Leveraging the Energy Leadership Index (ELI) to Understand and Elevate Your Team’s Energy
As a leader, one of your key responsibilities is to inspire and empower your team to perform at their best. However, achieving this often requires more than just strategies and processes—it demands an understanding of the underlying energy dynamics that drive your team’s engagement, communication, and overall performance. This is where the Energy Leadership Index (ELI) assessment comes into play.
The ELI, a core tool in iPEC’s Core Energy Coaching™ program, offers a unique lens through which leaders can measure and shift the energy of both individuals and entire teams. By assessing how team members show up energetically across seven levels of energy, the ELI can provide critical insights into how individuals and the group as a whole respond to challenges, collaborate, and embrace opportunities.
Here’s how leaders can leverage the ELI to understand and elevate the energy of their team.
What is the Energy Leadership Index (ELI)?
The ELI is an attitudinal assessment that measures an individual’s energy across seven levels, which range from catabolic (negative, destructive) to anabolic (positive, constructive) energy. These energy levels are influenced by a person’s perceptions, emotions, and reactions to situations, and they affect everything from problem-solving ability to stress management and interpersonal communication.
The ELI not only provides insight into a person’s current energy state but also reveals their potential for growth. This is critical for leaders who want to develop a team culture that fosters creativity, collaboration, and resilience.
The Power of Individual Assessments
The first step in leveraging the ELI within your team is to administer the assessment to each team member individually. Each person receives their unique ELI report, which identifies how they respond to everyday situations and stressful conditions.
Once each team member has completed their assessment, a debrief is conducted. In this one-on-one session, the individual learns about the seven energy levels and where they currently operate under both normal and stressful circumstances. They also explore how their personal energy patterns might be influencing their work, relationships, and overall satisfaction.
This debrief session is crucial because it brings awareness to blind spots and opens the door for personal development. For many, it’s the first time they gain a clear understanding of how their thoughts and emotions influence their performance and relationships.
Bringing the Team Together: Unveiling Collective Energy
Once each team member has been debriefed on their individual ELI results, it’s time to bring the group together to share the collective energy profile of the team. By doing so, the leader can foster a new level of transparency, collaboration, and understanding among team members.
In a group debrief, the current energy levels of the team are presented in aggregate. This provides the team with a big-picture view of how they operate collectively. Here’s where things get exciting: the group can see where the team is primarily functioning, whether in lower catabolic energy levels (Levels 1 and 2), which are typically marked by conflict, blame, or stress, or in higher anabolic energy levels (Levels 3-7), which foster cooperation, innovation, and growth.
The Benefits of Understanding the Team’s Energy Levels
Improved Team Dynamics: By understanding how team members tend to operate energetically, leaders can create more synergy within the group. Team members with high levels of anabolic energy (Levels 4-7) can serve as positive influencers, helping those who might operate from lower levels (Levels 1-3) shift their perspectives and move into more productive states of being.
Enhanced Communication: The ELI helps identify barriers to effective communication. Teams operating from lower energy levels often experience misunderstandings or conflicts because they’re focused on blame, protection, or control. Once these patterns are recognized, leaders can take intentional steps to shift communication dynamics, encouraging more open, constructive, and forward-focused conversations.
Higher Emotional Intelligence: When individuals understand their own energy levels, they gain greater self-awareness, which is a cornerstone of emotional intelligence. This self-awareness can help team members better regulate their responses to stress, which, in turn, leads to improved team cohesion.
Aligned Performance and Goals: Once the collective energy state is understood, leaders can align the team’s energy with their performance goals. For example, if the team is currently operating in a reactive, defensive state (Levels 1 and 2), it will be difficult to foster creativity and innovation. Leaders can use the insights from the ELI to create strategies to elevate the team’s energy to a more constructive and collaborative level.
Empowerment for Lasting Change: The ELI is not a one-time fix; it’s a tool for ongoing transformation. Leaders can continuously gauge their team’s energy levels and provide interventions—such as coaching, training, or team-building activities—that shift the energy to higher levels over time. The result is a team that’s more resilient, agile, and capable of handling change.
Applying the Insights for Maximum Impact
The real value of the ELI lies in applying the insights gained from both the individual and team assessments. Here are some practical steps leaders can take to leverage the ELI for lasting impact:
Create Tailored Development Plans: After the individual debriefs, work with each team member to create a personal development plan focused on increasing anabolic energy. This may include mindset shifts, stress management techniques, or leadership coaching.
Foster Peer Support: Encourage team members to support each other in shifting energy levels. For example, those who operate at higher energy levels in stressful situations can share strategies with peers to help them adopt a more empowering perspective when challenges arise.
Set Collective Goals: Use the insights from the team’s collective energy profile to set goals that elevate the group’s energy. This could involve initiatives to enhance collaboration, reduce stress, or boost engagement.
Monitor and Reassess: Energy levels fluctuate over time, especially in response to changing circumstances. Regularly reassessing the team’s energy profile allows leaders to monitor progress and adjust strategies to maintain a positive and productive energy state.
Elevating Your Team’s Energy for Success
The Energy Leadership Index provides a powerful framework for leaders who want to understand and optimize the energy of their team. By leveraging individual and collective ELI results, leaders can foster an environment that promotes growth, collaboration, and resilience. The key is to continuously apply these insights, supporting each team member’s personal development while also elevating the overall energy of the group. In doing so, you’ll not only improve your team’s performance but also create a more positive, engaged, and empowered workforce.
Ready to elevate your team’s energy? Embrace the power of the Energy Leadership Index and transform your team’s dynamics today.
Note: Core Energy Coaching and the Energy Ledaership Index Assessment were created by Bruce Schneider, Ph.D., M.C.C., and are taught through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching, an International Coaching Federation (ICF)-accredited training program. This article contains my interpretation of their copyrighted work.
