Banishing Energy Vampires

Ever sit down for a meeting and feel the room deflate before anyone talks?

Hello, Energy Vampire.​

You know the type…

🩸 They sigh before every new idea.

🩸 They start every sentence with “we tried that before” or “that’s not how we do it.”

🩸 They call themselves a “realist” but drain every drop of momentum from the room.

They hide in plain sight—colleagues, peers, leaders...and if we're honest, sometimes it's ourselves. But make no mistake, they can suck the energy out of your team faster than you can say “calendar invite.”

The truth is, Energy Vampires are just people running on empty.

At the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit this month, Brené Brown, esteemed leadership & emotions researcher, said “Our nervous systems aren’t ready for the level of uncertainty we’re facing right now.”

That uncertainty makes everyone a little thirstier for control and reassurance. We bare our own metaphorical fangs without even realizing it.

Maybe you’ve caught yourself slipping into the “what’s the point” mindset. Maybe you’ve rolled your eyes in a meeting before you even realized it. It happens.​

But the antidote isn’t about pulling others down. It’s about finding small ways to lift yourself back up so you can be a light for others ✨

The Science Behind the Suck

Positive psychology researchers have long studied something called the negativity bias aka our tendency to focus more on what’s wrong than what’s right.​

Survival mechanism? Yes. Helpful in meetings? Not so much.​

Leadership requires intentional positivity. It’s not “good vibes only,” it’s practice. Like a muscle, it needs to be built.

Enter one of my favorite WYDM tools…

The Cloak Check

Imagine you’re arriving at a restaurant. Before you sit down, you check your coat. It’s heavy, distracting, and not meant for the table.

Now imagine doing the same for your ENERGY.

Before your next meeting or conversation, pause and “Check Your Cloak.” Leave anything that could weigh others down (doubt, frustrations, assumptions) at the door.

Pick it back up afterward if needed, but you might find it fits differently once you’ve given yourself space to breathe.

To practice The Cloak Check, ask yourself:

🧛What emotion or thought am I bringing into this room that could drain energy instead of add to it?
🧛How can I reframe that energy into curiosity or openness instead?​
🧛What would “lightening my cloak” look like in this next conversation?

This practice takes time, but it’s how you start shifting from energy drain to energy source