THE TWELVE PILLARS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Intensity: A Pillar of Entrepreneurship Performance
Staying healthy is part of your job
As an entrepreneur, your road to success is likely paved with long hours, poor sleep hygiene, and constant challenges. To stay on top, you need to manage your cognitive, emotional, and physical resources effectively. You’re a human being, and therefore you are not endowed with infinite energy. Each day, you have a finite set of resources to expend on thinking, expressing emotion, and acting.
In this post, I’ll explain why Intensity is a key performance pillar for entrepreneurs and how sustaining energy over the long haul can help drive performance.
Intensity as an Entrepreneurship Performance Pillar
If you are a founder, your success depends on your ability to stay focused, motivated, and productive, day in and day out. It can be grueling and draining. You’re likely juggling multiple tasks, dealing with stress and uncertainty, and expanding beyond your comfort zone. With a never-ending to-do list, it can feel like maintaining a healthy work-life balance is impossible.
However, staying healthy should be at the top of your to-do list. If you are fatigued or unmotivated, your performance will suffer — science says so. If you don’t want your work quality to suffer, you must stay healthy. That’s why Intensity is a critical component of high performance. Performance in Intensity means you can manage your cognitive, emotional, and physical resources to maintain high-quality work without burning out. Burnout is an all too common experience for entrepreneurs.
When discussing performance, people often confuse behavior and outcomes. So, before going on, it’s essential that you understand the difference between performance tasks, behaviors, and outcomes. Below is a graphic that explains the difference between a task (the work that needs to be completed), performance (a collection of behaviors), and the outcome (the end output resulting from the behaviors).
What does high-performance Intensity look like?
Even the most motivated, dedicated, and determined entrepreneurs can burn out if they don’t care for themselves. Individuals and teams that perform high in the Intensity Pillar accept that they have a finite set of resources (e.g., emotional, physical), intentionally managing those resources. They understand they need sleep and fuel to perform at their maximum capacity. They can then maintain their energy and focus over the long term.
Here are some example Intensity behaviors that are common of successful entrepreneurs:
Behaviors:
- Allocate time, effort, and energy to achieving goals
- Express passion and enthusiasm for work
- Develop habits and routines that free up cognitive resources
- Channel optimism towards work and focus
Leveraging Teams for High-Performance
Performance in Intensity may seem like an individual task to you, but that is far from the truth. To prioritize self-care, you need the support of your team. For example, one of my teammates got COVID last week (when will it end?!). Because our team values compassion and self-care, we have a built-in system to handle these situations. We back each other up and cover the workload when one member is sick or needs a day to grieve after the passing of a family member. Our behavioral norms are not just because we want our people to be healthy. We also stress the backup process to give the teammate time to recover so they return reinvigorated. When people are sick, tired, or emotionally distracted, they cannot perform at their highest level. If we expected him to work through the sickness, it would take longer for him to recover, and his performance would suffer, and in turn, our team's performance would suffer. So instead of expecting my teammate to work through his COVID, other members took on the work so that when he returned to work, he would be at his max capacity.
Intensity is also highly connected to performance in the other Pillars. If you are exhausted or have expended all your emotional resources, you are less likely to make effective decisions. For instance, sleep deprivation can impair innovation and communication. One research study found that when participants had their sleep disrupted abruptly, their decision-making performance was less than 51% of their optimal decision performance. Interpersonal conflict is also more likely to arise when people are burned out at work, which poses a risk to effective teamwork. Burnout also impedes your ability to attain goals by lowering motivation and the effects of psychological and physiological symptoms. If you want your team to make wise decisions, communicate effectively, innovate creatively, and avoid interpersonal conflict (among other things) — focus on improving your Intensity performance.
Conclusion
Starting a company is not for the faint of heart. It requires dedication, hard work, and enthusiasm. By managing your cognitive, emotional, and physical resources effectively, you are more likely to perform to your highest potential. So, take care of yourself and support your teammates by helping them prioritize self-care.
Share some methods or techniques you use to manage and sustain your energy in the comment section below!
Check out our next blog to discover how to improve your Tenacity Performance.
Have Questions or Need Advice?
At Blackhawke, we have several I-O psychologists with expertise in entrepreneurship performance and performance management. Feel free to schedule a 15-minute consultation; we’d be happy to provide some advice or answer questions, no strings attached!
About Blackhawke Behavior Science
Want to learn more about building a strong entrepreneurial team and healthy organizational culture? Visit Blackhawke’s Medium publication, From I-O to IPO, or www.blackhawke.io and get social with us on Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, or Twitter!
