Energy-Based Leadership

“What do you think we should do about climate change?”

This was the thought question I posed to my younger siblings recently. It was a throwaway question really. One that I hoped that they would answer with an enthusiastic “start a recycling club at our school!”

I honestly would have been ecstatic with that answer.

Instead I got two blank, thousand yard stares. And then they gave me the worst possible answer I could have gotten to such an open-ended and optimistic question:

“I don’t know! What are we supposed to do about it? We’re in middle school!” Aiden laughed with his hands thrown up in the air.

I was LIVID.

The lack of ownership! The lack of agency! The helplessness! And worse — the excuse of impotence and incompetence to justify and excuse this nihilism! The audacity!

This was the future of our great country? What was our public education system (supposedly the best in the entire US!) doing to our youth? No wonder we were falling behind!

The phrase “I don’t know” is now banned in our house. Anytime Sophie and Aiden would have said “I don’t know,” they are encouraged to substitute it for “I’ll figure it out.” Why? Because “I’ll figure it out” is hopeful. It’s future oriented. And most importantly, it takes accountability.

I’m trying to teach Sophie and Aiden how to listen to their intuition and feel the truth of what they want. The reptilian part of your brain has been trained for millions of years. To rely solely on your cognition makes no sense. You should lean into the reptilian intelligence of millions of years of evolution and trust that because your reptilian brain is picking up on tons of sensory inputs that you can not even put into words if you tried. Your reptilian brain runs circles around your cognitive brain in the areas of understanding what you truly want, who you should spend time with, and what you truly give a shit about.

I also tell them that achieving anything requires two things: (1) belief in your capability to do the thing and (2) giving a shit about whatever you’re trying to do. I tell them this because I believe it to be true. Determination, hard work — all of those things follow belief. It is only by believing in yourself and your capabilities that you are able to trudge on with love and care, even if a million roadblocks are put in front of you. If you don’t care about what you are working on, if you don’t love it and let love fuel your actions, you will give up because it’s just not worth the trouble. The noblest thing you can invest your time into in this world is to figure out what the Japanese call your Ikigai (生き甲斐) — your reason for being. It exists at the intersection of what you are good at, what you love doing, and what the world needs.

When your heart and your mind are in alignment, you are truly unstoppable.

We need a world where people are doing what makes their heart sing — to live in any other kind of world is a waste of all of our lives indeed.

Recently, I became very convinced that I was dying imminently. I had no evidence for this besides the fact that I was suddenly meeting many ill people and found myself extremely drawn to them. This feeling of imminent death made me appreciate the gift of life so much more — to truly treasure it. I bought a mirrorless camera and took pictures of my mother.

“Why are you taking pictures of me? You’re making me look old!” my mother yelled at me as I snapped a picture of her cutting cabbage for pork buns.

“You look beautiful! I just want to capture this moment because it’s so fleeting. I can edit your pictures on the computer and digitally add make-up if you want.” I consoled her, taking a couple more pictures of the quotidian scene.

When I was young, I always assumed I would die tragically young because I couldn’t imagine myself old. I thought thirty was a pretty good round number. I lived with the expectation that I would die when I’m 30. At 28, I have 2 years left.

My friend Phillip has been slowly tricking me into upping that estimation. “Maybe just try to make it to 35?”

I’m sure when I hit 34, he will say “So, how about aiming for 40?”

And then one day I will wake up an old lady, having thought I would die at the ripe age of 30.

30 seemed SOO old when I was in high school. I guess I thought I would have more things figured out by now. The longer I live, the less sense everything makes. The world is unfathomably complicated and the 7 billion people on it, even more complicated. The diversity of lives lead, things cared about, people loved. It’s mind-blowing.

The moment that it really hit me that I knew nothing was this past year when I started interviewing high school applicants for my alma mater, Penn. I remembered how nervous I had been before my own college interview. The thought I put into crafting my “Thank You” email. The unimpressed look on my interviewer’s face when I had finished my rehearsed STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) interview answer to “What are you most proud of?” about building a Lego Mindstorm Mars rover model for my Research & Design class in high school. I realized in that moment that I was now where my interviewer was. I was 28 and was also at the Stanford GSB, exactly where my interviewer had been 10 years ago. I had somehow crossed that invisible bridge and one day woke up to be the interviewer instead of the interviewee. I realized just how little my interviewer must have felt she understood about the world when she interviewed me (or maybe she actually had the universe figured out, who knows?). And thus the cycle continues.

When I was 18, I felt like I understood the world perfectly. I felt like I understood how it worked and what I didn’t understand I felt like I could reason my way through, applying cold, hard logic to break it down to uncover satisfying nuggets of truth. I had confidence in my understanding of the world. The older I get, the more I realize that many things do not make sense — or they exist merely because people willed it into existence. We are apes in clothing. We have built all of these buildings and cities and restaurants and cars and airplanes and a million other things but we are still just apes in clothing. Are we worthy of this world? Are we the noblest of all creatures? Or are we a virus on this earth?

