Leadership Minute: Stop Giving Time to Energy Vampires

Stop giving your energy to people who drain you. How to identify and avoid the energy vampires in your personal and professional life.

After I give a keynote speech, I like to pay attention to the topics people ask questions about after the talk. A concept that often resonates deeply with people is how to manage Energy Vampires, which I speak about in the context of emotional capacity.

What Is An Energy Vampire?

An Energy Vampire is a person who drains your energy whenever you spend time with them, leaving you feeling worse afterwards than you did before. These are the people whose name you dread seeing in a text notification, on your calendar, or on a guest list.

An Energy Vampire can be a friend, a colleague or, quite often, a relative. I bet a name has already popped into your head as you’re reading this.

Here are some classic Energy Vampire archetypes:

• The Victim: The victim loves to let people know how they’re getting the short end of the stick in life. They often blame their misfortune on others and will try to drag you down to their pessimistic level when you’re with them.

• The Narcissist: Narcissists only care about themselves and their own problems; they tend to take up all the oxygen in a room and need to be the center of attention. Typically, after you’ve spent time with a narcissist, you’ll realize you barely got a word in, and they never asked you a single question about your life.

• The Drama Queen/King: These kings and queens seek out and relish drama—you can easily spot these people in your social media feed, because they’re always oversharing everything they experience, good or bad.

We all know people who fit these descriptions, have dreaded spending time with them, and have tried to limit our exposure.

The good news is you can. It starts with knowing how to identify the Energy Vampires in your life, and how to react to them based on where they sit in your personal or professional life.

How To Identify An Energy Vampire