Managing Energy

Challenges

Organisational cultures can seem very biased towards extroverts and some aspects of working life can be especially draining on energy. These aspects include:

• long days with lots of meetings
• having a lot of people around, especially more extroverted people
• open plan offices, where you are ‘available’ all the time
• very full diaries with no thinking time
• pressures to extend work into socialising
• requent and/or extensive travel, particularly on public transport where social interaction may be required.

It can be tempting to stay ‘stuck’ behind the desk!

Even the classic introvert approach of fostering one-to-one relationships can be draining if there are too many of them. If we end our working day drained of energy, this can spill into family life and then even our relaxation time can be draining, particularly if it has a social element.