Written by Christopher Kelly
Oct. 16, 2014
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Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and I'm joined today by Anese Cavanaugh.
Anese is the creator of the IEP Method, which stands for Intentional Energetic Presence, as well as a leadership and collaboration advisor, strategist, and thinking partner for business leaders in the design, service and innovation spaces.
Through her speaking, writing and creative leadership programs, people learn how to optimize their leadership and presence, bringing their best selves to the table for greater collaboration, impact, and cultural success. You can follow her at anesecavanaugh.com.
Hi, Anese! Thanks so much for coming on.
Anese: Hi, Chris! Thank you for having me.
Christopher: I think we should start with a definition. What exactly is Intentional Energetic Presence?
Anese: Great! I love that. Intentional Energetic Presence basically boils down to how we show up in our lives for ourselves and also for other people. If you take the three words, you've got intention, you've got energy, and you've got presence.
So to me, intention is being truly in front of an intention about how I want to show up and what I want to create in my life, the energy component is how I take care of myself and what kind of energy I bring to the table, and the presence component is how I show up both externally so people experience me well, but also how I show up for myself internally so I get to enjoy everything that I'm doing and have the resources possible to create impact.
Christopher: The presence part, I was a little bit confused at first. I thought maybe presence was maybe referring to my ability to not be thinking about the past or the future, only what is going on now. I have a feeling that might still be important, but that's not what the word "presence" refers to in this instance.
Anese: Oh no, it does. You're right on, Chris. A lot of people, when they talk about presence, they think about it in a way that you just said it, being in this moment or a lot of times, people think of this work as about their stage presence. It's just about how to do it on stage. Sometimes people think it's about being able to meditate.
To me, I look at presence really holistically. That's why I said it's how you show up for yourself internally and externally because the internal is the kind of presence you're talking about of being here in this moment and being really present to whatever I'm working on, whatever emotions I'm experiencing, if I'm competing. Whatever is happening right now, there's that presence internally, but then there's also making sure that I'm aware of my impact externally with how other people experience me.
What I find is that people tend to lean towards one or the other. They're either really, really great at being present externally for other people, so they've got charisma and they show up a lot on stage, but they're not always present internally, and so they might burn out. And then there are other people who are really good at being present internally, but they're so focused internally that they're not actually having a positive impact on the people around them, so it's very holistic. It's both. Does that make sense?
Christopher: It does make sense now. Maybe we could start with an example then. Can you walk me through a case study where you've worked with someone that benefitted from your teaching?
Anese: Sure! Absolutely. I work with a lot of people, a lot of business leaders. I work with a lot of people who are in the creative spaces. Their ability to create results for clients and their ability to create results for their team is highly dependent on presence, but what ends up happening is because -- I guess the simplest example to give you would be an example of a business leader who's brilliant, who takes really, really great care of himself, just super, super talented.
However, he was not aware that his presence, things as simple as his facial expressions, his level of presence with the people he was leading, his team, he was not aware that that was having a negative impact on his ability to be a good leader with his team. He had great internal presence, really, really smart. He was there for himself, but externally, his team experienced him as not present and also scary, to be honest, kind of unapproachable because of his facial expressions.
Christopher: Okay. How would you even know? How would this guy even know that the way that he's making his expressions is having an impact?
Anese: Well, the first step is always awareness. I always think that in this work, about 70% is about your awareness of your impact. For this guy, the way that he started to figure it out was he started to realize that he wasn't getting the responses that he wanted from them.
Sitting with him in a room for ten minutes, I could see my experience of him with his facial expressions, so it was one of those things where it was easy for him to get some feedback on that quickly. For people that don't have somebody like myself or somebody on their team that's giving them that feedback, the thing to start looking at is, are you having the impact that you want to have on people around you? Are people responding to you?
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When you walk into a room, does the room open up and feel better or do people get careful around you? If people are getting careful around you or if you feel like they're not being very interactive in conversations with you, a great place to look is how are you showing up? What is the experience they're having of you? Take that initial step of self-awareness to see what's happening and then to ask for some feedback. That can be incredibly helpful.
Christopher: Is it just physical appearance?
Anese: No.
Christopher: For myself personally, yeah, I thought that might be the answer. I've been trying to help people over the phone, and so I very rarely see people in person. What other things that are not physical are important?
