LEADERSHIP | How to optimize personal energy for peak performance. w/ Josefine Campbell

0:00And now, Taking Care of Business, your hosts, Craig Moen and Shai Gilad.

0:08Welcome to Business Owners Radio, episode 233. Our guest today is Josephine Campbell, author of the new book, Power Barometer, Managing Personal Energy, Not Just Time and Money. Josephine is the founder of Campbell Company, a top leadership consulting firm for multinational companies. As a four-time jiu-jitsu champion and coach, she has helped middle managers through chief executives at multinational organizations such as McDonald's, Deloitte, and Maersk. Josephine is particularly interested in developing personal leadership in difficult circumstances such as is often the case in the modern work life today.

0:52Good morning, Josephine. Welcome to Business Owners Radio. Good morning. Happy to be here. We're just excited to have you on board today. This is a deep topic when we went through the book and there was just so many areas of huge interest for our listeners. As business owners, we need all of the inputs and tools to bring forward our best. And this is a fantastic topic. But I got to ask, what led up to the writing of this book? Well, exactly to do what we're about to do here, to share all the insights I get from working with leaders, coaching, advising, engaging. And, you know, as a coach, there's confidentiality.

1:41I always say it's just like when you go to the doctors, you go or you speak to a lawyer, there's 120 percent confidentiality. so as I work with brilliant leaders a lot of them share their strategies and way of coping with things and you know sometimes I learn from them to be honest people have different ways of dealing with leadership challenges uncertainty change whatever comes your way and I've often felt that I was in a fortune situation that I could sit and listen to what these brilliant people have found out. And I thought it would be useful for other people to know. Then also in these processes, you know, like coaching, it's like playing tennis.

2:31You play together, right? So I'm playing the ball to someone I coach and they pick it up and they throw it back and we build on each other, right? And I have a background in Japanese martial arts. I have a background as a lecturer at Copenhagen Business School. So I know a lot of science about leadership, collaboration, performance, strategy, and so on. And then I have plus 25 years of business experience. I started my first business myself when I was just 21 years old and had to learn a lot of things the hard way. And so I've combined these three approaches, these three pillars of knowledge into how I coach.

3:14And I found that sometimes when I came with some suggestions or mirrored back some techniques from Japanese martial arts, that we would get outstanding effects. So, you know, what you do in martial arts, in Japanese martial arts to prepare yourself for uncertainty, for a battle is very, very useful when you're in business, in the modern work life, especially if you're a business owner or a leader. There's so much you have to deal with. And it takes a lot of personal energy. And it takes that you manage for mental capacity, that you know exactly where your mind is. Because very often we become unaware.

3:58And when we become unaware, we are unaware that we are unaware. And we won't see things that are coming from behind or behind some things that people say between the lines that we should have picked up on. And it can have severe consequences for us and for our business. Yeah, it's tremendous that you've really decided that you needed to share all of these learnings that you've had in your coaching and in your martial arts, combining that. And I was keyed up by one of the elements being the awareness matrix. Sometimes we're just not aware. And tell us your version of the awareness matrix and how that flows.

4:38Yes, awareness matrix provides you with a visual map of how to navigate your awareness in your mind and your energy level. So it's important that you keep consciousness about in what I call the red zone. That's when you are mentally hijacked. Or if you're in what I call the green zone, that's when you're ready. when you're ready to face uncertainties and challenges and see what is beyond your normal scope. And it also gives you a map to check into your personal energy level because your personal energy level has a huge impact on your abilities. And the same counts for the people you collaborate with or you lead.

5:28So let's say you have five people in your team. If three of them are drained, It's going to affect the team dynamic big time. So it's quite simple to sense where people's energy level are, but very often we don't do it or we don't put it into account. A lot of people have been trained to think within the scope of time, money, and quality. So when we're under pressure or we have to make a tough decision, we think about time, money, or quality. and very often we forget energy because nobody taught us that but as brains run on energy like energy is the fuel of brains it confies any logic not to consider personal energy you know josephine hearing you talk about this i recall the concepts of potential energy and kinetic energy that I learned in physics.

