Three ways to re-energize your tired nonprofit team

It's only February, and it's been a long year already for many of us. We are tired of the pandemic, tired of navigating working from home in the office, tired of winter, the cold, snow and the short days. And we are exhausted from whatever else is on our plates.

Yet, we want to come to work feeling energized and excited and to work with a group of employees who were also engaged, energized and excited to be there. We want to make an incredible difference, and we want a team that's alongside us and doing that work together.

So how do you move from tired, lethargic, and feeling apathetic to being excited, energized, and engaged? Here are three ways

Re-energize yourself
Re-energize your team
Re-energize your people one by one


Defining energy

Let's start with understanding what it means to have energy. 

VIA defines that energy as zest. Zest means approaching a situation, or life in general, with excitement and energy, not approaching tasks or activities halfway or halfheartedly. Zest, one of the 24 VIA character traits, has the strongest ties to overall life satisfaction and a life of engagement. But here's the problem: zest is consistently one of the lowest scoring traits worldwide. That's a problem if you and many others on your team are struggling with energy and enthusiasm. 

3 ways to re-energize your tired nonprofit team

Let's look at the 3 ways to re-energize your tired nonprofit team.


Re-energize yourself
Regardless of how much zest you have, you'll probably want to increase it or, at minimum, maintain it. Because it's tough to have the energy and enthusiasm to lead your team if you feel like a sloth? 

If you are curious where Zest lands for you on the VIA Character Strengths Assessment, click here to do the free assessment.
If you are a member of The Training Library, you can use the various worksheets in this course to help you use your signatures strengths and strengthen your lesser-used strengths. 

Strategies for increasing your zest

• Take a break
  • When your energy is depleted, you need to recharge.
• Exercise
  • Physical activity increases your energy. Even a walk around the office or your house can help.
• Spend time in nature
  • Getting outside can give you an energy boost, but so can picking off a few dead leaves or watering your plants!
• Shift your mindset. 
  • Focus on being enthusiastic about a project, conversation or task by focusing on the positive aspects of it or the parts of it that will use your strengths.

Re-energize your team

Even if you move to increase your zest or energy, you still may not be the most energized person on the team. That may not be your natural state. However, it might be for someone else. When we use people's strengths, they are more engaged, happy and impactful at work. So look around your team. Who is the most energized person? How can you leverage their excitement enthusiasm for work?

Tony Swartz from the Energy Project is called the Chief Energy Officer. Perhaps there is someone on your team who would like that unofficial title. Alternately, it might be a shared responsibility. 

Sample strategies:

• Include an energy-building exercise at each team meeting. You could rotate who coordinates this each meeting. 
• Have 5-day challenges like getting to 5000 steps, sharing five pictures from their nature walks, or tracking their breaks each week.
• Share a positive event daily on your team's chat. Research has shown more frequent sharing of positive events has led to greater vitality three weeks later - https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/27f1/d9a105fdc14d7eb2af7141f2d8454ff14742.pdf

Re-energize your people one-by-one
While in general, we need to look at boosting our energy, which will boost team morale, you'll also need to focus on individual challenges. Your job as a leader is to look at each individual on your team and support them in whatever way they need. This level of support requires you to tune in to your social intelligence lean into empathy, compassion and presence. Be aware of what each person is going through and consider helping support each of them in the way they need you.

For example:

• Encourage their development by providing a bit more positive reinforcement, gratitude or encouragement.
• Check-in regularly with a simple Likert scale. On a scale of 1-10, how close are you to quitting, feeling like you are going off the deep end, burnout etc.? Find language that you and the employee get and sum up their state quickly and easily. It removes the need to ask: How are you doing and gives them the freedom to be a bit more honest.
• Provide links to your EAP (Employee Assistance Program) if things are beyond your scope as the leader.

Moving your team from tired, lethargic, and feeling apathetic to being excited, energized, and engaged happens when you re-energize yourself, your team and your people one by one. You can do this! Start by choosing to take action. That will get the ball rolling and your energy in the right direction!