Anese: Well, there are a lot of different things. There's your tone. There are the obvious things, which is your tone of voice, your pacing, your physical appearance, of course. To me, it goes even deeper, which is the intention that you have for the people you're talking to.
Something as simple, Chris, is when you get on the phone with somebody, spending a few minutes beforehand to think about the human being that you're going to be connecting with, to think about what kind of connection you want to have with them, how you want them to experience you.
If you set an intention before you even get on that call -- like with me on this call, "Wow! I'm going to be talking with Anese today." If you can get into a state of curiosity, if you can get into a state of care, the more intentional you are and the more you see me as a human being, the easier it's going to be for your presence physically and auditorily and everything to support you having a positive impact on me.
It's really little things. It's as simple as getting on a call and greeting the person as a human being. "Hi! How are you doing?" It's the littlest things. We tend to get so busy that we forget that we're in communion with other human beings, and just taking that moment to set an intention before you even walk in a room makes a huge difference.
Christopher: Yeah. I definitely fall into that category where I'm quite impatient. The first thing that falls off the table for me is those little niceties, for sure in email. I kind of pride myself in how few words can I get this message across. And so, the obvious things to chop off are like "Hello! How are you?" I wonder whether that's starting to creep into the way that I speak on the phone as well.
I think a big driver of that is when you've got a busy schedule, if you've got a calendar that's packed full of things today and you know you need to get through it all, then these niceties -- I mean, what's the point of doing it in the first place though? I suppose if you're not going to get the impact, if you're not going to make the change that you want, then you might as well not bother, I suppose.
Anese: I think so. I think that taking ten seconds to say "hello" I think is a pretty high return on investment for that time. We're human beings. One of our greatest needs as a human being is to connect with other human beings and to be seen. And so, what you're talking about is a really, really common problem. I love what you just said, shaving off as many words as you can to be more efficient.
I would say the last thing I'd want you to shave off as a business leader or as a human being would be the connection point because if you can spend just a little bit of time and intention around thinking about that human being, my experience is that you save a lot of time and you're able to get into deeper conversation and deeper connection faster, so your time is actually better spent than if you just jump in and hit it cold.
Christopher: Is this just about trust then? Is it just about what we're talking about now? Is this getting to the point where you trust someone else?
Anese: I think that having really good IEP is at the center of trust. I think that if your presence is such that when I'm around you, I feel careful or I feel like I've got to be on my guard or I feel like you're trying to be really efficient with me, that is going to have an impact even if I'm not aware of it. It's going to have an impact where I'm probably going to be a little bit more careful around you.
To me, what I find is the better somebody is with their own IEP, the better their intention is, the better their ability to connect with another human being, the more quickly they can develop that trust.
Christopher: Okay. What does the course look like? It's a training course, so is it something I need to go and see you to do?
Anese: Yeah. You should come and see me. We're doing one at the end of October actually. Oh gosh! I'd love to get you out here for that. There are a couple of different ways that we do this work.
Any of you listeners online, we have a Quick Start IEP Kit that they can download from my website. It's at iepmethod.com, so they can download that; that's free.
There's also a really awesome presence tool that has Team Presence and also Virtual Presence, which is this fun infographic that my creative director created. It's got Quick Presence Reboot and everything, so there's stuff on our site that your people can have for free that they can just start using and we get really good feedback on that content.
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The other ways to engage with the content is we do live events. For example, we've got one coming up on October 22nd and 23rd where people actually come and we get in a room of anywhere from 20 to 50 people, depending on the group, and really work and play with this stuff for two days. We have online IEP school, which people can access and they can go through the program self-paced.
The final thing that we do is I actually do go into organizations and we integrate this content into organizations so that they start to build an even stronger culture of leadership and collaboration using the content in the program.
Christopher: Is this something that you can quantify? Can you actually measure success with someone?
Anese: Yes, we can. There are a couple of different ways to quantify it. There are the intangible ways, which if you look at what's the return on investment for somebody who's having a really negative impact on a team, what's the return on investment for somebody who goes from being kind of a jerk and people are scared of them to being somebody who people actually want to work with? There's that, which is a little hard to quantify. However, that's an important one.
There are tangible ways to quantify it. If you just take for example your team, Chris -- I did this with a team awhile ago. We took a team of eight. We had two people on the team that had really negative energy. Their IEP was not aligned with their intentions. They just weren't present. The cost for that particular team that we mapped out with the company came down to about $288,000, which costs them a year to not do something with the two members that were having such negative impact.
