You stare at your calendar Monday morning and your stomach drops. Another week of back-to-back stakeholder meetings, budget reviews, and strategic planning sessions. You're brilliant at all of it (your team's performance proves that). But somewhere between your last promotion and this moment, work has become something to endure rather than enjoy.
Sound familiar? You've been sold a lie about professional strengths.
The conventional wisdom says a strength is simply something you're good at. Wrong. A true strength combines capability with energy. It's not just what you can do well. It's what energises you while you do it well.
Here's why this matters: working against your energy patterns isn't just unpleasant, it's unsustainable. In today's demanding work environment, energy management has become as crucial as time management.
Understanding the Energy-Capability Gap
The Competence Trap
Most careers reward competence over passion. You're good at financial analysis, so you get more of it. You handle difficult conversations well, so they become your default responsibility. Before you know it, you're trapped in a role built around your capabilities, not your energy sources.
The hidden cost? You're running on willpower instead of natural momentum. That works for a while, but willpower is finite.
Consider the manager who excels at stakeholder management but finds constant meetings utterly draining. They're competent, valued, and successful (and completely exhausted). They've mistaken a skill for a strength.
Why This Matters in Leadership Roles
Leadership amplifies everything. When you're energised by your work, that enthusiasm spreads to your team. When you're drained, that shows up too. It appears in your decision-making, creativity, and ability to inspire others.
Leadership demands sustained energy for complex decisions, difficult conversations, and supporting teams through challenges. If you're already running on empty, those demands become overwhelming.
The Warning Signs
How do you know if you're caught in the competence trap?
- You procrastinate on tasks you're supposedly good at
- You feel exhausted after work despite clear accomplishments
- You find yourself less innovative in areas where you used to excel
These aren't character flaws. They're energy misalignment signals.
The Energy Audit Framework
The solution isn't guesswork or hoping things improve. You need data. Here's a systematic approach to understanding your energy patterns.
Week One: The Activity Log
Start tracking your daily activities alongside your energy levels. Use a simple 1-10 scale where 1 means completely drained and 10 means fully energised.
Log everything:
- The morning strategy meeting (energy: 4)
- Reviewing budget forecasts (energy: 2)
- Mentoring a junior colleague (energy: 8)
- Presenting to the leadership team (energy: 7)
Include interaction types too. Some people are energised by group problem-solving but drained by one-on-one coaching. Others thrive in individual work but find team meetings exhausting.
Week Two: Pattern Recognition
Now you're looking for trends:
- Which five activities consistently energise you?
- What are your biggest energy drains?
Pay attention to unexpected patterns. You might discover that the "difficult" conversations you've been avoiding actually energise you. Meanwhile, the "easy" administrative tasks leave you flat.
Consider timing factors too. Are you naturally more energised by creative work in the morning or analytical tasks in the afternoon?
Week Three: The Reality Check
This week, you're comparing your energy patterns with how you actually spend your time:
- Calculate what percentage of your week goes to energising activities
- Calculate what percentage goes to draining activities
If you're spending 70% of your time on activities that drain you, you've identified why Monday mornings feel overwhelming.
Making Sense of Your Data
Look for the difference between temporary energy dips and consistent patterns. Learning something new might temporarily drain your energy. But if you're energised by growth and challenge, that's different from being consistently drained by routine tasks.
Consider how team dynamics affect your individual energy. You might love strategic thinking but find it draining when done in certain group settings.
Practical Applications
For Individual Contributors
Start small. Use your energy insights to negotiate project assignments that better align with your patterns. If you're energised by presenting findings but drained by data analysis, look for opportunities to take on more client-facing or storytelling responsibilities.
Build your career development plan around energy insights, not just skill gaps. Instead of forcing yourself to become better at everything, become exceptional at things that energise you.
For Team Leaders and Managers
Use energy awareness when forming teams and assigning projects. Someone who's energised by troubleshooting complex problems might struggle with routine maintenance tasks, even if they're technically capable of both.
Create psychological safety for honest energy discussions. When team members can admit what drains them without feeling like they're shirking responsibility, you can build more effective team structures.
Support career development conversations that consider energy alignment, not just advancement opportunities.
For Career Transitions
When evaluating new opportunities, ask questions about energy alignment during interviews:
- What does a typical day look like?
- What types of challenges would you face?
- How much time is spent on different types of activities?
Look for ways to bridge your current skills with activities that energise you, rather than making dramatic leaps that ignore your existing capabilities.
Common Challenges and Solutions
"But I Can't Just Do What I Love"
Nobody's suggesting you can eliminate all draining activities from your role. The goal is better balance and conscious choice.
Start by finding energy sources within necessary tasks. If budget reviews drain you but you're energised by problem-solving, reframe the budget review as a strategic puzzle to solve.
Build towards better alignment over time rather than expecting immediate dramatic changes.
When Your Team's Energy Doesn't Align
Create rotation systems for necessary but universally draining work. Build complementary teams where one person's energy drain is another's energy source.
If your entire team is drained by certain activities, that's valuable information about process design or resource allocation.
The Learning Curve Problem
Distinguish between the temporary energy cost of learning something new and genuine misalignment with the work itself. If you're energised by growth and challenge, the learning curve energy investment pays off. If you're fundamentally misaligned with the type of work, no amount of competence will make it energising.
Your Next Steps
Start your own energy audit this week. Track just three days to begin with. You'll already start seeing patterns.
Have an honest conversation with your manager about energy alignment. Frame it around effectiveness, not preference. You're not asking to avoid difficult work. You're offering insights about how to get your best performance.
Share these concepts with your team. Energy awareness benefits everyone and creates more honest, effective working relationships.
Remember: sustainable career growth isn't about grinding through work that drains you until you reach some mythical level where you can finally do what energises you. It's about building from your energy sources whilst managing the necessary energy drains.
Your best work happens at the intersection of what you can do and what energises you. Start building your career from there.