The Hidden Cost Of Energy Vampires In Your Business

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The Business You Really Want | Energy Vampires

The most dangerous employee or team member isn’t the one who steals your money — it’s the one who steals your energy while appearing to work hard. In this episode, we explore energy theft: how good people with good intentions can slowly drain the life out of your business one interaction at a time.

Gwen Bortner breaks down the four types of energy vampires you’ll encounter: the constant reassurance seeker, the pot stirrer, the emotional dumper, and the guilt manipulator. We discuss why this matters so much (energy theft often goes undetected for months while wearing you down), the warning signs you’ve been ignoring, and most importantly — how to protect your energy without feeling guilty about setting boundaries.

This is the second episode in our four-part theft series, covering energy, time, and money theft. By the time you notice time and money theft, energy theft has often been happening for months, making this the most critical pattern to recognize and address.

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The Hidden Cost Of Energy Vampires In Your Business

Identifying Energy Theft: The Hidden Drain

The most dangerous employee or team member isn’t the one who steals your money. It is the one who steals your energy, especially while appearing to work hard. We are going to explore energy theft, how good people usually with good intentions can slowly drain the life out of your business one interaction at a time. In the last episode, we introduced our three-theft framework energy, time and then money. Energy theft always comes first as Gwen educated us. It’s oftentimes the hardest to detect because it feels personal instead of professional.

Gwen, what you have said is these matters because by the time you notice time and money theft, energy theft has often been happening for months. You are worn down and energy as a business owner is your most valuable resource. Without it, you can’t lead, innovate and make good decisions. In this episode, Gwen is going to help us cover exactly what energy theft looks like in daily interactions, why good people often do this usually unconsciously, the warning signs that you have been ignoring and how you can protect your energy without feeling guilty. Gwen, why don’t you start us off with telling us what energy theft looks like?

This is the biggest challenge with energy theft. It is not a one size fits all answer. It’s going to look different for each person and every situation is also going to be different. Energy doesn’t have a real measurement that we can go to. Money is a very tactile measurement that we can go to and time has a measurement because we’ve got the watches, the hours, the minutes and the seconds. For energy, there’s energy like for powering our houses energy but personal energy, we don’t have a good measurement for.

That’s one of the biggest reasons energy thefts happen because we don’t pay attention to our personal energy. Every day, our energy starts at one level and drops to another level over the course of a day. Also, it’s like, is it where it should be at this point in time in the day? There’s so many factors that make it difficult to identify. Is my energy being taken? You have to go to some more, what I’m going to call obvious things to start. My favorite one is dread. Am I excited to talk to this person, to spend time with this person or to interact with this person in any way, shape, or form? Do I have this weight that comes over me when I think about interacting with this person in any particular situation?

If that weight is happening, that would signal to me. That would be a little flag saying, “That sounds like an energy drain.” The next question is, does it happen every time or does it only happen in certain situations? For example, some people are not in the energy drain when they’re in a group but they’re a huge energy drain when they’re one to one. Some are exactly the opposite. They are not an energy drain one to one, but they e are a huge energy drain in a group. We start looking at when we are seeing it and we talked about it in the prior episode.

All of this is about identifying patterns, where we see consistency over time. It’s hard to identify the first time. If there’s any particular day, it’s like, “I do not want to talk to so and so. I probably also don’t want to talk to anybody that day.” If that’s the case, that’s not a pattern. That’s a me issue. That’s not a them issue. If every week when I’m supposed to talk to a client, for example. Clients can be energy drained drains just as well as employees and contractors. If I’m dreading talking to that client every time, that’s signaling an energy drain.

Energy Vampires: Unmasking Constant Reassurance Seekers

Going back to the last episode, you used this great term of energy vampire. After the last episode, I was thinking I feel like energy vampires fall into four categories. One is the energy vampire that needs constant reassurance, which you unpacked well for us but I’ll want you to do that again. It’s the pot stir. That’s number two. Number three is that person who likes to dump their emotional labor on you. number four, I would say is the guilt manipulator. A person who makes you feel badly for doing what you’re supposed to be doing as the business owner or for holding boundaries in some way. Let’s start with the person who needs constant reassurance. Do you want to walk me through that? Do you want me to kick that one off?

