The editors of the book introduce Volker Hische who has been working as a consultant, trainer, and manager/managing director for more than 25 years in a global American technology company. Nowadays, he works as a leadership coach. He has already published and written books on leadership and project management.
Background, Purpose, and Structure of This Chapter
From resonance deserts and resonance oasis—a psychologically and sociologically inspired cocktail to make people feel connected with their company in times when business challenges are more volatile, corporate targets are more movable, and organizational shapes are transforming quicker than ever before.
Let’s start with a thesis. The most relevant impact on our working morale is the answer to a simple question: to what extent do we feel connected with and in our company. Sounds too simple? Just imagine the effect on our working morale if we do not feel connected with our company—feeling disconnected means leaning back, stopping engagement, and making management responsible for whatever happens in the organization. If we agree that a company is only as good as its people, the consequences are devastating: lack of energy, mental stagnation, and resignation. A cocktail of poisoned chalice for each company.
Companies invest vast sums of money in providing technical platforms or open space architecture to ensure that people are connected within the organization. This is fine. However, economic realities—e.g., global labor markets, increased internal competition, global value chains, teams working 24/7, and digitalization agendas—put a lot of pressure on the organization (see travelling organization). Good morale requires more than a technical or organizational environment that helps people to be connected.
Companies need to do more to have people feel connected with them. Leaders know: high team spirit, a common vision, and an open culture are the psychological ingredients of the antitoxin to prevent people from stagnation and resignation. These ingredients stimulate growth and success in our companies. Consequently, in the 1970s, psychologists like Albert Bandura and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi developed well-regarded concepts to highlight the psychological aspect on connectivity. Today’s social scientists like sociologist Rosa Hart have developed a theory of resonance as a holistic concept of connectivity, and the concept of Becoming an Agile Leader, developed by Evelyn Orr, shows the silver lining of how to create a company as a resonance oasis. This is the purpose of this article: to better understand the psychological and sociological ingredients of feeling connected and learn how to mix and dispense an appropriate cocktail to the organization.
The Ingredients: What Do We Need to Mix Our Cocktail?
Imagine you are appointed as new CEO. Your new company—let’s call it Company A—has had a solid financial track record in the past and is well known in the industry thanks to a strong brand. You are highly motivated and looking forward to your new mission. However, within the first weeks in your job, you become a little nervous. No breakthrough innovation in the last years, no internationalization at all, no clear vision, no entrepreneurial spirit, and no growth perspective. In your first meetings with your management, you realize that people are behaving rather cautiously and reluctantly. In the past, mountains of PowerPoint slides have been generated. However, no visionary decisions have been taken. The former CEO launched lukewarm initiatives which came to nothing. External consultants have generated costly analysis to identify the underlying issues which everybody already knew, coming up with cost-saving initiatives evaluating the company from an investors’ point of view. Results have not been discussed in depth with the management team, the truth being limited to a set of KPIs. In a next step, you start interviews with long-term employees to discover that there are a lot of structural problems which have not been tackled for years. Managers who did engage in true turnaround initiatives were dismissed. The workforce has completely lost faith in its leadership team and conducts business as usual. In the context of our topic: neither management nor employees still feel connected with this company. You conclude that it is only because of the conservative and stable industry that your company is still alive.
Let us look at a second example in the same industry. Imagine you are about to enter a company—let’s call it Company B—as newly appointed member of the Board overseeing Production and Technology. For the first 2 days of your new job, you are invited to attend the annual management meeting. You find out that this company has enjoyed strong growth for decades. Acquisitions abroad have led to an external revenue of more than 50%. Profit is above the industry average. You realize that the operational issues to be solved in the meeting are simply down to the tremendous growth the company has experienced in recent years. The company is on a joint journey towards sustainable success, closely synchronizing with the opportunities provided by the market and its customer needs. During the meeting, you sense the high entrepreneurial spirit within the management team, empowered and fueled by strong leadership from the Board. You conclude that is obviously because of the strong leadership and laudable team spirit within the management that people feel connected with this company and its purpose and contribution to future-oriented solutions.
