Team Evaluation: Not Individual Evaluation

Energy Mapping_TM is all about measuring the team not evaluating employees. Organizations have lots of tools to evaluate employees but until now have lacked a diagnostic tool that can evaluate how the team is working together to deliver on the brand promise.

Senior leaders often see problems —- declining sales, employee turnover, low employee engagement — but have lacked an ability to see how the way people are working together is either mitigating or exacerbating them. Energy Mapping_TM is that tool.

The main reason that energy mapping is primarily a team rather than individual assessment is that energy is affected by the social and institutional context in which people work. It is not a personality measure. People who work in under-resources areas or are tasked repeatedly to interact with challenging clients are likely to be less energizing. Their energy is depleted.

Organizations with poor or cumbersome processes that do not align with the customer experience and employee needs may also find impacts on their energy. This is part of why those who do energize others can be so helpful in realigning how people work together.

It is harder to be an energizer if you are not being energized by the people around you. This is a fundamental truth about energy. It is contagious! Low energy parts of the organization can be locked in a cycle of low energy. And high energy areas locked in a virtuous circle.

How Mapping Helps Evaluate Teams: Employees Have Nothing to Fear

Organizations are always evaluating employees. Formal evaluations, informal assessments, monitoring sales and behaviour all provide a picture of how well employee are performing . And job performance is multi-dimensional.

Energy mapping is a different perspective because it locates individuals within a team evaluation. Employees have nothing to fear. Few people are so de-energizing in an organization that there would need to be radical employer action (e.g. termination). And, the organization probably has identified those people. 

Where people fit on the Energy dimension can help organizations plan training and development (in case you did not know, being an energizing person is a skill) and re-org processes and teams. Employees affected are as likely to welcome the change if managed well, because the energy scores show that the team/ group is not working effectively. People are not having a positive impact on each other; that needs to change. Using Energy as a KPI can help you understand if your changes are working.

Finally, we talk a lot about Super Energizers. Those who score high in terms of energizing others and who are well connected. These are organizational capital and these employees are likely, because they tend to be brand ambassadors, to want to help. Use them.