Most leadership assessments tell you who you are. The ELI tells you how you show up, and gives you the power to change it.
Picture this: you walk into a Monday morning leadership meeting after a weekend of rest and clarity. You’re engaged, creative, listening well. Now imagine the same meeting three days after a brutal quarter-end, back-to-back conflicts, and zero downtime. Same room. Same people. A completely different version of you.
That shift is energy, and it’s something most leaders have never been taught to recognize, let alone manage intentionally. The Energy Leadership Index® (ELI) changes that. Once you see your energy patterns clearly, you cannot unsee them.
What Is the ELI?
The Energy Leadership Index® (ELI) is a proprietary, research-backed assessment tool created by Bruce D. Schneider, PhD, MCC, founder of iPEC Coaching, built on 25 years of research into human potential and consciousness. Unlike personality assessments such as Myers-Briggs, DiSC, or Enneagram that measure your “fixed” personality, the ELI is an attitudinal assessment. It captures how you currently perceive and approach work and life, and crucially, how that changes when you’re under stress.
The ELI produces a tangible score tied to seven distinct levels of energy. Each level reflects a different way of engaging with the world from draining, reactive states at the lower levels to energizing, creative, and purpose-driven states at the top.
The Seven Levels of Energy at a Glance
| Level | Energy Type | How It Shows Up in Leadership |
| Level 1 | Victim Energy | Paralysis, apathy, feeling stuck. ‘I can’t win.’ |
| Level 2 | Conflict Energy | Anger, force, blame. ‘I win at your expense.’ |
| Level 3 | Responsibility Energy | Rationalizing, coping, tolerating. ‘I’ll manage.’ |
| Level 4 | Concern Energy | Service, compassion, care for others. ‘You win.’ |
| Level 5 | Reconciliation Energy | Collaboration, win-win thinking. ‘We all win.’ |
| Level 6 | Creative Synthesis | Innovation, big-picture vision. ‘Everyone wins.’ |
| Level 7 | Absolute Passion | Flow, purpose, presence. ‘Winning is irrelevant.’ |
Leaders who operate at higher average energy levels tend to inspire more, communicate more effectively, and build stronger team cultures. The ELI Assessment helps you understand your attitude and mindset in different situations.
How Does It Change the Way You Lead?
Here’s what makes the ELI different from every other assessment you’ve ever taken: your results are not fixed. Energy levels are not personality traits you are stuck with. They are mindsets and perspectives that can evolve with greater awareness.
After completing the online assessment (it takes about 20 minutes), you sit down with a certified ELI Master Practitioner for a personalized one-on-one debrief. That conversation is where the transformation begins.
The ELI helps leaders uncover hidden thought patterns and assumptions that influence their behavior. It highlights habitual tendencies and the “energetic” roots of behaviors, including what might be blocking or draining their energy.
Armed with their ELI results, leaders can make conscious shifts from unproductive, stress-driven reactions to more constructive, growth-oriented responses in real time. This enables better decision-making under pressure, more consistent emotional resilience, and improved adaptability. As leaders learn to “pause and choose” a more constructive response, they communicate more effectively, foster collaboration, and maintain focus even in high-pressure situations.
Who Benefits Most from the ELI?
The ELI is especially powerful for any leader who wants to lead with greater presence, intentionality, and impact. Whether you are leading yourself, guiding others, or working within a team, the assessment creates insight into how your energy influences communication, decision-making, collaboration, and trust. When teams experience the ELI together, it also opens honest dialogue about collective energy and gives people a shared language for how they show up with one another.
At Bold Horizon Coaching, we use the ELI as a foundational tool in many of our executive and group coaching engagements. It’s not just an assessment, it’s the starting point of a conversation that can change everything about how you lead.
Curious what your energy profile looks like? Let’s find out together.