6:27And just thinking about this idea that potential energy is typically we think of it as energy stored, right? It's energy that we haven't tapped yet. That's why it's potential energy. And then get something moving to make progress in kinetic energy. And there's a relationship between these two things, isn't there? Yes, definitely. And so it sounds like what I'm hearing you say is you have to manage your resource of potential energy because at any given time of the day, you're going to have different balance in that account, so to speak, right? And we need that in order to spend it, to convert it into kinetic energy.

7:07Yes, very true. We have to manage it. But most important is we have to be aware of it so that we balance our activities to the current energy level. And then at the same time, we have to recharge the batteries, right? Fill the tank. Yeah. And so many overconfident entrepreneurs tend to think they have this limitless resource of potential energy, don't we? Yeah. But then if you measure your energy, we have a tracker we use when we work with individuals and groups. And when we measure that, a lot of those people you're talking about, or people like us, could be very drained on a Friday, right? Leaving the office on a Friday afternoon or evening, you're completely empty.

7:59And then you might reach out throughout the weekend and then you start over Monday. But then what happens if you have someone at home who also needs you to be a little bit active and participant and he wants to spend time with you? Yeah. What do you bring into that then if you're all tapped out? Yeah. How are you going to end up? And if you don't have that support at home or other things beside your business, you become extremely vulnerable, especially as an entrepreneur, you have put so much at stake. If you don't have a life, people around you to bounce back on when it's hard times, it's going to be very difficult to go through the hard times.

8:36It's part of being resilient to have a full life. You know, one thing you said earlier that really stuck with me was this idea of preparing for uncertainty and, you know, to how that's informed the martial arts and your thinking about this and the connections you've noticed with your clients. What is your practice? Yes. So in Jiu Jitsu, it's a martial art. So if you have watched a martial art movie, for example, let's say Karate Kid, you remember that old movie from the 80s? Wax on, wax off. exactly wax on wax off there are some scenes where they are attending a fight a championship they're standing on the green satan mats and there's a judge saying fight me and then they start fighting right and then we would do that so we would have these two time two two minutes battles with one minute break it's pretty intense actually and we call that committee but you would also have another type of championships it's the type of championships that we call reaction tracks and there's a day track and there's a night track and a track tends to take one and a half hour to two hours to walk the track and they would put it somewhere desert you know let's say like in a in a forest where there are no people and no lights.

9:57So the night track would be quite dark. Actually, you couldn't see a hand in front of you when you were walking down the path. And they would put flower on the little path because flower lights up in the darkness. So you can only see those little white stripes made of flowers on the path. It sounds like Avatar or something. Go ahead. Yeah, it was. I like Avatar. So I was 12 years, the first time I participated. And fortunately, my sensei, my coach, he'd been training me well. He'd been training me not only in the physical aspects of Jiu-Jitsu. He also taught me the mental and energetic levels, techniques of Jiu-Jitsu.

10:44So he trained me beforehand to manage my mind and manage my energy level as I was walking through the dark forest. So an athlete, jiu-jitsu, marathon, basketball, you name it, an athlete will rest before a big performance. You will take it easy and recharge your batteries. Then just before you start the track, you will prepare mentally. We learned how to meditate. So you will focus. And I think a tennis player or a soccer player or a football player, they will also focus. So you focus your attention on yourself, your performance, the track or the court, wherever you are practicing. So you learn how to move your focus from what goes on inside yourself and what happens just around you where you're playing.

11:36So he taught me to stay calm. It's very important in martial art that you don't freak out or become aggressive when someone tries to hit you. that instinct that fight flight instinct it's designed to help people who do not know how to fight to survive in a dangerous situation so you just start hitting right you're very unconscious and unaware right it just becomes really crazy what you do and if you are like a true master true sensei a martial artist you learn not to activate the fight flight response that's the same response that get activated when there are a lot of uncertainties or you feel threatened in some other way.

