These kind of responses indicate that when I ask the question, people are responding as observers, rather than participants. With further probing it becomes clear that the question is referring to how an individual's energy is after an interaction with another.
For example, write down five people whom you interact with regularly, then answer this question for each of them: After an interaction with _______, how is your energy? Most of us find when we do this that personality types may not be a predictor of an energizer. So the question becomes, what are the attributes of these people, the energizers? This is the emphasis of my current research.
Carl Jung's and Isabel Myers-Briggs' work has been used to create personality profile tests based on these typologies. Personalities are described in four pairs of preferences that are competing. An individual will lean toward one preference in each of the four pairs.
ReplyDeleteMarcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton developed Strengths Finder, which identifies individual themes or strengths. There are 34 themes in this approach, and the most prevalent themes are used as a foundation for developing an approach to work that takes advantage of those themes.
ReplyDeleteDo you think it's the same kind of person for everyone? I mean I might interact with "Joe" and feel energized and Mike might feel deenergized. Just wondering if your research was leading toward certain people being almost universal energizers. Meaning they have that influence on most people they interact with.
ReplyDeleteGood questions--Does an energizer energize everyone? My thought is probably not. However, the research so far is not designed in such a way as to give a definitive answer to this. Rather, we find that energizing individuals appear as "hubs" in energy networks, having multiple connections.
ReplyDeleteCan a single interaction have opposite (or differently perceived) effects on the individuals involved? Yes. For example, if I have just lost an important client, and you have just received notice of a promotion, our interaction can go many ways...one of them is that you leave feeling energized, and I feel deenergized. However, the nature of this research is that when I am asked the question about how my energy is after an interaction with you, I answer based on all of the interactions we have, rather than a single interaction. The effect is a smoothing effect. Over time, we avoid those who deenergize us, unless we are compelled to interact with them (as in a superior/subordinate relationship).
Another question... Can a situation determine who is an energizer? For example, could Shirley be an energizer in a high stress situation and not in a more relaxed environment, while Ann is an energizer when in relaxed conditions but a deenergizer in a high stress situation?
ReplyDeleteThat question was actually from Dave, he just didn't bother to sign me out. Just want to give credit where credit is due. :D
ReplyDeleteNice! I love this question...while my research can't give the answer, one simple way to think about this would be to consider that each individual is a member of more than one group or organization. Let's take some extreme examples. Let's suppose Shirley is a doctor in a trauma center. Many would agree that this can be a high-stress environment. Further, most associations are not by choice, but by assignment. However, if we were to analyze the energy network in the trauma center, we may find that Shirley is a hub. Or not.
ReplyDeleteShirley might also be a member of her local PTA. She may 1) behave similarly to the way she behaves in the trauma center; OR 2) take a totally different approach to her interactions with others in the PTA. It becomes easy to see how people in the PTA may have a different experience with Shirley in terms of her energizing capacity than those in the trauma center.
Another question might be: How likely is it that one individual is consistently perceived as an energizer, neutral, or a deenergizer across the groups she/he belongs to?
In other words, do I have a similar effect or contribution to the energy of all the organizations I am a member of?