When you look at both examples, the difference is obvious. It is all about team spirit and leadership! Both companies operate in the same industry. Size and financial resources have been comparable in the past. Both companies are still owned and managed by families. So, the key differentiator is not financial power or size. It is all about team spirit and leadership. Nothing new, right? Agreed. And still it is worth having a deeper look at the leadership approach and its link to connectivity. There is strong mutual loyalty between CEO, management, and workforce based on three key values: entrepreneurship, personal development, and open communication. The Board has a clear vision and takes calculable risks to realize growth opportunities in international markets. Each manager is empowered to shape the future by him or herself in the framework of authority matrices. Everyone believes in the purpose of what they are doing; they know about the dynamics of markets and businesses along their corporate journey. There is a cross-functional operations management to overcome silo thinking and allow joint real-time adaptations to changing conditions in the markets. Finally, there is a deep understanding of the need to connect all resources with the company’s development. This creates trust and responsibilities at all levels in the daily work instead of following the sweet illusion of certainty due to long-term planning in uncertain times.
The Psychological Ingredients of Connectivity
There are three ingredients developed and described by famous scholars of psychology that help people to feel connected with their company. These examples are to show how our approach of sustainable purpose, travelling organization, and connected resources is linked with other sound concepts of organization and people development.
Self-Efficacy-Expectation
The effect of expectations on performance regarding one’s own capabilities [author’s own figure, adapted from Dilts (1994)]
The graph demonstrates that there is a clear link between expected performance and real performance. At the beginning, people do move in the right direction. They are motivated and believe in their capabilities to adopt a new task because they have not yet realized that they might not be competent enough. Bandura claims that it becomes particularly critical in the phase of conscious incompetence. If the initial motivation is replaced by frustration due to continuous failure, people lose confidence and stop performing. They start to believe that they are not as competent as assumed (conscious incompetence) and give up. So, for leaders, it is crucial to understand what we need to do to avoid ongoing failure in the phase of conscious incompetence. The theoretical solution is obvious: help people to develop a new strategy and/or new skills and capabilities, particularly during the phase of conscious incompetence. This will increase the belief that their engagement will deliver the expected results.
To underline and strengthen this concept, we would say the challenge is not only about expected and real performance in terms of output and results. The frustration of people willing to engage themselves is even more critical, if they want to contribute to a higher purpose and then fail, because market and business needs, personal motivations and individual competencies are not connected with each other. Leadership means enabling and encouraging people to continuously create connectivity of relevant resources—needs, motivations, and competencies—even in volatile environments and in uncertain conditions.
Flow
- 1.
Objectives are clearly defined.
- 2.
Work does not swamp nor underchallenge me—thus.
- 3.
I believe that I will be able to control what I am doing.
- 4.
Focus lies on the action (the doing) itself.
- 5.
Experience of own competence.
- 6.
Self-effectiveness—belief that I am the one who makes the difference.
- 7.
Direct feedback as to whether or not what I am doing is successful.
- 1.
Team members feel isolated.
- 2.
Unclear team targets.
- 3.
Difficult to motivate team members to review the achievement of their own goals.
- 4.
Lack of feedback within the group—insufficient information about the performance of other team members.
- 5.
Insufficient informal contacts.
- 6.
Lack of clear rules.
- 7.
Trust is a prerequisite for the participatory management style and is more difficult to achieve and cultivate in a virtual environment.
Obviously, it seems to be far easier to become familiar with the Flow concept than to apply it effectively in daily business.
Again, we have to connect the Flow concept with VUCA conditions and re-understand Csikszentmihalyi’s criteria. For example: what about clearly defined objectives in uncertain circumstances? That is why we emphasize the purpose that enables employees to explore and agree to the most effective objectives with their managers. This is more iterative than ever before, focused on “minimum viable solutions” and underlining the relevance of direct feedback for quick re-adjustment. Thus, the flow experience addresses two levels of self-experience, i.e., it connects two competencies: effective execution of a task and continuous synchronization with the transforming business and organizational circumstances.
Big Five
- 1.
Introversion versus extraversion differentiates between whether we are more oriented to the “inner” or the “outer.”
- 2.
Openness refers to what degree we embrace new experiences.
- 3.
Agreeableness refers to our willingness to cooperate and our capability for showing empathy to others.
- 4.
Conscientiousness describes the degree of self-discipline, goal-orientation, planning, and control.
- 5.
Neuroticism is the tendency to emotional instability.
As those five personal traits do have an impact on our day-to-day behavior, they merit being taken into consideration when we mix our connectivity cocktail.
What seems interesting here is the dual approach: on the one hand, the openness to change and, on the other hand, the degree of goal-orientation, planning, and control. These two aspects have to be connected and re-thought in a way that we have to understand objectives, organize tasks, and connect the resources in a more iterative way, regularly questioning and re-adjusting what we do. At the end, we will even have to deliver solutions that we weren’t able to define when we started our work. The emotional stability will be provided by the purpose and meaning of our journey, our readiness to accept uncertainty and to enter unknown territory, and connecting with others and involving them in our joint endeavor.
