The Energy Shift Newsletter

May 12, 2026 The Identity Disruption Few Organizations Prepared For There’s a strange irony unfolding in the modern workplace. For years, many organizations unintentionally trained people to attach their worth to efficiency, responsiveness, consistency, and task execution. The ideal employee became the one who could process faster, handle more, stay organized, and keep everything moving without friction. Check the boxes. Clear the queue. Respond quickly. Keep producing. And f

May 5, 2026 Some phrases sound simple. “I was wrong.” “I don’t know.” “I need help.” “I’m proud of you.” None of them are complicated. Most people understand what they mean. And yet, in real workplace moments, they can be surprisingly difficult to say. That’s what makes them revealing. Not because emotionally intelligent people have perfect language. They don’t. But because the words we reach for under pressure often show more than our communication style. They reveal what we

April 28, 2026 Douglas Herbert Workplace Visibility Strategist The next workplace advantage may not be better technology. It may be a more energy-aware organization. For the last few years, the business world has been racing toward AI. New tools. New platforms. New workflows. New promises. Every week seems to bring another headline about how artificial intelligence will transform productivity, reshape roles, and reinvent the way work gets done. And in many ways, the technolog

April 21, 2026 Some leadership questions sound strong simply because they sound certain. “What should be?” is one of them. It sounds responsible. It sounds disciplined. It sounds like the kind of question leaders are supposed to ask. After all, leaders are expected to have standards. They’re expected to create direction, hold accountability, and help teams move toward meaningful outcomes. But there’s a subtle risk in leading too heavily from that frame. When “what should be”

April 14, 2026 Some workplace problems arrive with noise. A resignation that catches everyone off guard. A conflict that spills into the open. A sharp drop in morale, trust, or performance that finally becomes too obvious to ignore. But many culture problems don’t begin that way. They begin quietly. Not as a breakdown, but as a drift. A subtle shift in how work is being experienced day to day. A little less candor in meetings. A little more hesitation before someone says what

April 7, 2026 Not every workplace issue is really about the issue itself. Sometimes the deeper problem is the pattern that forms around it. A concern gets raised. A frustration gets voiced. Someone signals that something feels off. On the surface, it looks like a normal moment of tension, the kind that teams and leaders are supposed to address. But sometimes the effort required to express the friction is relatively small, while the effort required to absorb it, manage it, and

March 31, 2026 Most workplaces develop their own quiet shorthand for people. Someone is seen as difficult. Someone else is called high potential. One person becomes the reliable one. Another is described as emotional, political, resistant, quiet, or not really leadership material. These descriptions often begin with something real. They usually grow out of an observation, a repeated pattern, or a moment that seemed to explain something clearly. The issue is not that we notice

March 24, 2026 Douglas Herbert Workplace Visibility Strategist I was recently talking with a friend about how often we struggle to get out of our own way when it comes to moving forward. The conversation began at a personal level, but it did not stay there for long. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that this is not just an individual issue. It is something that shows up in teams, in leadership, and in organizations all the time. Most workplaces spend a great de

March 17, 2026 One of the ongoing challenges of leadership is learning how to read the room accurately. Most experienced leaders know that energy in a room can shift quickly. A new idea gets introduced, a difficult comment gets made, or a particular person begins to speak, and something changes. You can feel the room tighten, open up, lean in, or pull back. Even when no one says it out loud, the energy tells you something. It becomes part of how we interpret what is happening