Energy the currency of personal productivity: after working with world-class sports athletes, Jim Loehr has turned his focus to "corporate athletes," saying he's changed his thinking about who is the quintessential example of toughness and grace under pressure.

When it comes to personal productivity, businesses are simply not getting what they pay for, what they expect or what they can expect from both general staff, as well as from their highpaid senior executives. That's the belief of performance psychologist Jim Loehr, who says a big issue affecting performance in today's corporate America is workforce disengagement. Corporations invest millions of dollars to recruit and train people, and then find they are not getting the full return on their investment. Even while working longer and harder than ever, corporations and individuals are not reaping the rewards, he says, due to mismanagement of a precious resource: energy.

"Energy is the currency that makes business happen," says Loehr, cofounder of LGE Performance Systems in Orlando, Fla., who for over 25 years has worked with world-class sports athletes, as well as with corporate leaders, FBI hostage rescue teams and emergency room personnel.

Results from The Gallup Organization's numerous studies and research by Loehr's firm are similar. The data indicates that one in four people are "'fully engaged" in their work, while three out of four are not. Fifty-five percent are "not engaged," and 19 percent of corporate America's population is actively "disengaged," meaning they are so out of sync with what's happening that they are really working at opposition to what the corporate mission might be.

Gallup estimates the annual cost for the category of "disengagement" to be a minimum of $250 billion to $350 billion. Most disengagers are said to be managerial--bad managers breed disengagement. It could be the insensitivity of a boss, or not having the tools needed to do a job or not enough growth opportunities. But, Loehr, comments, "Even if the things are in place that fully engage an individual, you just kind of get to the baseline; you stop disengagement, but you don't get people fully engaged."

The key component for full engagement, he explains, is in understanding energy and its management. "We virtually have no energy management tools," Loehr argues--until now. He notes a growing recognition in his belief, "if you don't have energy, time doesn't mean a whole lot." While we can't expand time, we can expand energy, and we can do it efficiently and effectively, he says, when we understand how energy is metabolized and produced in the human system.

Historically, wellness and health programs have been viewed as "perks"--as an expense to a company--and not as direct investments in productivity, Loehr explains. With growing data that energy itself is the central issue, getting people to expand their capacity for energy and then helping them--to develop the skills so that they manage this resource more efficiently in the service of the corporate mission--just makes great business sense.

Indeed, Loehr laments that as soon as we realize something as a resource, "we're all over it." For example, industries have been built around time management--with organizers, Blackberries, pop-up-reminders on our computers, management systems of all kinds.

But even with the array of timesaving technological tools, personal productivity has not, in fact, improved. It's not utilization of time that's at issue, he insists, but this problem of disengagement, or the lack of its antithesis, "full engagement." That's the subject of the book he's coauthored with Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement, which, as of this writing, is appearing on several best-seller lists.

What is it, then, and how do we get "full engagement" in the workplace? Loehr explains that people are fully engaged when their values--what they see as important in their lives--are synced with those of the corporation or the mission of the corporation. It's an individual belief, that is, in essence: my personal mission and that of the corporation are in sync, and 1 believe the work I'm doing is very important. I am very eager to invest this resource that I have, my energy, in this work effort, regardless of how much time and energy it might take'.

Loehr adds that "fully engaged" really means "the full spectrum of energy potentials that we possess as human beings are fully vested in what you are doing--right here, right now. All the lights are on, and they are focused in the service of this activity that stands before you." (see "Full Engagement: Based on Four Principles of Energy Management.")

In his nearly three decades in this field, which began with training athletes, Loehr says he's learned that one of the most important assets that a person carries into high-stress, high-performance venues is the mentality of an elite athlete. He has, in fact, labeled business executives "corporate athletes" (see box above).

The most important resource that an athlete is trying to attack and to expand, he says, is energy. "They are trying to figure out how they can bring the greatest energy to whatever competitive stage they might be on," Loehr argues, "because energy, ultimately, is what ignites talents and skills and drives the victor, and drives winning."