The Sociological Ingredients of Connectivity
Based on the ingredients condensed from insights in psychology, it is worth looking at two sociologists who developed those ideas by conceding that we are not only individuals but part of teams and milieus. This is important to understand when we want to ensure purpose, change, and connectivity within our companies. In addition, both examples show how these three pillars are linked with other relevant theories.
Milieus
- 1.
A first reaction could be that you take this as a threat. Dangerous trails, uphill all the way, probably the most unfit member of the team. No way! You stick to your home trail. Schulze describes this as harmony milieu.
- 2.
A second reaction could be that you take this as a challenge. To cross the Alps by bike is tough and needs you to be very fit. Let us see how the other bikers will cope. You will do your utmost during the preparation phase to end up as one of the best in the team. Losers are everywhere! Schulze describes this as niveau milieu.
- 3.
A third reaction might be that you take this as a stimulation. This is cool, isn’t it? Hopefully, this will be great fun. Schulze describes this as entertainment milieu.
- 4.
A fourth reaction might be that you take this as a self-actualization. Wow, this is a great opportunity to figure out how I’ll manage to climb 1300 m a day on a bike and how it will feel to navigate those difficult downhill sections. Schulze describes this as self-actualization milieu.
- 5.
A fifth reaction might be that you take this as a necessary adaptation. It is a mega trend to be fit and active, and the TransAlp is a must for any mountain biker. And—you do not want to let your friend down as it is normal for friends to do as the other one asks. Schulze describes this as integration milieu.
As this is only hypothetical please relax, nobody wants you to cross the Alps. However, according to Gerhard Schulze, it is our “normal existential problem definition” (NEP) which determines how we react to a changing world. Do we seek the chances and opportunities in our daily lives, or do we avoid every new situation? And it is easy to apply our personal NEP to new situations in business, isn’t it?
The milieu approach is highly relevant when we discuss the aspect of travelling organizations. How are individuals prepared to face uncertain business development and organizational needs such as flexible structures, iterative decision-making processes, and practices for solving workplace conflicts? Such findings will influence the company’s transformation strategies and even support approaches of transformational leadership.
Resonance
One of the latest concepts in the context of connectivity has been developed by Hartmut Rosa (2018), which he calls resonance. He claims that people can only feel connected with other people, with their jobs, with their company, with their families, and with their environment when there is some resonance. In general, Rosa claims that resonance will only occur when positive affection and emotion are triggered by our work, when there is an intrinsic interest and an expectation of self-effectiveness in a working situation. According to him, resonance is not an echo, but a response relationship. In their specific working environment, employees should play an active part in day-to-day decision-making processes, in the improvement of working conditions, and in the creation of ideas and new concepts. Finally, he says that resonance is possible when strong values are affected. So, a good match between company’s and employees’ values allows more resonance and more connectivity.
Could we generate resonance or even install resonance oases in our modern working environment?
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Affection: There is a high degree of affection towards the company itself. All members of the management team have a positive personal relationship with the owner (who is CEO) and the family and identify 100% with the company.
- 2.
Emotion: Each member of the management team is highly emotionalized. People are proud of the company’s success story, its brands, and its future perspective. They fight hard for their needs and objectives. Once a decision has been made, though, people stick to it.
- 3.
Intrinsic Interest: Everybody’s intrinsic motivation is high as people are convinced by the products, the vision, and their own personal contribution. The challenge is rather to overcome individual interests and transform them into common, shared goals.
- 4.
Self-Efficacy-Expectation: There is high a degree of ownership and self-responsibility. An authorization matrix clearly defines the framework within which each manager decides and acts on his or her own.
- 5.
Response Relationship: it is part of the company’s DNA that people are entrepreneurs. Decision-making and communication are a two-way street, and that was demonstrated in the workshop by ensuring that all participants raise their voice.
- 6.
Strong Values: The company DNA is written in the form of three key values (entrepreneurship, continuous development, open and respectful behavior). As CEO and the Members of the Board have continuously emphasized these values for years, they have become implicit behavioral guidelines. Thus, people identify strongly with the culture of Company B.
- 7.
Momentum of Unavailability: Everybody knows that this culture is not a no-brainer, nor is it self-evident. Thus, they appreciate that the Board and/or the owner pushes and ensures that the ingredients for resonance and connectivity are in place.
In other words: Rosa’s resonance concept describes the pure connectivity that is for employees needed to go the company way together, to set up the team who are willing to go on a journey. Even if they don’t know what is round the next bend. They are in resonance with the entrepreneurial purpose and with each other, trusting they will make it.