12:14So you learn how to keep that calm so you can stay aware of what happens inside yourself and around you. Because if you're all activated, if you're all on what I call the autopilots in fight flight response, you won't see things that are coming from behind. We can fight with blindfolds. You've probably seen that. We can sense what happens around us and walking through a track in the darkness is also almost like fighting in darkness right and sometimes you would get attacked by two people you wouldn't know sometimes it's one person sometimes there would be three you're just done with the first two then there comes another one from behind so you really really have to keep attention on what happens around you you can't just go into some kind of zone, right?

13:04And Jiu Jitsu is a martial art where ethics is a big part of it. We learn how to take life with our hands. So we also learn how to preserve life with our hands. So some of the posts would not be attacks. Some of them would be someone in need of first dead. And what happens if you are all fiery with your fight-flight response activated, if you're what I call mentally hijacked, if you are in what I call the red zone, and you arrive at a post, there's a big guy screaming. He's lying on the floor and he's screaming, right? But he's screaming because he's pretending that the vein in his thigh is bleeding.

13:50He needs first aid. And some of my competitors, they would beat him up. They would actually beat him up. But what you have to do is you have to sit down. You have to calm down the guy. Then I would take off my belt. I would tie it around his thigh. I would put it up and let him know that help would be on its way. That's what you have to do. You have to stay calm. It's just like in your business. You see something happening or someone says something to you. And if you're in the red zone, if you're all fiery, you might get them wrong. You might beat up someone who are asking to buy something from you.

14:26Would be a shame, wouldn't it? Yeah, to say the least. But the analogy is just so clear. You know, when we think about it, when we think about classic examples of leadership that we admire, again, you'll say, well, what did you notice? You know, often in my teaching, one of the things we look at is something that happened in the U.S. called the Miracle on the Hudson in 2009, where Captain Sully Sullenberg, First Officer Skiles, they lost both of the engines in their aircraft after takeoff out of New York, and they successfully landed that airplane in the Hudson River. Everyone survived. You know, I play that for my students and I will ask them, what do you notice?

15:06And we listen to the transcript of communications in real time. And the first thing they all say is they notice how calm he was. Yeah. Wow. And I'm picturing 12 year old you going through the woods with this little phosphorus, you know, trail of powder and and having these very intense role plays going on. And yet, as you say, that the skill is to manage that energy to keep yourself from being hijacked by that fight or flight response, because once that happens, literally parts of your brain shut down. Definitely. And those are the parts we need to make executive decisions, aren't they? Exactly.

15:48So how did your sensei prepare you for that? What are some of the earliest things that you remember even as a child for being prepared for that kind of thing? It must have been really intense, to say the least. Well, not really. It's actually very simple. And that's also why it has been easy for me to pass it on in my practice as a coach, working with many different kinds of leaders. And it's been easy for them to adapt it. And if you look at the awareness matrix in my book, and so you can also find the awareness matrix on my website on the freebies, if some of the listeners want to check it out, it provides this map.

16:23You have to keep your awareness on two things, your personal energy level and your mind. So it takes some kind of self-awareness. And if you realize that you lost your self-awareness for some moments, you've probably been in the red zone. You've probably been hijacked because when you're hijacked, you lose your ability to use the executive function. So you lose your ability to have empathy, self-awareness, think logic. Yeah, I'm saying I'm serious. Think logic. We think we think logic, but we are not. It creates so many executive functions. It just goes out of order. And it happens to us, all of us, even to me sometimes.

17:05And you just have to say, oh, I was hijacked. And then you try to stay in the green zone. So just being aware of it is the first and foremost important step. Then being aware in itself, it's something you can go on practicing for a long time, right? And meditation does help because when you meditate, you practice your ability to control where your mind is, right? It's one way of meditating. There are many, many types of meditation. Like there's many, many types of yoga. Like there are many types of gymnastics. and many types of butterflies. But some of the techniques you can do in meditation is you can do a body scan where you move your attention from the top of your head to your toes, little by little.