Christopher: Wow! That's a huge difference. Is it something you see -- are men much worse in this than women?
Anese: No, I don't think so. I think there are different categories. I would hate to totally generalize it. I do notice that men tend to not be aware of their impact as much. Here's one. They tend to not be aware of their impact as much, whereas women tend to be overly aware of their impact.
Women sometimes will be more careful with taking up space and having really big presence because they hold themselves back versus men sometimes -- if I'm super generalizing -- men often will come into a room, guns blazing, and not be aware of the impact they might be having.
I guess a simple way to put this is I will often get calls from men who are incredibly brilliant, super successful with what they're doing, got great crafts, whatever it is, and they'll say, "You know, Anese, I'm really successful in all these things, but for whatever reason, people say that I'm kind of a jerk" or "I'm not having the impact I want to have. Can you help me look at that?"
We look at it and nine times out of ten, it's something to do with their IEP. It's their level of presence. It might be as simple as the guy I talked about earlier, the facial expressions, something as simple as turning and being present with one of his direct reports, putting his computer away. That had a huge impact on his team that he didn't realize what the impact was. He just wasn't conscious to it. That's men.
Women often will come to this work because they want to step into even more powerful presence and higher levels of influence. And so, they'll come to this work to really look at what are their intentions and what are their beliefs and how are they showing up physically and what do they need to shift in order to be more powerful.
Of course, Chris, I would say I've had men come to me for the intentions that women have, and I've had women come to me for the intentions that men have, so I again don't want to generalize, but if I had to, that would be a generalization I would make.
Christopher: Okay. One thing I've noticed is -- I'm a computer scientist and I've been a back office programmer pretty much my whole career. There was a time when I couldn't even bear the thought of having to talk to people in a meeting or face to face in any way. Now that I've improved my health, I'm definitely much better. I spend quite a lot of time talking to people on the phone and it doesn't bother me at all.
Do you ever see someone that's struggling and do you ever say to them, "Well, I can't help you until you get this other stuff fixed." Does that ever happen?
Anese: That's interesting. It's really interesting. I think my relationship with that would be that if somebody's struggling with interacting with their team or just super, super introverted, I don't want to force them to do something they don't want to do. What I would point them towards would be, "Are you having the impact that you want to have and is there due to start having more connection or having more the impact that you want to have?" I would point them towards what's the littlest thing they feel comfortable with.
The other side of that is a lot of times, if somebody is struggling with their presence or they're feeling really shy or they're not feeling good about themselves or their leadership, a lot of times, if I can get them to really start focusing on their physical well-being, so how they're eating, their exercise, if we can get them feeling really physically good, that has an impact on their vibrational presence and also their mental and emotional presence.
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To your question of take care of this thing and this will help the rest, I would say I think the physical side is so important. I think one of the things that we have the most control over -- I don't have control over a lot of stuff that happens in the world or my life or people around me. I don't have control over that. However, I have control over how I want to interact with it and I have even more control over how I take care of myself so that my own internal presence sets me up for the clearest state as possible.
The work that you're doing -- that's why I was excited to talk to you because my original background, I was a kineseologist and that's how I got brought into this, was getting people physically healthy, which supported their mental health, which then supports their leadership.
Christopher: Right. That's exactly what I was getting at. I think in the past, I was worse than I am now because I didn't feel very good. When you don't feel very good, you're not really in a very good mood. It can spoil anything. I can do any of the most fun things I can think about and if my digestion -- if I'm bloated, I'm just not going to enjoy it. The same is true with talking to someone. I'm just not really going to be engaged or present.
Anese: Gosh! I could not agree with you more. I see that all the time and people don't realize -- I'm sure you probably get this with your team. People don't realize how good "good" can feel. I hear people all the time that go through our programs who start to address it.
There are four different quadrants of IEP and one of them is the physical and the environmental energy. They'll start to address their physical health and they'll come to me a month or two later and go, "Oh my gosh! I had no idea that I wasn't feeling good. I had no idea how 'good' could feel."
What's amazing is they increase their own self-efficacy and their self-confidence because they start to take better care of themselves, and so that's a powerful thing to step into. And then they start to alleviate the brain fog and they can actually think more clearly. They start to make decisions more from a place of consciousness versus being bloated or sugared up or --
Christopher: Caffeinated.