The person who needs constant reassurance need validation for every decision, not just the first time, not just for the big decision. Share on X

Go and kick it off and then I’ll weigh my thoughts.

When I think of the constant reassurance person, it’s like at first, you’re just like, they need confidence. That’s all. They’re new at this or this is a new skillset and they just need to know that they’ve got it but then they start asking the exact same question multiple times in different ways. They need validation for every decision, not just the first time they make this decision and for the big decisions. I find that they love to call a meeting. They love to have the meeting about the meeting because they don’t want any surprises in the actual meetings.

“Can’t we just talk about this ahead of time and you can tell me what you’re going to say so that I can go into the meeting totally prepared. Although, I don’t know why we bother having the other meeting if we’ve already had a meeting about the meeting.” They want you to constantly repeat your instructions. You end up having five emails back and forth like, “Let me just make sure I understand this.” You’re like, “I don’t know how else I can write this.”

That situation is tough because what I have found is and I don’t think they’re consciously doing this but they are at least subconsciously attention seekers. I need to be the center of attention. I need everyone to be focused on me and what’s happening. As I said, it may not be in that obvious way and as you were saying all this, I was running through back in my prior world as a knitting instructor. There would inevitably be someone in class who pretty much after every stitch would say, “Can you verify that I did this right?”

The classes that I was teaching, we were not teaching how to knit. We were above that. It was like, you’ve got this. What I realized in helping some of their teachers who would struggle with this because my students wouldn’t ever become that needy. I had some teachers sit in and be like, “How do you have none of those students?” I was like, “Part of it is I don’t reinforce bad behavior.” When they’re wanting my attention, I don’t give it to them when I know they’ve got it.

That’s one of the places where this energy vampire happens. It’s because we don’t empower them to say, “No, you’ve got this.” We just keep responding and every time we respond, we’re reinforcing that we will respond, which is the only thing they need. They only want the response. They don’t need the information.

Dealing With Disruptive “Pot Stirrers” At Work

Talk to me about the pot stir.

Everyone thinks it's only happening to them, so nobody talks about it; it's actually happening to everybody. Share on X

The pot stir is another form of needing attention. In this case, what they want is everybody to be in a tizzy. It’s what’s happening. They’re always into everybody else’s business, whether they’re businesses, the job that they’re doing or whatnot. They’re checking in in all of these other places that are not necessarily their responsibility and/or getting into the personal pots during about, “I heard your son got laid off.” It’s like, that doesn’t matter unless you’re hiring for a position that the son might be qualified for.

That’s a fine conversation to have out of work, but it’s not anything that needs to be happening in work. Often, it looks like work because they’re checking in and seeing, “Can I help you? Can I be of assistance?” We’re getting into things like, do you not have work to do? You probably do. Why don’t you go do that work? As opposed to, let me help you do the thing that you’re doing. It’s like, “No, you don’t need to do that. We need you to do the work that we’re paying you to do.”

The pot stir ends up taking other people’s attention and often they are not doing it with a CEO. The challenge with the pot stir is they’re stealing energy but they’re not stealing energy in a way that you see it. There’s a feeling of energy from your other workers, other folks in your team. Typically, the individual team members are saying anything about it because they don’t want to be a whiner. They often think it’s only them. They don’t assume that’s happening with everybody.

The example we talked about, this was an example from one of my clients. The CEO didn’t know she had a pot stir. She’s like, “She’s been here for a long time. This is all part of the issue as they helped me start the business. I couldn’t have gotten here without them.” We call it misplaced loyalty because they did the thing that they were supposed to do and they were paid to do and now we are still rewarding them for past work that is no longer current work. We’re saying, “We still have to support them because at one point they supported us.” We paid them to do that job and they did that job and that’s great, but once that pot stir gets going, they go around and around and around. We don’t realize how much time it’s taking away from the other jobs.

