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Contagious You: Unlock Your Power to Influence, Lead, and Creat the Impact You Want
The much-anticipated follow-up to Contagious Culture shows aspiring leaders how to embody the qualities they wish to cultivate in their organizations.
In Contagious Culture, Anese Cavanaugh proved that it’s possible to create an energized and engaged organizational culture that spreads from person to person. Now, in Contagious You, she hones in on the individual, showing us how each of us is contagious in our own way and stressing the importance of leading with intention to achieve positive results.
For anyone who’s sought to create change, or felt sucked into the drama and chaos of a toxic work environment, this book will advance the notion that everyone at an organization is a leader - for good or for bad - and that leaders have tremendous power to influence those who follow their example. The quality of our leadership is based upon our intentions, energy, and presence. By emphasizing authorship, self-care, and response-ability (not responsibility) as leadership skills and therefore cultural amplifiers, Contagious You shows you how to walk the path of more effective leadership while navigating the road blocks in your way. Whether these road blocks are working with negative co-workers with secret agendas and unrealistic expectations, or just the general “busyness” of life and its excessive demands, this book will take you on a journey to create more space, more courageous leadership, and stronger collaboration to influence others and create the impact you desire.
The common denominator is you. No matter what level you’re on, your intentions, energy, and presence impact your ability to do anything within your life. Contagious You is an invitation to unlock your own power. You set the tone. You are the culture. So show up, lead, and intentionally become the change you wish to see.
In Contagious Culture, Anese Cavanaugh proved that it’s possible to create an energized and engaged organizational culture that spreads from person to person. Now, in Contagious You, she hones in on the individual, showing us how each of us is contagious in our own way and stressing the importance of leading with intention to achieve positive results.
For anyone who’s sought to create change, or felt sucked into the drama and chaos of a toxic work environment, this book will advance the notion that everyone at an organization is a leader - for good or for bad - and that leaders have tremendous power to influence those who follow their example. The quality of our leadership is based upon our intentions, energy, and presence. By emphasizing authorship, self-care, and response-ability (not responsibility) as leadership skills and therefore cultural amplifiers, Contagious You shows you how to walk the path of more effective leadership while navigating the road blocks in your way. Whether these road blocks are working with negative co-workers with secret agendas and unrealistic expectations, or just the general “busyness” of life and its excessive demands, this book will take you on a journey to create more space, more courageous leadership, and stronger collaboration to influence others and create the impact you desire.
The common denominator is you. No matter what level you’re on, your intentions, energy, and presence impact your ability to do anything within your life. Contagious You is an invitation to unlock your own power. You set the tone. You are the culture. So show up, lead, and intentionally become the change you wish to see.
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Published January 20, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 4, 2019
I love how Anese gives examples of how to "be the culture" and examples of what not to do, then offers tactical ways to really be positively contagious. Anese's encouragement to lead from whatever "level" of life you're in is inspirational. From leading yourself to your family or friends or your house, to leading at work to the boardroom of a large corporation, we can all "be the culture" exactly where we are.
The best part? Anese lives this IEP methodology in her own life! Ask her about her Sheeppocalypse sometime. She's not perfect in the execution, but she's always working to be more positively contagious, influential and impactful.
I really believe this can change your life. Just make sure you're not reading it thinking you know who needs it - read it for you because you need it. Because we all do!
The best part? Anese lives this IEP methodology in her own life! Ask her about her Sheeppocalypse sometime. She's not perfect in the execution, but she's always working to be more positively contagious, influential and impactful.
I really believe this can change your life. Just make sure you're not reading it thinking you know who needs it - read it for you because you need it. Because we all do!
August 2, 2020
The book Contagious You: Unlock Your Power to Influence, Lead, and Create the Impact You Want by Anese Cavanaugh focuses on how contagious we are. For leaders, this concept is even more important for us to be conscious of as our intentions, energy, presence, and state of being are all contagious. We are always under a microscope and being critiqued. Cavanaugh says at the root of your contagiousness are your intentions, energy, and presence, and your Intentional Energetic Presence® (your IEP). She writes, “You control all these things. They’re yours; nobody can do them for you; no one can take them away. Make any of them better, and you level-up your ability to create influence.” Leadership and culture are something that we be, not that we do. The being, which is our intentions, energy, and presence, is like food coloring in water—you can’t separate the being from the doing. It infuses and colors everything. It’s contagious. The doing is important, absolutely - but the being is what people respond to and are inspired or repelled by.