Anese: Caffeinated, right, or lacking caffeine.
Christopher: How important do you think the environment is in all of this? I've been in a few corporate -- there's one thing I really noticed when I moved to the US, was the corporate environment really sucks, and then somebody -- I forgot the name of the movie. Is it "Office Space"? I forget now.
It's like a living cliché when I first went to -- I won't mention the name of the tech company, but I saw this football pitch-size area of grey cubes and fluorescent lights and these windowless meeting rooms that were full of meetings with no agenda. It was torture for even the most saintly of humans. What impact do you think that has on it?
Anese: It's huge! It's huge. I'm giggling because I remember "Office Space" and I have to tell you, I've watched that movie and I really appreciate that movie, but it made me tired just watching it. I was like, oh my gosh! I feel exhausted watching these guys.
I believe that environment is essential. I think that from a personal standpoint, you always have people look at, "Is your environment setting you up for success?" If you're saying that leadership and vitality is really important to you, but I come over to your house and your closets are a mess and your pantry is full of Ho-Hos and donuts, if that's happening, your environment is not setting you up, so we want to look personally first at who are the people you're surrounding yourself with, what does your home look like.
Some of the funniest things that I've had happen with people have been when they've gone and they cleaned their closet out, and the closet-cleaning seemed to be this catalyst to get them in front of the rest of their lives, and so now they're eating better and they're showing up differently. I would never have guessed that it would have been that powerful, but the closet did the trick.
Look at your physical environment from an organizational standpoint. I go in and I do cultural IEP assessments for companies where I'll just go and spend a day on site and feel into what's happening. I'll look at the food that they have on site. I'll look at the cubicles that you're talking about.
The minute you walk in, you want to start noticing for your people and for yourself -- the minute you walk in to your office space, do you feel exhausted or do you feel open and expansive and exhilarated? If you feel exhausted, there is some serious work to do with IEP from an environmental standpoint because that's having a huge impact on how people are thinking. It's having a huge impact on their creativity. It's having a huge impact on your team's ability to innovate and collaborate.
If they're feeling fuzzy and yucky, it's going to hurt. I would say that you can't always -- I realize people are going to hear this and go, "Well, I can't change. There are 800 cubicles that we've got. That's where our environment is," and I hear that and I'd also offer what's the littlest thing you can do again to shift the environment so it starts to feel better.
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Even if you've got cubicles, do you put color into them? Do you put flowers in the office? Do you make sure that you've got good food on site? Do you have everybody take a pause as a company that every hour on the hour, they stop what they're doing just to have a moment of silence and to do a presence reboot so that they reengage with themselves and set their intentions for what kind of next hour they want to have? So there are little things you can do for environment even if in your environment, you feel like you have no control over it.
Christopher: Right. When we do that, the presence reboot, I think that's quite an interesting idea. What exactly is that?
Anese: This presence reboot also is on that tool that I mentioned that people can get, so [0:21:02] [Audio Glitch] Chris, but you're welcome to it as well, obviously. The presence reboot is you stop and you just notice -- the first step is you stop and you notice where you're at. The second step is to decide if you're good with where you're at or if you'd like to actually be more present or to show up differently, so you get the gap.
If you're fine at step one, then you leave it alone. You just keep breathing and keep moving. If you're not, which is usually the case, usually people would like to feel a little bit more present or they'd like to have a better experience, if you find in step two that you want to step into something different, you notice what it is that you need to do to take care of yourself.
Step three is looking at, "What do I need to do right now to take care of myself?" It might be, "I've been sitting for hours. I need to move around," "Oh gosh, my breathing is horrible," "I'm hungry," "I need some water," "I need to use the bathroom," "I need to change my mindset." I find a lot of times in step three, people are focusing on the wrong things or they're in a state of judgment or they're just not conscious.
And so, the simplest thing might be, "Actually, I need to intend that I want to have a better experience right now," and then step four is to step into that better experience, into that new level of presence. Step five is to just keep rinsing and repeating and to just keep staying in touch with it. Does that make sense?
One is notice where you're at, two is notice where you want to be, three is notice what you need to do to take care of yourself so you can get there, four is to just step into it, you don't need to go and meditate for an hour. You can just step into a new level of presence, and five is to keep doing it over and over and over again.
Christopher: So there are specific instructions then.