17:51Or the other things you can do in meditation is you can try to observe your breath or you can try to control your breath. If you have a meditation teacher that tells you you're not supposed to have thoughts, then get another teacher. Thoughts do happen, but you have to notice when the thoughts appear. And then refocus back to what you were doing. If you choose the one where you're moving your breath or you're consciously controlling your breath to do slow in breath and out breath, you have a double effect. Double effect is that one thing is that you're controlling your mind and your focus. The other one is that you will automatically send signals to the amygdala where the flight response is located or where it kicks out from.

18:36you will send signals telling the amygdala that there is no danger. And that is because your breath is the only of the vital functions that you can control. You cannot control how fast your heart pumps, but you can control the pace of your breath. And it's kind of giving body feedback back to the brain, telling it how to behave. It can go both ways, right? It's really smart. So that's why when I was walking in the dark forest on the path, knowingly that I would get attacked, then I could keep my awareness on my own body and I could sense, for example, if my breath becomes swallow or if I get sweaty hands, I know, okay, now I'm kind of moving into the red zone.

19:19Then I would start to breathe slowly. Yeah, there's so many elements that can be brought into place to help. But I love the analogy of the breath as far as the one thing you have influence over and have control over. These techniques and capabilities all are excellent to have in your knowledge center. One of the things that you mentioned a number of times, this element of hijacking. jacking and we go into meetings, we have conversations, we have dialogues, and we have all these potentials that can trigger us. And sometimes we don't know them or recognize them. When a business owner is walking into meetings or having one-on-ones, what should they be aware of that may be silent triggers for them to be able to employ some of the techniques?

20:09the atmosphere in the room and what goes on inside themselves so you should know where is your own energy level now i have a technique that i call the power barometer that's why my book is titled the power barometer again it's a very simple mental exercise that can help you be aware of where is your own energy level now and then the book also has a list of body signals such as the sweaty palms or swallow breath that you could look at to kind of do like a little self-diagnosis on what is it that happens to your body when you're about to get hijacked. And then you can try to keep your awareness of those signals.

20:55Many times we're hijacked so easily. And being this awareness element allows us to identify it. Identification is the first step, of course, and a major step. And it comes with time. Your book helps tremendously to bring forward some of those underlying elements that we may not recognize right off. And even to measure, your book has a lot of elements regarding measuring your energy level during the day and being conscious and being aware. One of the items that came up that I thought was interesting was the values lighthouse that's in your book. Can you tell us more about that? Yes. So very often we will end up in situations where we don't know whether to walk right or left.

21:42And you need somewhere to look at. And that's where you need something to guide you, like a North Star. And that's where you can look at your values lighthouse. So it's a simple exercise where you're from a long list of values. You have to pick three values. And it's easy to pick 50 or even 10. but it's very hard to pick three or two. So when you are in the middle of the storm or you don't know where to look, you don't know which way to walk, you will look towards those values. And very often it is so that if we live our values, even sometimes it's the tough choices when we live our values, then you will never go really wrong.

22:25You know, you will always go somewhere that fits you, that is good for you at the end. Compromising for too long on your top two or top three values, it's only going to take you down a wrong path. Yeah, it's almost like without this context, I just feel like the more I'm listening to you talk about this and the more I'm thinking about it, it just feels like it's such a foundational leadership context, like a place to start from. You know, you've talked about these analogies of we all talk about time management and money management. I mean, you can actually hire financial managers, right, to help you manage your money.

23:02And we can get assistance and other things to help us manage time. We use calendars and other tools to manage time. Without energy, neither of those things matter. We can't deploy capital without using some kind of energy. When we think of time management, we think of activity management. What are we doing at different times of the day? Well, if we're not conscious of the energy, how can we be successful at those things? Yeah. And how can you enjoy it? right so yeah back to what you said about well now it's friday and we all can think about how we feel on friday afternoon but now you've got to come into your weekend and be there for your family and maybe for other folks that you care about and things that you want to do and you want to bring your best to those things and what is success like really like is success only a big bank account or is it also enjoying your success by yourself or with someone else but you know like You need a little bit of energy, not just to be drained in front of Netflix, right?