The Recipe: How Do We Mix Our Cocktail?
We have described the need to share the purpose of the organization’s journey, connecting the resources such as business insights, individual motivation, corporate strategies, and processes. How do we develop the competencies that a travelling organization needs to be successful?
the willingness and ability to learn from experience, and subsequently apply that learning to perform successfully under new or first-time conditions ... learning agile people do know what to do when they don’t know what to do.
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Mental Agility: describes people who think through problems from a fresh point of view and are comfortable with complexity and ambiguity and explain their thinking to others
- 2.
People Agility: describes people who know themselves well, learn from experience, treat others constructively, and are cool and resilient under the pressure of change
- 3.
Change Agility: describes people who are curious, have a passion for ideas, like to experiment with test cases, and engage in skill-building activities
- 4.
Results Agility: describes people who get results under tough conditions, inspire others to perform beyond normal, and exhibit the sort of presence that builds confidence in others
Blending your learning and development cocktail from psychological and sociological ingredients, aligning it to the purpose, using it as a connectivity exercise, and pacing it with the travelling organization in terms of learning agility (Figure: Frank Kühn)
Questions on the basis of learning agility, acc. to Orr (2012)
Indicator | Description | Low or does not demonstrate | Sometimes demonstrates | Often demonstrates | Consistently demonstrates |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ||
Mental agility | Is more fascinated, amused, or intrigued by tough problems and challenges than stressed, troubled, or strained | ||||
Quickly understands the essence and the underlying structure of a situation | |||||
Can combine the best parts of more than one idea or solution from multiple people and sources and transform it into an overall improved solution | |||||
Functions as effectively under conditions of ambiguity as well as certainty | |||||
Is a curious person; is intellectually adventuresome | |||||
Change agility | Is creative and innovative | ||||
Does not let others’ reactions to his/her mistakes and failures be a deterrent to proceeding if he/she thinks something will eventually work | |||||
Knows how to get things done outside of formal channels as well as within them; is savvy about who to go to and when | |||||
Lives with the negative consequences of being ahead of others on change | |||||
Quickly picks up the need to change personal, interpersonal, and managerial behavior as required | |||||
People agility | Can articulate complex ideas and concepts to others | ||||
Makes quick and mostly accurate judgments about people | |||||
Watches others for their reactions to his/her attempts to influence and perform and adjust | |||||
Has seen this person substantially change after receiving critical feedback, making a mistake, or learning something new | |||||
Seeks and looks forward to opportunities for new learning experiences in business or personal areas | |||||
Results agility | Performs well under first-time conditions; isn’t thrown by changing circumstances | ||||
Exudes self-confidence, has a significant, noticeable presence | |||||
Can state his/her case or viewpoint with energizing passion | |||||
Is willing to work hard and make personal sacrifices to get ahead | |||||
Has high internal standards of excellence in addition to being tuned to outside standards |
And? Are you the agile hero or are you rather disappointed? Relax. Usually, nobody is the “special one” (except—perhaps—a select few in sports or arts); we are rather the “normal ones.” Nobody is agile in all four dimensions, and it is probably impossible to be agile in all dimensions. As a leader, though, it is worth connecting the individual strengths-weaknesses profile of your employees with the appropriate job profiles of a travelling organization. It is useful to connect the company’s purpose and its needs for agile resources with the individual development plans for the people. Why not ask your team members to run their own personal strengths-weaknesses profile and start to work on the strengths and connect them with the company’s journey? Why not give people who are strong in dealing with tough problems challenging operational tasks? Why not give people who are creative and innovative appropriate start-up projects? Why not give people who are strong in supporting others people development tasks? Why not give people who are strong in performing under first-time conditions pioneer jobs? Again, there is no simple recipe. However, if we agree that we are all on a joint journey, the best survival kit in our travel baggage contains a good deal of learning agility.
A Cocktail Called Resonance Oasis to Feel More Connected with Our Travelling Company
We all know: we work for money. Companies reimburse our work by paying us a salary. That’s it. Anything else? Nice to have. If we need resonance experiences (or—to put it more profanely—some fun), we have our families, our friends, our partner, our environment, our sports, our retail therapy attacks, movies, cinemas, museums, books, and arts. We do have our work-life balance, right? So—why bother with a romantic-sentimental metaphor such as resonance oasis for companies to enhance our working lives?
