asked him how he stays consistent after decades of performing standup and his answer was basically that he treats energy like part of the job so it's not something that just happens to you it's something you prepare for and you protect the same way you protect any other part of your craft so he structures his entire day around being at peak energy when it's time to perform sleep diet routine all of it in service of being able to show up and deliver when it counts and what struck me about that is here's a guy who's been doing this for over 40 years he's done thousands of shows he could probably do a set on autopilot at this point but he's still treats his energy as the thing that has to be managed above everything else not his material not his delivery it's his energy because he knows that if the energy is right everything else follows and if the energy is off it doesn't matter how good the material is the audience feels it they always feel it and this is true for you too your team feels it your partner feels it your clients feel it Gina called me out on this not too long ago she said something like you know when you come home after a day they didn't go well you don't have to say anything I can feel it the second you walk through the door and she was right see I thought I was keeping it to myself I thought I was compartmentalizing but I wasn't it was leaking into everything and I was the last person to really see it and that hit me because if the people closest to you can feel your energy without you saying anything imagine what your team is picking up on imagine what your clients are picking up on you think you're hiding a bad day you're not you're just the only one who thinks you are and I've lived both sides of this in my own work there have been stretches where I was grinding not sleeping enough eating like garbage just powering through because there was too much to do and in those stretches everything suffered the podcast was worse uh conversation with Gina was worse decision making was worse not because I suddenly forgot how to do my job but because I had nothing left to bring to it I was running on empty and first of all everyone around me felt it and everything around me showed it and then there's been stretches where I was locked in sleeping well training eating right protecting my mornings sometimes it's when I don't have to travel as much whatever it is in those periods the quality of everything went up same workload same responsibilities completely different outputs the only variable to change was the energy I was bringing to it now here's the part that I think most people get wrong about this and I got it wrong for a very long time too everyone can bring good energy on day one a new job a new project a new relationship everything's fresh the enthusiasm is real so you are showing up ready to go that's easy that is a adrenaline the real test is what happens around week three so something goes wrong there's a setback a slow stretch a frustrating conversation and that's where most people's energy becomes reactive it starts getting dictated by what's happening to them instead of what they're choosing to bring I like to call this the two week wall so once I started paying attention to it I saw it in myself and I saw it in basically everyone around me about two weeks of sustained positive energy and the environment starts to pull you back to whatever your default is and for most people the default is reactive so people get stressed when things are stressful people get low when things are slow or frustrating people get frustrated when things aren't working people just sort of mirror and reflect whatever life or the situation hands them the people I've watched build careers and companies and relationships that actually compound over time they treat their energy like a practice they are deliberate about sleep about what they eat about how they start their day about creating space between the hard moments and the important ones and the people who don't the people who just let their energy be whatever the day makes it they are at a disadvantage that they can't even see now none of that is glamorous none of this would make a good Instagram post but it's a stuff that lets people show up the same day on day 300 as they did on day one and good energy reliable energy being mindful of your life and how it impacts how you show up and everything that consistency over years it creates a gap between them and everyone else that is honestly impossible to close and here's the thing that keeps hitting me when I think about this the bar is so much lower than you'd expect most rooms are full of people operating on fumes they're distracted by their phones they're carrying stress from the last meeting into the next one they're half present they're drained they're running on caffeine and willpower and honestly not much else that's the competition and in that context the person who shows up rested attentive and actually ready to engage doesn't just stand out they become the person everyone wants to work with sit next to partner with hire promote invest in not because they're the most talented person in the room because they're the one whose energy makes other people better at what they're doing so in a world where most people hit that two week wall and never push through it the person who can sustain good energy starts getting picked for things they never even applied for opportunities just start showing up and that is not luck it's that people want to be around someone who makes the room feel better and there are shockingly few of those people in most environments now I want to get practical for a second because I think this is what really matters if you are listening to this and you're honest with yourself you probably know what your energy has been like lately you know whether you've been the thermostat or the thermometer you know whether you've been setting the temperature or just reflecting whatever's been happening around you and if the answer is that you've been reactive here's what I actually want you to do about it first look at your inputs what are you consuming in the first hour of the day if you're waking up and immediately checking your email or scrolling your phone you're handing control of your energy to other people before you've even decided what your day is about that is thermometer behavior you are letting the world set your temperature before you've had a chance to set it yourself second protect the transitions the 10 minutes between one thing and the next thing is where most people's energy leaks you go from a stressful conversation straight into the next meeting and you carry all that tension with you without even realizing it build a buffer even five minutes I want you to walk and breathe and reset that's the difference between walking into the next room still carrying the last one and actually being present for what's in front of you and thirdly track it not in some elaborate system just ask yourself at the end of the day did I set the temperature today or did I reflect it that's it one question and over a few weeks you start to see the patterns you were gonna see which situations drain you which ones bring out your best and where your wall is because the thing is that nobody is gonna manage your energy for you nobody's gonna tap you on the shoulder and say hey you've been off for the last two weeks maybe fix that it's invisible but it's real doesn't show up on any performance review doesn't show up in your relationship it doesn't show up in whether or not you raise your next round of funding or you sell to your next customer or grow your business it's not gonna show up today it's just gonna make it a lot harder to accomplish all of those things there's no metric for it but the people who figure it out the ones who treat their energy as something they actively build and promote they end up in a completely different place and everyone around them it's not because they worked harder it's not because they were smarter it's because they were the person in the room who made the room better by being in it and they did that consistently for years that's the invisible skill and it is available to every single person listening to this right now you don't need to buy anything you don't need to learn anything new you just need to decide it how you show up matters as much as what you do when you get there