Goodness exists in all humans but there is also unfathomable darkness. We are spiteful and cruel but also caring, selfless, and capable. I believe in progress. I believe that generation after generation, things have gotten better. Our standards for what is acceptable evolves with every generation and always toward the more generous and gentile.

I am excited and optimistic about what the future holds but this future is only possible if we help people believe in themselves, equip them with the tools they need to fulfill their potential, and guide them toward what makes their hearts truly sing.

I am introducing today a new approach to leadership that I’ve been piloting at Comet. I’m calling it Energy-Based Leadership.

The leading rhetoric and modern approach to leadership today is “Strengths-Based Leadership”. My problem with Strengths-Based Leadership is that it is too static where I’ve found my own energy to vary and vacillate widely. Strengths-based leadership did not resonate with me because it felt like it pigeon holed me into “what I was” versus “what I could be”. Energy-Based Leadership acknowledges that to do your best work, you need to be in an environment that recharges you and leaves you more energetic and excited than the day before. It requires energy management to preserve stamina and enable creativity. The life-force of progress is managing people’s energy so that they can show up for the people in their lives, at work or at home, as the best version of themselves.

What does energy-based leadership mean?

It starts with self-care: realizing that you need to take care of yourself so that your heart is at peace. It is only with a peaceful and content heart that you can move through the world with love. It is only with a peaceful and content heart that you can create and innovate in this world. It is only with a peaceful and content heart that you can show up fully for the people in your life.

It also requires self-awareness: understanding what brings you energy and what drains your energy. This can change day-to-day depending on your mood or disposition but ultimately, managing this energy is the most important thing you can do to maintain your stamina and faith. I find that the things that bring me energy are pretty consistent but do still vary depending on my moods. For example, people energize me. I love mentoring and teaching people. I love sharing my knowledge and I love investing and building other people up so that they can fulfill their potential. Ideas energize me. If I hadn’t been an entrepreneur, I would have been an inventor because I love thinking about what the future could look like and how we can make life better for people and how we can make systems more fair and efficient with technology. I appreciate the absurdity of the world and the ways that it falls short every day and the ways that humans are just humans. I believe that we can make things better and we continue to do so. This has always been the course of mankind and I am delight and excited about a future free of suffering, hunger, malnutrition, loneliness, fear, and violence. Spending time with my family is energizing. Writing is energizing. Listening to music and making AI art is energizing for me. Working out is energizing for me. Coding is energizing for me. It is ok if these things are not energizing for you every day. Sometimes, I recognize that my brain is not in the mood to code and I don’t force it. I write instead or I play the guitar. There are many ways to create and express yourself depending on what is energizing to you on a given day. The most important thing is that you do something every day that energizes you, whatever that might be.

Have a point, you do baby Yoda!

I hate logistical things and am not particularly detail oriented. I have never been an inbox zero person and never will be because it doesn’t give me pleasure to manage an inbox. I hate planning itineraries for trips, though I can do it and have played that role in many friend groups.

Recognizing what energizes you and what drains your energy enables you to sculpt your day to ensure that you always do things that energize you. The ideal state is to outsource the things that drain your energy or minimize how much time you spend doing them. Throughout my career, I’ve met many people who ARE inbox zero types. They LOVE planning trips. They love Gantt charts and timelines and project plans. Find people for whom the things that drain your energy energizes them and surround yourself with those people. I’ve learned that the world is big enough and people are diverse enough in how their minds work that there is someone out there who loves what you consider draining. Be open to what energizes you to change potentially day-to-day, season-to-season, or over the years. Lean into that awareness and don’t judge it.

Keeping yourself in a job that constantly drains your energy and surrounding yourself with people who drain your energy? This is possible for short periods of time but isn’t sustainable. Without energy, you go home in a miserable mood and yell at your family; you are distracted, hopeless, bitter, and angry. And thus you spread those negative feelings to the people who love you and you ruin their day in turn. You breed spitefulness and sadness in the world instead of moving through it with love, strength, and courage.

The modern hamster wheel.

By now, Benjamin Franklin predicted that we would only be working 4 hours a day and life would be all “leisure and pleasure.” Karl Marx looked forward to a day when everyone would wake up “to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, raise cattle in the evening” for fun and not out of obligation. What happened to that future? The promises of technology were that we would automate ourselves out of work and then humans could love pleasurable and happy lives of dancing, art, and music. We have not fulfilled this because we are looking at work wrong. All humans are worthy of living lives of fulfillment and happiness. We are just misallocated our human resources. We are sucking the energetic life force out of our population by not aligning them with fulfilling meaningful work that leaves them feeling energized instead of drained at the end of the day. When people are happy, optimistic, and believe in something, they do their best work.

If you are interested in pursuing energy-based leadership in your day-to-day life, start with an energy audit. What do you do every day by the hour / minute and do these activities energize or drain you? What can you do to increase the activities that bring you energy and outsource the activities that leave you drained? This will enable you to be your happiest, most creative self, and also show up for the people you love. This allows you to move through the world with love, grace, and belief.