23:58Yes. Yes. Yeah. And when I think about success, I always think of what one of my coaches used to call the tombstone problem, which is what do you want it to say on your tombstone? You know, so here lies Craig. He was really great at email. You know, nobody wants that on their tombstone, you know. So yes, you know, I love that you brought this book into the world through your practice. And I think these lessons are just so overlooked. and at the same time, they resonate so clearly. And where you started, you talked about how this kept coming up in your coaching relationships. And can you give one or two examples about how this has shown up with your clients so that we can get in tune with what the symptoms are that maybe we're not in touch with ourselves around our energy?

24:42Well, let me give you a good case and a bad case. So the good case is that I found that many top executives in large corporations, some of my clients are like big corporations such as McDonald's or Carlsberg and, you know, really, really big companies. And some of these executives manage thousands of people and they have a high level of complexity and uncertainty at their job. And some of them are thriving. and I found that they have somehow developed some techniques on their own or with a coach to manage their energy and their mind because otherwise they could do what they're doing every day and other people that I work with would suffer from severe stress and unfortunately that's a quite common condition today it shouldn't be normal but it kind of becomes normal to be stressed out or to have been burned down and complexity.

25:40An entrepreneurial or executive trope almost, right? The tired executive because they work so many hours. And some organizations, unfortunately, that are very archaic and still see this as like a badge of honor. And I think, again, folks that are accidental entrepreneurs, which many business owners are, they didn't necessarily start out as a young child and dream of owning a business someday. It's usually some kinds of circumstances and opportunity that thrust them into that role. And they have these ideas and beliefs around, well, of course I work 70 hours a week. All the hardest chargers do that.

26:15So therefore I need to do that too. Yeah. And that's a dangerous core belief because it wears out the machinery that is supposed to perform and build value. And that machinery is you. So it's a quite common problem. And many people are in this situation where they cannot just get on a sick leave because they're stressed out, though you should because your nerve system and your neurons in your brain are suffering. So it is like a biological condition that you can measure and rest does make a difference. And if you don't take care of it, you can lose some of your cognitive abilities. You could lose your capability to concentrate, to focus, and you will not be able to work many hours ever again if you don't take care of it.

27:01But then sometimes people cannot just take two or three months off, which would be unneeded. And then they have to start managing their energy while they're working. And they have to stay in the green zone because every time you move into the red zone, it costs a lot on the energy account. It's very energy costly to be on fight flight mode. It exhausts you. So some of the people, the leaders that I work with, they couldn't just leave their business. because then there would be no business. So we had to manage their energy and their mind just to survive. And it's incredible what people can do. It's always a little bit like a rollercoaster, those rides.

27:44And it's good to have someone there with you to support you, to help you, because sometimes you take a few steps forward and you take a step back. And it takes a while. Sometimes it takes a couple of years to get back on track if you don't get a real time out. Well, I think that your analogy of saying it's an account that you have to manage, I think it's like any other investment then, isn't it? So if it takes time, well, of course it does. You have to invest that time to build up that account, to get that return. And there's consequences if you don't do that. In terms of your potential for leadership, your potential for fulfillment within the other roles you play in your personal life and your family.

28:27and getting back to what you said, Josephine, about, well, how do you define success, right? And if you're already in a good place, sure, it takes some time to do some sports or go for a walk or whatever fills you up and give you energy. But the amount of time you have to invest in it doesn't have to be that large. It's just most important is that you have attention on it. Then sometimes a five minutes break can do wonders. I'm serious, five minutes break. And I mean a break, not looking at your phone, but you close your eyes for five minutes, it really resets the brain. And we have substantial evidence to support that.

29:06Josephine, thank you so much for joining us today. Shai and I had a wonderful time in dialogue with you, and I know our listeners are really going to gain from this. And I wanted to thank you for being part of the show. You're welcome. It's been great talking to you, And I am so happy that you bring forward these messages I have. I have so much I'd like to give. On my website, there are some free tools that josepincampbell.com. If you look on the freebies, there are these different tools that we talked about today that you can access for free. And I do what I do because it's meaningful to me. My work actually gives me energy.