Anese: Yeah, very specific. That's a five-step process. Once people start playing with it -- I always do the five steps just to give them training [0:22:56] [Audio Glitch] to the structure.
For me, I've been doing it for so long and what I find is people, as soon as they start to practice it, it doesn't have to take that -- it can just be in this moment where I go "I'm not really having the experience I want" or "I'm not being really present," and so I'll just change it and now I'm in a new level of presence, so it can take a second.
Christopher: Okay. I wanted to ask you about how this might apply to athletes. There's a real problem there, I think, that people invest their entire lives on training and equipment and all the rest. You turn up to a competition and the goal is to do well. That's why you spent all that money and time, and then you can blow the whole thing just by not being present in that moment or not being -- I'll stop talking and just let you speak.
Anese: Oh no, I appreciate it. I empathize and I appreciate what you're talking about. I think that presence, especially for athletes, I think what I would say about that is if you're out there and you're training and you're in competition and you find that you're getting flustered or nervous, you're losing the joy of the experience or you feel any kind of stress, to me, that's an automatic flag. It's an invitation to stop and to get really present to what's happening in this moment.
It's not only physically, Chris. It's not only physically like, "How's my body doing? What do I need?" and just really checking with my body. That's important, but it's also mentally. I think one of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves mentally is to remember when we're competing why we've gotten in the sport in the first place and to connect with the joy. "Wow! I'm cycling" or "I'm doing this triathlon" or whatever it is, the joy of what it took to get here and the acknowledgment of myself even if I'm losing the race, even if I'm having the worst race ever.
The acknowledgement of the fact that I'm here, I'm doing it, "The race is not great right now, but at least I'm doing it," connecting with that, I believe, that gives us an energy boost and that brings us back to a level of presence that has us -- we may not still win the race, but it has us optimized where we can stop into the next level and enjoy it because if you're competing and you're not enjoying it, really truly, what's the point?
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Christopher: Yeah, it's true. I don't really know anyone that's taking a paycheck for competing, so yeah, it has to be fun. There's no doubt about that, so you think then that -- say, if I'm suffering like if my mind is starting to wander before the start of a race and I'm thinking about something else, which is usually curtains for the speed at the start, what can I do then to set my mind back? Is there another exercise? Would I do the presence reboot thing?
Anese: Yeah. I'd probably just do the presence reboot. I would go through the five steps if I feel like I have the patience for it, but I also might just go, "Whoa! The race is about to start. I'm not in this moment. Let me get back into my body." And so, the simplest thing is to notice what's happening in my body and to notice what's around me.
Little things, Chris, like I might go, "The guy in front of me, he's my co-racer, my competition," whatever, looking at my bike, connecting with my shoes, connecting with my feet, just anything to connect me to this moment, and what I find is if I can appreciate this moment even if I'm terrified, if I can appreciate that terror, that brings me into presence.
I had an experience recently where I had a ton of stuff going on and I had 15 things on my to-do list that day. I was running around and I was not present to anything and it was very stressful. All of a sudden, I remember I was walking into my house and I stopped and I noticed my feet. I just thought, "Okay, Anese, what's going on today?" I noticed my feet and then I started to think about how I was feeling.
I thought, "What is it like in this moment? What do I need to attend to right now?" All of a sudden, all the stress of the 15 things I had to do, it kind of evaporated and I got to enjoy this moment, so I still have my 15 things, I still have my race. Speaking of athletes, I still have a race to run, but in this moment, I've got a jolt of energy and fuel that allowed me to enjoy the present moment and allowed me to perform better for the rest of my day.
Christopher: I don't fully understand why just becoming present for a moment and doing something -- you mentioned thinking about your feet. The body scan is a classic guided meditation technique. Why does it work? I don't understand why it works, why that should reduce stress, but you're right, it does.
Anese: Well, because you can't -- Eckhart Tolle, do you know who Eckhart Tolle is with "The Power of Now"?
Christopher: Oh yeah, I have heard that name.
Anese: He's like the presence guy like from a really spiritual standpoint. The thing that always stuck with me with him is you can't be stressed in the present moment. You find stress if you're living in the future or you're living in the past, but in the present, right now, it's real.
I think my version of that is when I notice my feet or I notice even terror or sadness in this moment, I'm dealing with what's real, so I'm not making up what's going to happen in the future and I'm not stuck in the past. I'm dealing with what's real right now.
Chris, I think that is why it's so powerful, is we're dealing with realness, and I think for human beings, we need authenticity. We need to be present in our lives. We need to have things real so when we stop for a moment and deal with what's real right now, no matter how great or horrible it is, it's the truth and I think our body can relax and we get that extra little jolt.
Christopher: That's great. I've totally forgotten about that. You're absolutely right. What else have you thought about recently? What topics excite you at the moment?
Anese: What excites me at the moment? Gosh, that's good! What's exciting me at the moment is the power of doing less. The power of doing less, meaning that you're still doing a ton, but getting -- let's see here. Let me rephrase this.
The power of doing less meaning that I get out of my own way because I stop being so overwhelmed by all that I have to do and I take a step back. I go and I take a half an hour walk. And then when I come back from taking a half an hour walk, all of a sudden, I still have all those things I need to do, but my brain is so much clearer that I probably now only have to do three things versus the 20 things I thought I had to do, so that's the power of doing less like really being discerning about what you engage your time and your energy in.
The other things that have my attention right now are who you surround yourself with. This has got my attention huge. We become the average sum of the people that we hang out with the most, so if I'm hanging out with people who are negative and who are not supporting me and championing me and whatnot, I will adopt that energy. Energy is contagious. I will adopt that.
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And so, I want to really look at who am I surrounding myself with, how much energy am I putting into things that aren't important to me that are big "should" or that are big projections from other people. That's got my attention right now.
Christopher: Again, what can you do about that sort of thing? If you have family and you're kind of stuck with them, what can you really do about that?
Anese: That's so great. Well, it's not about going out and firing your family. Everybody always freaks out when I talk about this in my workshops because we do a whole section that's called "Ecology", which is basically how you set yourself up with your family, how your family and your friends are called your ecology and setting yourself up for success.
We'll do this whole thing and every time I say that, you see in people the look of terror. It's like, "Oh my gosh, I've got to fire my mom," so you don't. The good news is you don't have to do that, but what you do want to do is you want to be aware of the impact those relationships are having on your energy.
And so, my mom, if every time I talk to my mom I feel horrible when I get off the phone, I really want to get curious about what that is and where is it that I need to make my own energetic field stronger so that I don't let negative energy in, take anybody else's negative energy into my space, so developing a really strong IEP practice and really strong presence practice that makes my energetic field stronger so when I have those negative people, whether it's a mom, a sister, a brother, whatever, I'm better able to rebound from the negative energy dinks. That's one thing, is just the awareness and then taking care of my own field so I'm better able to work with it.
The other thing is making requests, and I've seen this happen so many times. I'll have somebody who's got a negative relationship or maybe it's a spouse or it's a colleague, it could be anything, a sister, and making the request and just saying, "I'm noticing that every time we get together, when we're done with our conversation, I actually feel worse" or "I feel really bummed out. Could we explore that? Could we look at what's happening in our dynamic that's making that, that feels icky?"
I think making the request to the person to either show up differently with you or to start focusing your relationship on different things that feel better, that's another thing that you can do with that. And then if you find that they're just like, "Nope. I'm so committed to my misery and I'm so committed to your misery and I'm just going to bring you down every chance I get," then it might be time for that relationship to change.
Christopher: Okay. I notice that there's a kind of principle emerging here of resilience. With what you've just talked about with family, you can't really change them, but you can change the way in which you respond to them or interact with them, and then the same is true of stress as well, so you can't really avoid exposure to stress. It's ubiquitous and even if you did have no stress, you'd probably just invent something psychological to stress yourself out with.
The same is also true of fear as well that everybody gets scared, but you can control it and it's that control that makes the difference between success and failure. It just seems like a common pattern as much in there.
Anese: I love it that you just pulled that up. Resiliency is one of my favorite words in the world. To me, IEP is about how you show up. It's the internal and external and all that, and I think this is one of the main lines on our website. It's about having you happen to your life versus your life happening to you.
Even with my family and my relationships, I can't control what they do. I can't control what my team does. I've got some influence there, but I can't necessarily control them. I can't control the guy, the barista at the coffee shop who's having a really bad day. I can't control these people.
However, I can control how I take care of myself and what I want to have that mean. If the guy at the coffee shop is really mean to me this morning and I take that really personally and I take his negative energy into my space and I let that infect my day, I let that mean something bigger than it is. He's just having a bad day. I took that on, so that's a choice I make.