Cavanaugh promoted The Five Steps to Intentional Impact Framework that supports crafting intentional impact, in its simplest form, to create tangible and intangible results in any conversation, project, relationship, or experience.
1. Outcome. What is the outcome you want to create? This should be tangible and something you can see or touch. You would not have created this outcome with¬out the meeting, conversation, project, and so on.
2. Impact. What is the emotional impact you want to have? How do you want people to feel? How do you want to feel? You will create an emotional and energetic experience with your presence and actions either way. Being intentional about it is highly useful.
3. Show up. How will you have to show up to create the outcome(s) and emotional impact you desire? What will your presence be? Your quality of listening? Your body language? Your attire? Anything that impacts how you show up goes here.
4. Believe. What will you want and need to believe in order to show up that way? Make this authentic. If you’re having a hard time finding something useful and real to believe, go deeper. What’s the truest thing you can believe to help you show up well and be congruent?
5. Actions. What actions will you need to take to make it all so? What will you actually have to do? Before, during, after?
The book Contagious You discusses the Mindset of Building Your Immunity (Being). The following are 8 incredibly helpful principles for shifting mindset, building immunity, and strengthening Intentional Energetic Presence®. Own and embody any of these, and you shift the field:
• My presence is my impact. How I show up matters.
• Showing up for myself first is vital to be able to show up for others. (self-care)
• My relationship with myself is the most important relationship I have. (This includes any spiritual beliefs I hold and my relationship with a higher power.)
• The combination of trust, credibility, and leadership is an inside-out job.
• The clarity of my intention equals the power and quality of my impact (and the ease of doing anything).
• I matter. I have my own space. (I am “response-able” for holding and nourishing it.)
• I create my experience. I author my story. I lead me.
• Presence, not perfection.
Cavanaugh writes, “When we’re connected with purpose, service, and the humans we impact, our mission becomes clearer and stronger. Masterful leadership inspires, enables, and creates more positively contagious leaders, who inspire, enable, and create more positivity contagious leaders.”
In creating other leaders, she advocates:
Give Productive Feedback. To lead well, you must get good at feedback. This includes giving it and receiving it. Make sure the feedback is in service of your person, clean, clear, and specific. See the humans you are giving the feedback to - they are just like you with hopes, dreams, fears, heart, and a desire to do well. Love them. Remember that their growth (and your honesty) is more important than your comfort.
Enroll, Recognize, Honor, Value, Trust, and See the Humans You Lead. Remember that you are leading human beings. You must see them, their values and their value. You are “response-able” to them, not responsible for them. You may be their boss or their mentor, but you are not responsible for their success. They are. You are “response-able” to lead them, to be direct and clear, to help them navigate their path, and to help them learn, fall down, get up, and become the best leader they can be.
Let Them Lead. Your job as leader is not to be followed. It’s to create, nourish, and grow other leaders. One of the ultimate forms of contagiousness is contagious leadership. In order to do this you will need to take care of a few things: your ego (i.e., your pride), your congruency, your growth, your mentorship, and your presence, purpose, and play.
Cavanaugh promoted The Five Steps to Intentional Impact Framework that supports crafting intentional impact, in its simplest form, to create tangible and intangible results in any conversation, project, relationship, or experience.
1. Outcome. What is the outcome you want to create? This should be tangible and something you can see or touch. You would not have created this outcome with¬out the meeting, conversation, project, and so on.
2. Impact. What is the emotional impact you want to have? How do you want people to feel? How do you want to feel? You will create an emotional and energetic experience with your presence and actions either way. Being intentional about it is highly useful.
3. Show up. How will you have to show up to create the outcome(s) and emotional impact you desire? What will your presence be? Your quality of listening? Your body language? Your attire? Anything that impacts how you show up goes here.
4. Believe. What will you want and need to believe in order to show up that way? Make this authentic. If you’re having a hard time finding something useful and real to believe, go deeper. What’s the truest thing you can believe to help you show up well and be congruent?
5. Actions. What actions will you need to take to make it all so? What will you actually have to do? Before, during, after?