It's a hard thing for people to be fully engaged. However, Loehr is optimistic. He's seeing more recognition of the importance of the components of energy management, and says that's what his firm is all about--helping people understand how this happens, and the process involved to get people to bring 100 percent of their energy to what is important to the productivity and profitability of the company. And, when focused on the training principles, people go beyond professional achievement, and excel personally.

One of the most important assets a person carries into high-stress, high-perfomance venues is the mentality of an elite athlete. And energy is what ignites talents and skills, and drives the victor and drives winning.

--Jim Loehr

                Professional Athlete      Corporate Athlete
Workday         4 to 5 hours (when on)    8-12-hour days
Career Span     5-7 years (average)       30-40 years
Preparation     90% of time               small percentage
                spent- training           of time training
Performance     10% of time               most of the time
Accountability  minimal accountability/   mostly accountable/
                mostly practicing         virtually no practice
Recovery        off-season/several        no off-season/few
                months                    weeks or months
                                          vacation (often not
                                          taken, or not totally
                                          away)

Full engagement--based on four principles of energy management:

Principle One. Draw on four distinct but connected dimensions of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual We are complex energy systems, and full engagement is multi-dimensional, focusing more on the individual. It has organizational components, but it needs to be addressed on a very personal level, with the accountability and the training handled individual by individual.

Principle Two. Balance energy expenditure and investment with energy recovery and renewal. You can't be "on" all the time--fully engaged in everything. Human beings are basically oscillatory creatures in an oscillatory universe. People who just work, work, work, in an almost "grind-it-out" mentality, are really working against the way we were designed as human beings. We're designed to operate more as sprinters, and not marathoners. If you want to be someone who is extraordinary at something, you have to find the right balance between expending and recovering energy.

Principle Three. We must push beyond normal limits, training like an elite athlete. Growth follows energy investment. Whether growing biceps, confidence or empathy for mental focus, in a sense these are all muscles that we can expand in exactly the same way. Those things that you invest your energy in tend to grow. If you want extraordinary growth to occur in anything, you must make extraordinary energy investment.

Principle Four. For sustained high performance, focus on positive rituals and precise behaviors that become automatic over time. We are pretty much creatures of habit, as only about 5 percent of behavior is self-regulated, and as high as 95 percent is non-conscious and automatic. If you want to change behavior, you have to change habits, routines and rituals. Rituals are really consciously acquired habitual forms of behavior that are linked to important values. They create order, rhythm and harmony in highstress environments. They help to bring the convergence of value, time, energy and behavior--and keep you moving toward whatever mission you are on. This is what training is. The best athletes are the people who have the best routines in their lives.

'Corporate Athletes' Work Hardest

Professional athletes are admired--for their discipline, training, ability to focus, to be "on" and to work towards impossible personal

goals, often achieving spectacular and winning performances. The general view is that athletes are extraordinary when compared to ordinary men and women.

Think again, for according to sports psychologist Jim Loehr, professional athletes don't work nearly as hard and certainly not as long as you do, Mr. or Ms. Business Executive.

Having begun his career training professional athletes, when he turned his focus on executives, Loehr says he was "really shocked to learn that the demands on most people in the business world exceeded anything we ever saw in terms of the demands on energy for athletes. The corporate executives' workday was two and three times that of the athlete." The chart below shows some other of his findings.

Also, Loehr says, the corporate athletes overwhelmed the professional sports athlete by the number of demands on their energy, the challenges they face in achieving balance and in trying to fully ignite their talents and skills.

"I've always revered athletes and thought that they were the quintessential examples of toughness and grace under pressure. But, I've come to change my thinking pretty dramatically," he says.

Additionally, he sees a disparity between what people think of professional athletes and how they think of themselves in business. The ultimate athlete, he argues, is the business executive who has learned how to eat right, sleep right, exercise and be fit, and train all the way up the pyramid from the physical to the emotional, mental and even to the spiritual, so that he or she can sustain this level for 30 to 40 years, as is the case of most people in the corporate world.

Loehr's company, LGE Performance Systems, in Orlando, Fla., offers on-site and off-site training, as well as Web-based programs. In fact, readers can assess their level of engagement right now--through a complimentary test--by logging on to www.fullengagement.com.

--Ellen M. Heffes