In this particular situation, I kept saying, “You’ve got to let him go.” It was nearly a year before they let this person go. Here is the thing, they let this person go and part of it was like, “I don’t know how we’re going to get all the work done. I don’t know how I’m going to replace the job. I don’t know who I can find to do it.” The list went on and on. They let this person go who, by the way, was the highest paid person out of all of the staff. I think he was paid the same or more than the CEO was at the time and they didn’t replace that person for nine months because everyone else could be so much more productive.

All of the work that needed to be done. She was doing that much work because she was spending a lot of time stirring pots. Allocating a little of her work out to each of 2 or 3 different people. They were like, “I’ve got plenty of time to do that because I’m not dealing with her pot stirring all the time.” It’s very sneaky because as I said, everyone thinks it’s only happening to them so nobody talks about it but it’s happening to everybody. It’s 1,000 paper cuts but we’ve got ten paper cuts on everybody.

That’s where it steals the energy and that’s also an example of time theft as well.

   

The Business You Really Want | Energy Vampires

   

That’s the thing. The energy theft becomes time theft pretty fast.

When Work Becomes Therapy: Handling Emotional Labor

The second to last, we have the person who dumps their emotional labor. I refer to this as the person who, honestly, needs a therapist but they don’t know they need a therapist. They’re using you or their colleagues as the therapist. How do you describe the person who dumps their emotional labor?

That one is challenging and I will use this phrase when I’m working with my clients. It’s like, “This is above my pay grade.” They’re asking you to do work that is above your pay grade. Your work is to provide a job for them, if you’re the CEO with guidelines and all of the things that go along with it. Your work is not to solve all of their problems.

This one’s tough because you have to hold a boundary and say, “This is not appropriate for this space, this time or this whatever.” The boundary piece is a huge piece of boundaries that are held well and tend to have less energy leaks than places that don’t have boundaries held well. It’s a hard conversation that basically say, “Good God. You need help, woman. Good God you need help, dude. Go get some therapy.” It’s not an easy conversation to have and you can’t have it that way but you do have to say, “This conversation is not what this job is about.”

Getting them to be aware of, “This is not space and time.” Now, a lot of times, it is disguised as explaining why I wasn’t able to do the thing that I was supposed to do, which is okay occasionally. If that’s always happening, back to pattern recognition. This means we’ve got some bigger issues. Understanding that the pattern is they aren’t able to do this job because they can’t emotionally handle it now, whatever that may be. It’s also part of your job as the CEO. If they can do the job and not do the emotional dump, great. If they can’t, then they are not capable of doing the job that needs to be done now. It doesn’t make them a bad person, but it just means this is not the job for them.

Navigating Guilt Trips From Manipulative Employees

What you’re describing is the person who is using you as their therapist during work hours, the person who is sharing or oversharing personal problems affecting their performance. The person who expects you to manage their feelings about work, work tasks, clients or who pushes their emotional regulation on you. As you said, it’s like a prime thing. It’s like, “This is above my pay grade. I cannot regulate your emotions. That’s a thing only you get to do. I did not get to do that.”

I find that when you assert those boundaries, as you pointed out, and they push back. Sometimes, that person is the same person who becomes the guilt manipulator. Which is that person who makes you feel badly for setting boundaries. What does that look like? That person who guilt trip you as the energy vampire looks like.

If boundaries are held, we tend to have less energy leaks. Share on X

The first thing is, guilt is never appropriate. I feel like guilt is almost never appropriate about anything. We should just be able to do our job and not have to be guilty about whether we’re doing it or not doing it. Trying to guilt someone into doing something is not helpful. If they’re like, “I can’t because of this, this, and this.” Back to, it is not your job to provide someone a livelihood. It is your job to fill a role that needs to be done so that you can have a business that can function profitably. That’s your job as a business owner but we get stuck believing our job is to take care of our employees.