The book Contagious You discusses the Mindset of Building Your Immunity (Being). The following are 8 incredibly helpful principles for shifting mindset, building immunity, and strengthening Intentional Energetic Presence®. Own and embody any of these, and you shift the field:
• My presence is my impact. How I show up matters.
• Showing up for myself first is vital to be able to show up for others. (self-care)
• My relationship with myself is the most important relationship I have. (This includes any spiritual beliefs I hold and my relationship with a higher power.)
• The combination of trust, credibility, and leadership is an inside-out job.
• The clarity of my intention equals the power and quality of my impact (and the ease of doing anything).
• I matter. I have my own space. (I am “response-able” for holding and nourishing it.)
• I create my experience. I author my story. I lead me.
• Presence, not perfection.
Cavanaugh writes, “When we’re connected with purpose, service, and the humans we impact, our mission becomes clearer and stronger. Masterful leadership inspires, enables, and creates more positively contagious leaders, who inspire, enable, and create more positivity contagious leaders.”
In creating other leaders, she advocates:
Give Productive Feedback. To lead well, you must get good at feedback. This includes giving it and receiving it. Make sure the feedback is in service of your person, clean, clear, and specific. See the humans you are giving the feedback to - they are just like you with hopes, dreams, fears, heart, and a desire to do well. Love them. Remember that their growth (and your honesty) is more important than your comfort.
Enroll, Recognize, Honor, Value, Trust, and See the Humans You Lead. Remember that you are leading human beings. You must see them, their values and their value. You are “response-able” to them, not responsible for them. You may be their boss or their mentor, but you are not responsible for their success. They are. You are “response-able” to lead them, to be direct and clear, to help them navigate their path, and to help them learn, fall down, get up, and become the best leader they can be.
Let Them Lead. Your job as leader is not to be followed. It’s to create, nourish, and grow other leaders. One of the ultimate forms of contagiousness is contagious leadership. In order to do this you will need to take care of a few things: your ego (i.e., your pride), your congruency, your growth, your mentorship, and your presence, purpose, and play.
March 4, 2020
“Every interaction we have has a ‘vibrational energetic impact’...If your presence is not on point or you’re burnt out or of the lowest vibration in the room, or ‘leaving dead bodies’ everywhere you go, and have a weak inner game, your skills and tools will only take things so far, and often even make matters worse...I’ve noticed that almost every disconnect, argument, pain, feeling of overwhelm or contraction, unkind act (within ourselves and with others), and even loss of presence can be drilled down to a disconnection from humanness, love, and purpose.”
CONTAGIOUS YOU, a business book which focuses on creating better leaders, teams, and cultures can also apply to improving one’s personal life and relationships. I was a people manager for a number of years and attended various leadership training, but few of the tools I was given measure up to the content of this book.
The book is divided into five parts: Contagious You: Claim Your Power; Contagious Presence: Unlock and Nourish Your Superpowers; Contagious Relating: Build, Heal, and Optimize Your Relationships; Contagious Leadership: Inspire and Grow Others and Contagious Impact: Be a Force for Good in the World. The bulk of the book concentrates on the individual leader, then branches out to address culture, relationships, and teams. Fieldwork including action items and quizzes are included at the end of chapters to aid in implementation.
Cavanaugh introduces an Intentional Energetic Presence (IEP) model which hones ones energy, presence, skills, and competences to maximize impact in the form of results and outcomes. IEP is divided into Internal (physical/environmental and mental/emotional) and External (vibrational and relational) components. For example, self care is presented as a leadership skill, because when a leader isn’t at her best (e.g. burned out, exhausted, etc.) that energy negatively impacts everyone they interact with. Many suggestions to promote self-care are included. Chapter eight even looks at neuroscience and the effects of “contagiousness.”
My favorite part of the book is chapter 7, which presents a “superpower toolkit,” including a number which increase in effectiveness when used together. For example, The Self-Care Trifecta includes Nourishment, Kindness, and Graceful Vigor (e.g. leading with tenacity and grace.) Another great takeaway I enjoyed can be found in chapter nine, which focuses on burnout. Pausing, which is taking a time out, allows a little space to “regroup, reboot, rethink, and reassess” before reacting. This can also be used to create chucks of time for focused work to increase productivity. The author reminds us that “we’re all doing the best we can” and a little empathy/compassion can go a long way. I found tons of valuable nuggets, particularly in chapter 9, which addresses other people’s problems, projections, and expectations. I really liked the action plan for creating boundaries found there.