The more conscious I am and the better I take care of myself like with my food and my nutrition, my food and my exercise and my environment, the more I take care of myself and the easier it is for me to rebound and to go, "Oh, that negative energy, that's not mine. I don't want it." I can actually give that guy a little bit of a blessing, wish him a really great rest of his day and I can be done with it.
It's the same thing with relationships. I can't tell you how many times I've seen somebody say, "Oh my gosh, my team is horrible" or "My husband is so horrible" or "Every time I go to another job, my boss is horrible." Well, we're the common denominator in that.
So while I can't control what somebody else does with me, if I shift the way that I show up, I'm contagious, so I have a better chance of having an impact on my spouse or my sister or my friend that has them start to change how they show up with me. My best way to change other people is not to try and change them. It's to change myself and then they'll interact with me differently.
[0:35:08]
Christopher: Okay. I get it.
Anese: Does that make sense?
Christopher: It does make sense. Yeah, I understand.
Anese: There are 15 different paths I could go there, Chris. I get super excited about what we're talking about.
Christopher: It's all really interesting. I'm absorbing it as best as I can. I think I am.
Anese: Good!
Christopher: How long do you have to spend with someone before you get a feel for how good their presence is and how much work they have to do?
Anese: I think you can get a feel for someone's presence and their level of connection on a human level -- I think you can get that pretty, pretty fast. I pose that right back to you. When you're interacting with people, my guess is you probably know really, really quickly if you have their attention or not, right?
Christopher: Right.
Anese: I think that we get that just intuitively as human beings. Sometimes it's more obvious than others. We just feel that jarring disregard when we're talking to somebody, so I think we can get that pretty fast.
Personally, as somebody who does this work, I can read that pretty quickly. I go into teams and I can read pretty fast what's happening with the team and where the negative energy gaps are. I'd say as long as it takes. IEP is a lifelong practice. It's never done. This is my life's work and I still have to work on it every single day, and just when I think I've got one thing mastered that I find a blind spot with something different.
And so, I think that that's really liberating to just think of it as a practice, almost like a yoga practice. It's something that you work on for your whole life and you keep getting better and better and more resilient at it. I think that a lot of times, when people go through, they might just need a quick two-day workshop or a day in a workshop and they feel like they've got a good foundation.
The trick for them is to continue to integrate their practices because if they come in and do a one-day workshop and then I never see them again, they can get tremendous value out of that. They just have to stay conscious to it. If they decide to not integrate and they're not working on their presence and they're not continuing to do their work, then they're still better for it, but their return on investment for just a little bit of time and intention every single day is huge. Does that answer your question?
Christopher: It does, yes. My next question follows then, do you have enough information about me to give me some feedback? What do you think?
Anese: Well, you did not say "hello" to me when we got on the call.
Christopher: Didn't I? That's not a good start. I think I normally -- I wonder if all the people listening would be able to tell me whether I actually said "hello" or not. That's hilarious.
Anese: I don't know. I have to tell you, I feel like your voice -- you're so soothing. You're so soothing to listen to. Your accent is beautiful. You're very charming. I love that you and I have had this conversation really organically. I love that kind of space.
I would say your next optimization from my experience of you is just taking that moment before you even get on a call with someone or an interview and thinking about who the person is, and then just greeting them, just a, "Hello! How are you today?" That would be great.
Christopher: I think it might have been a technical thing actually. I might have said "hello" before the call actually went through, but it doest really matter because you still didn't hear it and you're probably not going to mention it again and the damage is already done at that stage, right?
Anese: And to be really super clear, there was zero damage done at all. Chris, I always look at stuff -- unless somebody's got really, really bad presence, unless they've got really bad presence and it's negative impact, I always look at it from optimization.
For you, I feel like your presence is lovely and from an optimization standpoint, that would be my one noticing, but like you said, it could've been a technical glitch. Who knows? Believe me, there's no damage done at all. That would be my optimization point, is just to think about that person and then say "hello" to them.
Christopher: It sounds really obvious, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't do that, right?
Anese: Oh, of course not. The other thing is that I would offer you this thing that you've got around cutting out words to be more efficient because you've got so much stuff to do. I love that. I can empathize where that comes from and I would offer you to go the opposite direction and to spend two minutes before any conversation or any phone call, thinking about the human being and what is it that you want to get out of that conversation and how do you want them to experience you.
I'm pretty sure, Chris, 99% if you start to build that little two-minute practice in before any call, any interview, anything, that's going to have a positive impact on your presence with that person and that will have an even better impact on whatever collaboration you guys do together. It's already great. It's all about optimization.
[0:40:02]
Christopher: Okay. I wonder if some of it is cultural as well. I think that British culture is different. Certainly, I've definitely met large groups of people that don't really do that, the niceties, and you notice it. I probably don't notice it as much now, but certainly when you first come to the US, everybody is all "Have a nice day" and all this kind of stuff and that's very unnatural to British culture. British people are always surprised by that.
Anese: Yeah. It's so funny you bring that up. I was in London this summer. I went out for a week with a company and we did an entire IEP integration for their entire location. We weren't sure culturally how this work would do because I know it's a little bit different, and they ate it up. They jumped right in.
In fact, they're talking about painting door handles in their building different colors to remind people to do presence reboot before they walk into a room because what they got -- the main thing that they took away from this content was that it's not even about leadership or collaboration as much as how you show up.
If you show really intentionally, if you set an intention and you get really present before you walk into a room, then the leadership and the collaboration happens organically, but yeah, I hear you on the cultural differences and they're fine. Here's the way I look at it. We're all human beings and I think all human beings want to be acknowledged and connected with.
Christopher: Yeah, it's true. I think the cultural difference is exactly that, is the history of doing the same thing. It doesn't necessarily mean the thing you've been doing forever is better. It's just different.
Anese: I've never really seen anybody complain about having someone be really present with that.
Christopher: Complain about, "Oh, that woman, she said, 'Have a nice day.' It's ridiculous. I can't stand it. I'm going home."
Anese: To be really clear, there is a creepy level of presence. When we do our two-day events, they're super experiential. Some people are working together and we've got -- it's like there's a ton of stuff happening.
We do model and push it a little bit far so people really do tap into this and know what it feels like to be creepily present with somebody else, so there is that other side of the spectrum, but it's all about calibration. It's about noticing how you're feeling internally and how you're doing for yourself, and then it's also about noticing what is the impact you're having on other people.
So even from a British standpoint, you're always having an impact on somebody, so you just want to start noticing, is it the impact that you want to have? Are you getting the results that you want from them? And at the same time, Chris, are you feeling really good doing it? Because I've seen people get really great results from other people, but they're burnt out and they're not taking care of themselves, and that's not good, so we want both. I want people feeling amazing and happy internally and then I also want them using those super powers for good towards the impact they're creating in the world.
Christopher: That's great. Yeah, I understand. How can people find out more about this stuff? How can you sign up and do the course or how do you come into an assessment?
Anese: Oh gosh, that'd be great. Probably the quickest way to get to it is to go to the iepmethod.com. That's the IEP Method's body work, is iepmethod.com. They can learn more about me at anesecavanaugh.com. If you go to IEP Method, you can go to "Anese Cavanaugh". The sites, they work together.
They can download that resource tool kit. I write articles regularly. We're about to make a big announcement, which I can't say yet, but if they get on my list and when I'm allowed to make the big announcement, then they'll get information on that.
In October, we're doing this event at the end of the month in Sacramento. You're welcome to come. I would love to have anybody for your audience to come to that. In fact, I'm happy to extend an Inner Circle discount code, which is "impact", which will give them 20% off tuition, which is a really nice chunk of change. I think if they go to the site and download stuff, they'll get a ton of good information.
Christopher: That's brilliant and very generous of you. Thank you very much. I'll put that on the show notes, so I can put these links in --
Anese: Oh, please do.
Christopher: If you're looking at these in iTunes, you'll be able to click on the link and go through to the site. That's fantastic.
Anese: Please do, and yes, please extend the discount. I have a really huge belief that we all have to work together in creating amazing impact on our lives and the companies we're leading and just with everything that's happening in the world.
We've got to continue to build stronger leaders in ourselves and also around us, so anything that I can do to contribute to your community and especially if I can get them to the IEP event to support their leadership, I'm all over it, so "impact" code, 25% off, it'd be awesome.
Christopher: Brilliant! Thank you very much.
Anese: Of course, my pleasure.
Christopher: Thank you so much for your time today. It's much appreciated.
Anese: Thank you for having me. I love talking to you.
Christopher: Great! Thank you. Cheers, Anese!
[0:44:52]End of Audio
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