Now, I’m not saying that we should abuse our employees or any of the rest of that because that is not true. It’s not to keep people who are not performing the job that needs to be done. If someone is guilting you into trying to do something different, the first question you have to ask is, why are you allowing yourself to be guilted? Boundaries. The next is, why are they trying to guilt me into it? I shouldn’t have to guilt anybody into doing anything.

I love my boundaries, so we’re pretty good about boundaries. I will from time to time reach out to you during a non-official time and say, “Are you available to talk?” You know 100% that if you say, “No.” I am not going to make you feel guilty about that because I respect your boundaries because I expect you to respect mine. If you are feeling guilty about it, the first question I want to ask is, why? Are you not respecting their boundaries? Are you holding boundaries for you but not allowing other people to hold their boundaries or are you not holding your boundaries?

I’m going to come to the defense of the person who feels guilty because it can be subtle. How I see it play out is it sometimes comes under the guise of teamwork. It’s like, you can cover for me while I take a later lunch, or you can cover for me for this other thing. You say, “I’ve got a deadline and unfortunately, I’m already up to the wire. I can’t cover that because yes, it’s only a half hour or maybe it’s only twenty minutes but to cover that will push me behind and I can’t make that happen.”

It comes like, “I thought we were part of a team. I cover for you.” “I don’t ask you to miss your deadline to cover for me. You’re asking me to miss my deadline.” We start to feel bad, like, “Maybe I should have started my project earlier. Maybe I shouldn’t be running up to the end of this deadline because if I was, if I had done more yesterday or if I was willing to work late, then I could accommodate this.” A lot of times, that’s what the guilt trip thing looks like.

The Martyr Mentality And Boundaries

It’s often triggered by what I’m going to call the Martyr, who says yes to everything because they don’t hold boundaries. When you hold the boundary on them, then they need to guilt in, “I’ve done this, this and this and that and eighteen other things for you.” What you end up finding out is like half the time, they missed their deadline or they did have to work overtime because they did the thing for you. Where they should have said the same thing that you just said, “I’m sorry. I can’t cover you for you because I still got four hours of work and I have four hours of time.”

I will say another way that this plays out and this is also where it plays out on the client front. You, as the business owner, are trying to make some shifts. You’re trying to work through your people and there’s that person who only wants to work with you. You are trying to be a good business owner and being like, “That’s Tanya. Tanya is the best person to answer that question.”

When you assert boundaries and they push back, sometimes that person is the same person who becomes the guilt manipulator. Share on X

They’re like, “But Gwen. You’ve always taken such good care of me, Gwen.” You’re like, “Yes, but Tanya is the right person for you. She’s updated on that project. She can help you out there.” They’re like, “You’re too good for me now. Is that it?” They’re all hurt because you’re trying to issue the appropriate chain of command, but it hurts their feelings, Gwen. You’re so mean.

Boundaries.

I love how everything I come up with, you’re like, “Boundaries time.” It’s all about boundaries.

Once again, boundaries because that is truly what they’re trying to do, is manipulate you. If you don’t believe what you’re saying, it is easy to get sucked into it. If I don’t believe that Tanya is the better solution, which almost always my answer is, yes, Tanya is my better solution then it’s easy for you to believe. If you can say, “I can do it for you. It’ll be done half as well. It’ll take twice as long and I’m going to charge you three times as much.” If that’s what you want, instead you can get it done in a half an hour. It would be done ten times better and it will cost you a tenth of the amount. I’ll make the sacrifice and do the bad thing. Most of the time, if you know that that’s the truth.

It’s easy to say, “No, you don’t want me. You do not want me for this. You want Tanya for this. I’m not going to give you good service. I’m not going to respond well. I’m not going to be available.” It’s like, “No, I want to talk to you next week.” “I’m on vacation next week. You can try and reach out to me. I am not going to be available or you could just have time with Tanya. Tanya is very smart and has a better brain on a whole different set of subjects. Why don’t you talk to Tanya?”

You make it sound so easy.

Back to boundaries. If I say, “I’ll give up part of my time to do this thing.”

   

The Business You Really Want | Energy Vampires

   

“Only just this once.” Those are the famous last words. It’s always, “Only this once. I’ll make an exception.”

You also know that in certain situations I will make the exception but it’s when I know it’s a real crisis. It’s not because I want my way. We don’t ever have to do this because we have amazing clients that don’t play these games.

We have amazing clients who respect boundaries and we assert our boundaries.

We assert our boundaries early on. I am absolutely saying this and it’s true. I don’t ever feel like my energy is ever stolen from my clients, ever. I’m not sure most people can say that. I am happy to get on every call, even when I know it’s going to be a hard call. Not just because they’re going to be sunshine and roses. I’m happy to get on with all of my clients. I am not getting any energy drain from being on with my clients. I can say the same thing about the staff that we have.

I can also say there have been times that I’ve had people on my staff that weren’t energy drains for exactly the reasons that we were talking about. Either we aren’t paying attention and I’m having to repeat myself, they’re needing attention or wanting to do a halfway job but get paid a full price for it. It has happened. It’s not like I am completely immune to it but I also stay aware. As soon as I start seeing that yellow flag of energy, I start asking myself, what and why. What’s causing that yellow flag? Why is that happening? Is it a me thing? It can be a me thing. Is it a them thing or is it a situation thing? A lot of times it’s a situation. Things have shifted enough that this is now an energy drain.

Energy Drains Not Always Malicious

That brings to the final point which you had referenced in the last episode too, is that very rarely is this intentional. Most thieves may be absent from money and aren’t malicious, especially energy thieves. They’re meeting their own psychological needs. Some of the psychological needs I’ve heard you call out is attention or connection, control, security and validation. Do you want to unpack those?

There’s probably others. We can go back to, this is above my pay grade because we’re starting to get therapy now. Most energy drains are not about you. They’re not trying to take your energy. It is about me. It’s about, I need the energy and this is how I get it. One of the things is always important to realize is that just because they’re an energy drain for you, doesn’t mean they’re going to be an energy drain for somebody else.

Just because they're an energy drain for you doesn't mean they're going to be an energy drain for somebody else. Share on X

A lot of folks are like, “I don’t want to let them go because then they’re going to go work for someone else who’s going to be miserable.” You’re assuming that they’re going to find someone exactly like you. That’s not true. They may find someone who just thinks that is the most perfect thing in the world because their behavior is draining to feed other people. Understanding that it’s not about a right or a wrong answer. It’s about understanding the right or wrong answer for you. Is this energy drain affecting you and your business? It may not affect someone else in their business but also realizing you can’t fix the other person. That’s not your job. Unless your job is a therapist, then it may be your job.

Outside of therapy, however.

In most situations, that’s not your job. Your job is to provide a job of a specific role with specific things. If their needs, whatever they are, are creating an energy drain and are not needs that you can easily fill in that energy drain, then you’ve got to make the call on what you’re going to do about that because it’s not going to get better. That’s the thing that we also assume. Somehow, magically, it’s going to get better and it’s not going to get better. That’s not the way this works. It’s not going to change automatically. Usually, these are deep set behaviors and they aren’t necessarily negative behaviors. They’re just not productive in this environment.

Stopping Energy Bleeding With Clear Boundaries

Speaking of that, how do we get out of it? I’m listening and I’m like, “Oh.”

That’s how we get out of it because you’ve made all the faces that have said, “I have to do something hard.” That’s the truth of it. The way I would always start is that a lot of times people don’t realize what they’re doing until someone calls it out. If they call it out, it’s like, “I didn’t realize I was doing that,” and they can stop and if they can, great. Simply making someone aware that this is a problem and why it’s a problem can be enough.

Now, if it’s not, then you’re going to have to take the hard action, which generally the right behavior is what I would call proactive coaching. The next one is an actual performance improvement plan and then a release out into the wild. Whatever that looks like. I use the same process whether it’s an employee, a contractor or a client because we need to realize that we need to do the same things with clients as well. Let them know this behavior is not appropriate, whatever that behavior happens to be.