The only part of the book that didn’t really excite me was chapter 15, which included many case studies. I prefer the actionable parts. Chapter 16, however, does a great job of summarizing key points and provides fifteen core principles of being contagious.
For me this is a four and a half star read, rounded up to five.
I voluntarily read and reviewed this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Thanks to the Amazon and McGraw-Hill Education for providing a Reviewer Copy.
CONTAGIOUS YOU, a business book which focuses on creating better leaders, teams, and cultures can also apply to improving one’s personal life and relationships. I was a people manager for a number of years and attended various leadership training, but few of the tools I was given measure up to the content of this book.
The book is divided into five parts: Contagious You: Claim Your Power; Contagious Presence: Unlock and Nourish Your Superpowers; Contagious Relating: Build, Heal, and Optimize Your Relationships; Contagious Leadership: Inspire and Grow Others and Contagious Impact: Be a Force for Good in the World. The bulk of the book concentrates on the individual leader, then branches out to address culture, relationships, and teams. Fieldwork including action items and quizzes are included at the end of chapters to aid in implementation.
Cavanaugh introduces an Intentional Energetic Presence (IEP) model which hones ones energy, presence, skills, and competences to maximize impact in the form of results and outcomes. IEP is divided into Internal (physical/environmental and mental/emotional) and External (vibrational and relational) components. For example, self care is presented as a leadership skill, because when a leader isn’t at her best (e.g. burned out, exhausted, etc.) that energy negatively impacts everyone they interact with. Many suggestions to promote self-care are included. Chapter eight even looks at neuroscience and the effects of “contagiousness.”
My favorite part of the book is chapter 7, which presents a “superpower toolkit,” including a number which increase in effectiveness when used together. For example, The Self-Care Trifecta includes Nourishment, Kindness, and Graceful Vigor (e.g. leading with tenacity and grace.) Another great takeaway I enjoyed can be found in chapter nine, which focuses on burnout. Pausing, which is taking a time out, allows a little space to “regroup, reboot, rethink, and reassess” before reacting. This can also be used to create chucks of time for focused work to increase productivity. The author reminds us that “we’re all doing the best we can” and a little empathy/compassion can go a long way. I found tons of valuable nuggets, particularly in chapter 9, which addresses other people’s problems, projections, and expectations. I really liked the action plan for creating boundaries found there.
The only part of the book that didn’t really excite me was chapter 15, which included many case studies. I prefer the actionable parts. Chapter 16, however, does a great job of summarizing key points and provides fifteen core principles of being contagious.
For me this is a four and a half star read, rounded up to five.
I voluntarily read and reviewed this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Thanks to the Amazon and McGraw-Hill Education for providing a Reviewer Copy.
September 2, 2020
Whether you work or you retire from a meaningful, busy career this book is centered on the impact you have through your "Intention, Energy and Presence". I have found the information helpful and important in my first years of retirement.
April 25, 2020
i’ve always found anese’s work with intentional energetic presence (the IEP method) to be inspiring. in contagious you, she coaches us on lots of terrific leadership advice, but my biggest takeaway was the idea of “shifting.”
anese challenges us to bubble up and shift to a higher emotional state when we’re feeling a negative emotion or armoring up.
feeling frustrated? get curious about why. what’s the smallest thing you could do to shift to a more helpful state?
why be pissed when you could be appreciative? or why be disappointed when you could be grateful?
find state shifters like inspiration, commitment, ownership, intention, etc. and choose the experience you create for yourself!
remember: hold your space, get curious and look for the gift. where’s your opportunity to shift?
anese challenges us to bubble up and shift to a higher emotional state when we’re feeling a negative emotion or armoring up.
feeling frustrated? get curious about why. what’s the smallest thing you could do to shift to a more helpful state?
why be pissed when you could be appreciative? or why be disappointed when you could be grateful?
find state shifters like inspiration, commitment, ownership, intention, etc. and choose the experience you create for yourself!
remember: hold your space, get curious and look for the gift. where’s your opportunity to shift?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews