Hey Everyone,

What fascinates me most right now is how we change under pressure and stress. Why is it so hard to regulate emotions and maintain habits when things fall out of order? I'd say this is at the core of my current work. If you have ideas and strategies that work for you, please share them with me. Thanks!

Today at a Glance

• The MD I Saw Myself in Years Ago

• Energy as a Core Leadership Idea

• How I Coach Habits

The MD I Saw Myself in Years Ago

I had a coaching client who is a medical doctor like myself and has run a very successful practice for years now. I was like him some years ago:

He's super busy with his work and came to me seeking help. He skipped meals, ate sweets (very common in doctor offices, tbh), lacked sufficient sleep, felt drained of all energy, and lost his mind-body connection. He also skipped his daily workouts. When we spoke about how he runs his practice, several obstacles and problems were occurring—lack of leadership, employees frequently out sick for weeks, and he couldn't assert his authority as chief of the practice.

I thought about our coaching when we set up the LinkedIn post for Monday (November 3rd) about habits and referring to Atomic Habits in general.

We made a so-called cheat sheet and thought about the 7 obstacles for building habits. We had one of my favorite coaching clientele in mind, high potentials, who sure well know the pressure-stress-habits axis. This is the cheat sheet:

1/ Overloaded mind: Absolutely. He had tons of tasks per day and worked at night.

2/ Context switching: Yes. His workday was inconsistent, distractions every second.

3/ Perfectionism: He's actually quite pragmatic, which is good here.

4/ Motivation swings: He became unmotivated when going to the practice and seeing 50% of employees are sick… AGAIN.

5/ Invisible progress: He gets feedback from patients and money, of course. But beyond that, the extreme effort he puts in most of the time didn’t get noticed or becomes the new normal.

6/ Accountability gaps: There were no limits—in his environment or in himself—for making time, attention, and energy accountable.

7/ Identity conflict: Tricky one. I'd say he's okay with his identity for the professional role as an MD.

Energy as a Core Leadership Idea

As I put Agile Leadership and Mastering Emotions on my billboards and banners, most clients want to transform into future high EQ-leaders immediately.

That’s amazing, but, as always in life, there is a but:

Leadership, at its core, is about SENDING energy to others and your environment. This sounds simple—even a bit esoteric—but it's incredibly difficult. To do this consistently—not just once or twice, but daily, under pressure, across multiple relationships, with numerous tasks, needs to address, and teams to lead—requires very specific capabilities.

To SEND energy to others, you must first BUILD energy. Every day. And regenerate at night. After this, you need to MANAGE or CHANNEL energy (or most of it) toward yourself (see next chapter).

Then, with learning, repetition and rhythm, you will build EQ fast, establish a steadfast brain-body-budget and lead as agile as you every could.

How I Coach Habits

Now, where do habits come in? Where and how do I integrate habit building in coaching EQ and leadership.

It is quite simple: Building energy every day lies at the very core of the next-step-modules like EQ and leadership. Habit building is an extremely effective tool - on a protocol level - to build and sustain a balanced brain-body-budget.

So what did we do first?

1. Ranking the 7 obstacles for building habits and healthy routines in the first place.

2. For my client the top #3 were overloaded mind (#1), context switching (#2) and invisible progress (#3).

3. I would recommend to start building one new habit at a time for at least 30 days.

4. For the top #1 overloaded mind we came up with a simple thing: Sitting down at his desk at the beginning of the work day and take 5 minutes to answer a question: “What makes the most sense today?”

5. As clarity starts with subtraction, most of the time, day by day he deleted, delegated or scheduled a lot of extra tasks and errants. Just by a simple reflection habit every day for 5 minutes. It stopped the autopilot mode.

6. Further, this turned into a protected 90-minute block of deep-work in the morning.

7. For #2 and #3 he established a protocol for managing distractions (especially the sweets) as well as a simple, yet effective, progress tracker (paper and pencil - coloured) with important metrics (e.g. body weight, stress level via a gadget, number of cooking dinner for his family per week and so on).

Usually, when the client is motivated, many new developments follow, as there is more energy available in his system. And habit building becomes actual fun.

Let me finish toady with the author and book I am referring to … James Clear:

“Good habits stockpile ease. Bad habits postpone pain.”

I love browsing through the comments on our LinkedIn posts every Monday and Thursday. I'm always stunned by the new thoughts and ideas that emerge within the community.

Last week, Dr. Khadija Siddiqui blew my mind with the following line:

“I love how you frame habits not as willpower battles, but as reflections of environment, limits, and energy alignment.”

Let that sink in.

That’s it for this month.

See you again on Saturday in 2 weeks, the 29th of November.

Take care,

Yours,

Moritz

PS:

Can you rarely make time for physical activity or regeneration? Do youI feel emotionally unstable and have difficulties to stay calm under pressure? Is managing people emotionally and energetically draining for you?

If that sounds familiar, Mastering Emotions is for you. I began coaching in 2023. Since then, l've coached over 30 executives, entrepreneurs, and high potentials on building Emotional Intelligence and into becoming future leaders.

If you want to learn more about my coaching book an orientation call here:

PPS:

If you're still undecided, no problem -we've got you covered. Take our Future Leader Quiz first. We'll send you a personalized analysis of your challenges and a potential outline of your coaching journey with us.