Beyond Skills: The Rise of Leadership Energy and How It Shapes Teams, Culture, and Innovation

Marcus walked into the Monday morning stand-up carrying something invisible.

His team couldn't name it. But they felt it immediately.

The room temperature seemed to drop. Shoulders tensed. Eye contact became scarce. The normally energetic product designer who usually bounced ideas off walls suddenly found her notebook fascinating.

Marcus hadn't said a word yet. He'd just entered the room.

But his energy had already spoken volumes.

He'd spent the weekend spiralling over a board presentation. His anxiety about Thursday's pitch had colonised his entire nervous system. And now, standing in front of his team with his coffee and laptop, he was broadcasting that anxiety like a radio signal—wordless, invisible, but unmistakably present.

The stand-up that usually sparked with creative friction and collaborative problem-solving? It became a recitation of status updates. Safe. Perfunctory. Dead.

Nobody disagreed with anyone. Nobody suggested anything bold. Nobody took risks.

Not because Marcus said "play it safe." Because his energy said, "I can't handle complexity right now."

The team felt it. And they adapted to match it.

This is leadership energy. And it's shaping your organisation's outcomes far more than your strategy deck, your mission statement, or your quarterly OKRs.

Welcome to the invisible force that builds culture—or quietly destroys it.

The Leadership Variable Nobody Measures (But Everyone Feels)

We obsess over leadership competencies. Strategic thinking. Communication skills. Decision-making frameworks. Emotional intelligence.

All critical. All trainable. And all incomplete.

Because beneath competencies lives something more fundamental: the energetic field you create just by being in the room.

Dr. Sigal Barsade, a researcher at Wharton, spent two decades studying what she called "emotional contagion" in organisations. Her findings were startling:

Within 2 minutes of a leader entering a space, the collective emotional state of everyone present measurably shifts to align with that leader's energy.

Not their words. Not their directives. Their energy.

And that shift—that invisible atmospheric change—predicts team performance, innovation output, and psychological safety more accurately than any personality assessment or skills inventory.

Think about it:

You've worked for the leader whose mere presence made you want to do your best work. Not because they demanded it. Because something about their energy unlocked your capability.

You've also worked for the leader who drained rooms. Who made talented people feel small? Whose presence created an invisible ceiling on what felt possible.

Same skills. Opposite energy. Completely different organisational outcomes.

The Next Dimension Story approach to leadership is based on energy management for effective leadership. Through 5 key pillars of leadership, we empower our leaders to implement highly effective techniques into their daily working lives. Try out our leadership video course or the leadership audio course to learn these powerful techniques for yourself and see the boost in your leadership impact in under 10 days. Check it out now and be part of the effective leadership energy revolution.  

What Leadership Energy Actually Is (And Isn't)

Leadership energy is not:

• Charisma (you can be charismatic and energetically toxic)

• Extroversion (quiet leaders can project powerful, generative energy)

• Positivity (toxic positivity is still toxic energy)

• Volume (loud doesn't equal energising)

Leadership energy is the emotional atmosphere you create through your presence—the felt sense of what it's like to be in proximity to you.

It operates on multiple frequencies:

1. Emotional Tone Are you broadcasting anxiety or groundedness? Scarcity or abundance? Fear or trust?

2. Relational Stance Do people feel evaluated or seen? Used or valued? Like resources or like humans?

3. Energetic Quality Constricting or expansive? Depleting or enlivening? Closing down possibilities or opening them up?

Your team's nervous systems read all of this—subconsciously, constantly, accurately.

And they respond accordingly.

The Energy Equation: How Leaders Amplify or Drain

Here's what most leaders don't realise: You don't get to opt out of having an energetic impact.

You're always broadcasting. The only question is what you're broadcasting.

THE ENERGY DRAINERS:

1. Unprocessed Anxiety When you carry unmetabolised stress into interactions, your team's cortisol levels rise to match yours. They become hypervigilant, scanning for threats, and are unable to access creative thinking.

Real example: A tech startup CEO's unprocessed fear about runway created a culture where every decision felt life-or-death. Innovation died because nobody could think expansively when survival energy dominated.

2. Transactional Relating When people feel like means to your ends—resources to extract value from rather than humans to collaborate with—they minimise what they offer. You get compliance, not commitment.

Real example: A sales director who only engaged team members when he needed something created an energy of "What does he want now?" The team's proactive initiative disappeared because they only showed up when summoned.

3. Emotional Incongruence When what you say doesn't match what you feel, teams sense the dissonance. It creates an energetic "glitch" that erodes trust faster than overt dishonesty.

Real example: A CMO kept saying "we're fine" while radiating panic about declining metrics. The team stopped trusting her words and started reading her energy, which told them to update their résumés.

4. Scarcity Consciousness When you operate from "not enough" (time, resources, recognition, safety), you create competitive, hoarding cultures where collaboration withers.

Real example: A research lab director's constant messaging about limited funding created such intense competition for resources that scientists stopped sharing findings. Innovation paradoxically slowed despite high talent density.

THE ENERGY AMPLIFIERS:

1. Grounded Presence When you're regulated—nervous system calm, mentally clear, emotionally available—you create psychological safety that unlocks peak performance.

Real example: Satya Nadella's practice of starting meetings with genuine curiosity rather than agenda-pushing transformed Microsoft's culture from combative to collaborative. His grounded energy gave permission for others to show up fully.

2. Abundance Orientation When you operate from "there's enough" (ideas, credit, opportunity), you create generative cultures where people lift each other.

Real example: Pixar's culture of "plussing"—building on others' ideas rather than competing—stems from leadership energy that celebrates collective wins over individual heroics. Ed Catmull and John Lasseter modelled this energetically, not just verbally.

3. Authentic Caring When people feel genuinely valued (not for output, but for humanity), they bring discretionary effort you can't demand.

Real example: The CEO of a boutique consultancy learned every employee's coffee order and remembered details about their lives. Small gestures. But the energetic message was clear: "You matter to me as a human." Retention rate: 96% in an industry averaging 68%.

4. Possibility Consciousness When you hold space for what doesn't exist yet—when your energy says "we'll figure this out" rather than "this might not work"—teams access creative problem-solving.

Real example: When Jacinda Ardern led New Zealand's COVID response, her energy consistently communicated "this is hard AND we can handle it." That energetic stance enabled a nation to do difficult things without descending into panic or resistance.

The AI Mirror: How Technology Amplifies Your Energy

Here's where it gets really interesting: AI doesn't just automate work. It amplifies leadership energy—for better or worse.

Consider two leaders implementing the same AI customer service tool:

LEADER A: Scarcity Energy Implements AI saying: "This will handle routine inquiries so we can reduce headcount and improve margins."

The energy broadcast: You're expendable. AI is replacing you. Your value is diminishing.

What happens: Team disengagement. Quiet quitting. Innovation dies (why suggest improvements if you're being optimised away?). Customer experience degrades because remaining humans bring transactional energy.

LEADER B: Abundance Energy Implements AI saying: "This tool handles repetitive inquiries so you can focus on complex problems that require your uniquely human judgment and creativity."

The energy broadcast: Your humanity is more valuable, not less. AI frees you for higher-order work. Your role is evolving, not ending.

What happens: Team engagement increases. People experiment with AI as a tool that serves them. Innovation accelerates because psychological safety remains intact. Customer experience improves because humans bring elevated energy to their remaining interactions.

Same technology. Opposite energy. Completely different outcomes.

AI is an energetic amplifier. It doesn't change your leadership energy—it broadcasts it at scale.

If your foundational energy is fear-based, controlling, or scarcity-driven, AI will amplify that throughout your organisation.

If your energy is trust-based, empowering, or abundance-oriented, AI will amplify that instead.

Technology doesn't determine the outcome. Your energy does.

From Transactional to Energy-Driven Leadership: The Shift

TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP asks: "What do I need from my team?"

ENERGY-DRIVEN LEADERSHIP asks: "What energy do I need to bring so my team can do their best work?"

It's a fundamental reorientation—from extracting value to creating conditions.

Q&A: Mastering Leadership Energy

Q: This sounds like woo-woo. Where's the science?

A: The science is robust. Look up:

• Emotional contagion (Sigal Barcade, Wharton)

• Limbic resonance (Thomas Lewis, UCSF)

• Polyvagal theory (Stephen Porges, Indiana University)

• Psychological safety (Amy Edmondson, Harvard)
  

These aren't mystical concepts. They're measurable neurobiological phenomena. Mirror neurons, nervous system regulation, hormonal cascades—all scientifically documented ways humans unconsciously sync emotional states.

Q: I'm naturally anxious/intense/pessimistic. Am I doomed to project bad energy?

A: Not at all. Energy-driven leadership isn't about suppressing your natural temperament. It's about metabolising it so you're not unconsciously broadcasting unprocessed emotion.

Anxiety becomes problematic when it's unconscious and unregulated—when you leak it into every interaction. Contained, processed anxiety can actually generate helpful urgency.

The key: Do your emotional work privately so you can show up intentionally publicly.

Q: How do I shift energy that's already toxic in my organisation?

A: You can't change organizational energy by announcing new values. You change it by consistently modelling different energy until the system begins to entrain you.

Start small:

• Your team (your direct sphere of influence)

• One meeting per week where you consciously bring different energy

• Model for 90 days before expecting systemic change

Energy shifts are slow, then sudden. You'll see little change for months, then wake up one day and realize the whole culture feels different.

The Future Is Energetic

Marcus—the leader from our opening story—realised something three months after that dead stand-up.

He'd been so focused on his Thursday pitch anxiety that he'd missed a more important Thursday: the one where his entire team had become tentative, self-protective, and small.

His unprocessed energy had colonised their creative capacity.

So, he changed his practice. Every morning before his commute, he spent 10 minutes processing his own anxiety privately.

Journal. Breathe. Talk it through with a coach. Metabolise it so he wasn't broadcasting it unconsciously.

The shift was subtle. And total.

Stand-ups regained their spark. The product designer started bouncing ideas off the walls again. Disagreements reemerged—healthy friction that generates better solutions.

Marcus hadn't changed his words, his strategy, or his competencies.

He'd changed his energy. And his team's entire experience of work was transformed.

That's the power—and the responsibility—of leadership energy.

You're always broadcasting. Your team is always receiving.

The question isn't whether you have an energetic impact.

The question is: Are you creating the energetic conditions where human potential can flourish?

Because in the age of AI—where algorithms handle transactions and humans handle complexity—your energy is your strategy.

Technology can optimise efficiency. Only you can create the atmosphere where innovation, collaboration, and human excellence emerge.

The future of leadership isn't more skills.

It's more presence. More awareness. More conscious energy cultivation.

Your team is waiting to see what energy you bring tomorrow.

Choose it wisely. They'll build their entire experience of work around it.