One of the things for us is that I don’t respond to text. That’s not my world. Now, that doesn’t mean my clients don’t text me from time to time, but they know it could be a while before I respond. None of them care if it takes me 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 hours to respond. If I had a client who was like, “Are you there? What’s going on? Did you see this?” It was this constant chain of, “Hey. Hey. Hey.” That would be inappropriate behavior.

I would start with the coaching saying, “I’m sorry. I’m not on my phone all the time. I don’t respond to texts. I’m only going to respond to something urgent that is fire, flutter, and blood. The work we do isn’t firefighter blood.” That’s not how I’m going to respond. If it continued, then I would say, “I’m sorry. If you don’t stop this, we’re going to have to discontinue our relationship because it’s just not going to work for me. I’m not going to be responsive enough for you. Therefore, it’s not a good fit.” If they change their behavior, great. If they don’t, then we call it off. I would use that regardless of what the relationship is.

A lot of times, people don't realize what they're doing until someone calls it out. Share on X

Make people aware this is an energy drain and this is why I consider it a problem. You can make it about you. “I don’t have the capacity to be able to do this.” If they don’t respond to that performance improvement plan and then release. That means we have to make hard choices, but if we don’t what we’re doing is death by 1,000 paper cuts. That’s the thing that most people missed. I talk about fast hard or slow hard. It’s going to be hard regardless, but do you want to have a 1,000 paper cuts or are you going to do the hard thing? Stop the bleeding. Stitches aren’t fun but it stops the bleeding.

Recognizing Personal And Systemic Energy Drain

In the case of business, the bleeding isn’t just usually for you as the CEO. The bleeding is systemic in the case of that person. Even if they’re only stealing your energy, that’s less that you have for everything else you need to do as a business owner. That’s the piece that people forget.

Energy is one of those pieces, as I said, hard to measure. It’s how we started. It’s hard to measure and we know we’re going to lose it throughout the day. It’s so easy for us to assume that this additional loss is part of the day. It’s just part of what we have to deal with until it’s gone. All of a sudden, it’s like, “At 5:00, I may be tired but I’m not completely exhausted.” What happened there? We didn’t talk about this but it is one of the ways to watch if your energy level changes also for the positive. What happened there? Back to pattern recognition. “This was the week that Harry had off. Why was my energy level higher?” “Harry wasn’t here.” “Maybe what I’ve been expecting and accepting as normal is an energy drain.”

It is about correlation and pattern recognition, which isn’t necessarily easy for everybody. Back to a reason often that you need to have someone that’s an outsider to give you perspective on it. Often, we’ll just say, “It’s just me.” It’s like, that may not be just you. It may feel like you because we’re very aware of us but it might not be just you.

We’ve talked about energy vampires, so the energy drain or the energy theft. In the next episode, we’re going to be talking about time theft. One of the things that you had pointed out in the last episode is sometimes it becomes a graduated process. It starts with the energy theft, then it goes to the time theft and it gets to the big stuff where it’s money. Join us next time for the discussion on time theft. We’re going to cover the productivity illusion, the occasional delegation trap and why people who are busy aren’t necessarily valuable.

Now, if you’re recognizing yourself in this episode, if you’re exhausted by managing certain team members or even certain client relationships and it’s affecting your ability to lead or to show up as you know you need to as a business owner. You do not have to figure this out alone. Energy theft, as Gwen said, is often the very hardest pattern to address because it’s the hardest to recognize. Even when you do recognize it, it feels personal. It can cause feelings of guilt. It can cause feelings of inadequacy and that is why you often need outside perspective.

We encourage you to give us a call. Seek out our perspective. You can book a call directly with Gwen at EverydayEffectiveness.com/Clarity and break things down. Explain what’s going on. She’ll give you her insight. Whether you choose to work with us or not, you will walk away with a clear plan of what you should do next to reclaim your energy so that you can build the business that you want.

  

Mentioned in This Episode

 

About Your Hosts

Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.

Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.