FEBI as a Key Tool in Integrating Energy to Create Stronger, More Resilient Teams

FEBI as a Key Tool in Integrating Energy to Create Stronger, More Resilient Teams

By Kate Watters

“We’re a team,” says a key staff member. “We have each other’s backs, and support each other, especially when things get tough.”

This message is one of generosity and kindness, but it is also pragmatic and makes for effective, efficient work in our environmental and human rights nonprofit, which is often managing numerous issues simultaneously, and working on social justice every day. This can be draining, and in our field, burnout is a concern we all struggle with. Trauma and grief come with the territory, and so we seek tools that help us navigate this landscape with grace, expansiveness, and practicality.

Don’t get me wrong, though.

There is also deep joy, gratitude, fulfillment, and community in the work that we do. But the world is tough these days and so we also consciously bolster ourselves to find strength in each other and to effectively serve our community. FEBI (Focus Energy Balance Indicator), part of the Zen Leadership Toolkit, has been a useful tool in this endeavor.

FEBI is “a validated psychometric instrument that measures 4 energy patterns in the nervous system that map to 4 factors of personality, 4 ways of moving, and 4 essential modes of leadership.” FEBI highlights the four energy patterns in our nervous systems: driver, organizer, collaborator, and visionary, and helps each of us understand which patterns we are more naturally drawn to, and how to benefit from each of them, depending on what is called for in a given situation. As leaders, tapping into FEBI can help us realize our ease and our potential, and it can also serve us as we work through challenges. By accessing all the ways of leading available to us, we can be more effective.

This is true in teams, as well as for each of us individually.

Our team at work has benefited from FEBI training not just as individuals, although many of us have done that, but also as a team, and this helps us manage a variety of tasks with vision, strategy, and organization, depending on what is needed in the moment.

The various strengths of our team manifest in many ways. Leadership looks very different in different situations, and each of us has the opportunity to lead depending on what is called for in a given moment. It can be like passing the baton in a relay race, or taking turns carrying the melody in an orchestra, or simply sharing the task of making supper.

In our organization, it often involves creating and enacting an advocacy strategy, while simultaneously developing and carrying out a communications plan to support the advocacy work. We must also support our colleagues, many of whom are working in difficult and dangerous situations, threatened by authoritarian regimes. Personal and digital security must also be maintained, while we also “get the story out.” This requires diligence and multiple, simultaneous, points of focus. Digging into our FEBI tools helps in these situations.

Visionary energy helps us create strategic plans, find solutions in tough and emotionally draining situations, and find creative answers to tough and complicated problems. It keeps us believing, and helps us keep our eye on the big picture, while finding new ways to engage in the world.

Driver energy keeps us on task, circling back around to the point when conversations go sideways, finding solutions, and keeping an eye on the goal. Driver energy also keeps the fires burning when fatigue threatens.

Organizer energy keeps us on track, too, reminding us to make use of shared drives and calendars, setting schedules, and keeping a sense of perspective when the multitude of tasks threatens to overwhelm. It helps us stay grounded when the whirlwind feels close.

And our collaborator energy reminds us to work together, to have fun, to take the moment to breathe between jobs, tell a joke, ask about the weekend, keep things human. It reminds us that we are our own community that is connected to a larger one, and that there is strength and power in that.

Each member of the team has all these energies, but as we know from FEBI, we all have preferred patterns. And when we allow the leadership of our organization to come from all the leaders (each of us!) in the group, our work tapestry is so much richer than if we were to rely on just one leadership style, just one leader, just one “correct” way of moving forward. When one of us gets tired, the others can step up, leading from their strengths and providing an opportunity to restore and re-energize.

We know that our strengths support and complement each other. Compromise. Standing firm. Looking at options. Choosing a path. Engaging with partners. Selecting a way forward. Listening. Speaking. Stepping forward. Letting someone else lead. All these strategies—and the many, many more that are out there, work best when they happen in concert.

FEBI teaches us this.

And it reminds us that none of us have to be everything. That each of us has the capacity to lead in our own way and that we don’t have to conform to a mold, to a standard, to an ideal of leadership that we may have been taught as children, or early in our careers, or from outmoded models of what a leader looks like.

A leader looks like you. A leader looks like me. A leader looks like all of us, especially when we make use of the patterns available to us, whether they are in our own bodies or in the bodies of our colleagues.

FEBI training first teaches us this, then reminds us of it, and guides us through the energy patterns as creatively as we can do so. As a team, the depth of each of our individual FEBI capacities is strengthened even more, making our unit more whole.

Kate Watters is the IZL Board Chair, an IZL Instructor, and a FEBI Certified Coach.

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