Let’s assume a young talented and ambitious professional gets three competing offers to start their career. Company A is a start-up. The young professional got the advice from a friend to apply for a job there. Instead of running through a structured recruiting process with telephone interview, assessment center, further interviews, etc., he only had lunch with the guy who he would be working for in the cafeteria of the company’s headquarters. A rather informal but inspiring conversation about life, work, aspirations, visions, and values. The next day he receives the call from this guy, telling him that he has got the job. Company B is a global corporate player to which our young professional also applied. After the telephone interview, our young professional is invited to take part in an assessment center which he successfully passes. The HR consultant responsible for the department in question—not the manager—informs him afterwards that the organization needs to decide which job offer might be best for him and that he will be informed within a couple of weeks. After 4 weeks he still has not heard anything. Company C took another approach. Instead of recruiting and selecting applicants, Company C applies itself for candidates like our young professional. He found out about Company C at a fair where Company C presented and introduced itself. Company C’s idea is that the candidate is in the driver’s seat, and it is him or her who selects the company and not the other way around. After the fair, our young professional is invited to attend an annual networking meeting, an invitation that the company extends to all its employees who were hired in the preceding 12 months. After this meeting, our young professional is expected to decide either to join the company or not. Reverse concept—well, guess how our young professional would decide or even better, make your own choice, how would you decide?
Take a second example. You work as General Manager for the country organization of a corporate global player in the IT service industry. You are accountable for profit and loss in this country. Although you have financial objectives concerning revenue and profit, you do not have the authority to take a decision that impacts on the company’s costs. When you want to procure external services, hire new recruits, invest in product development, send offers to clients, etc., you need to run through a formal purchasing and/or approval process with numerous approval levels. All internal processes are centralized and managed via corporate headquarters. The company’s matrix organization does not have an official authority matrix in place regulating accountabilities of senior executive roles across the various functions such as sales and delivery—so you have to have everything approved. Or you work as General Manager for a country organization of a hidden champignon in the food industry. You have agreed with the CEO, who is the owner of the company, the country’s strategy and the annual financial objectives in the context of the company’s overall vision. You are authorized to make any investment decision on your own concerning issues such as product innovation, new hires, procurement, product pricing, or new machines, aside from IT and controlling. Again—which company would you like to work for as General Manager? And why?
You would probably choose the company where you feel more affection and to which you have a closer emotional bond. Hartmut Rosa would argue that the degree of affection and emotion depends on the degree to which a company allows us to “transmute with” it. By transmutation, he means that we actively adopt and shape our environment and/or company instead of just passively experiencing it. Take an analogy from gardening. Let’s take a typical couple. The husband does not understand why his wife likes her garden that much. It is fun for him to spend the evening together with her on the patio. However, he doesn’t enjoy mowing the lawn, while she does enjoy digging, planting, weeding, and watering. Year after year. While she knows all the flowers, the sequence when each type will blossom, her husband can—at best—tell the difference between roses and tulips. While she is actively transmuting with the garden and is, thus, affected and emotionalized, he is merely “consuming” it. While he is just an observer and visitor, his wife feels deeply connected with their garden. She takes responsibility for the further development of the garden, while her husband remains “unattached.”
The same effect is valid for our work life. Companies that enable their employees to transmute with them increase the likelihood that their people will get more connected. Those companies create a vibrant culture where people are invited to actively adapt to it by offering communication platforms, involvement concepts, and shared accountabilities. We feel more connected with the purpose and vision of our company when we are empowered to take own decisions in the framework of clear and transparent accountabilities and where we do have our own voice to participate in the development of the (travelling) company’s future along its journey.
- 1.
The CEO should be deeply connected with the company. He (or she) represents the face of the company. People can directly talk to the CEO. He defines a clear vision together with his Board and sells this vision to the employees.
- 2.
The DNA of a vibrant culture. The Board should develop and prescribe the travelling company’s values (i.e., entrepreneurship—open communication—personal development) itself. Afterwards, the values can be discussed and modified by management and employees.
- 3.
The learning agility as a key competence becomes the core of leadership development programs and measures.
- 4.
The accountabilities are to be clearly defined by job descriptions and authority matrices at all levels.
- 5.
Empowerment of all management levels. Management should be invited and empowered to actively contribute to the future development of the company.
- 6.
Pride cannot be prescribed but is the best indicator of a vibrant company culture and whether the five management techniques above work or not.
- 7.
Last but not least you will need to take a deep breath! This is (unfortunately) a must if one is to establish a vibrant culture. To change and transform a culture is not a matter of months but of years. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day!
There are probably more “building blocks” which help to create a culture where people feel more connected with their companies. You may be able to you create your own cocktail to stimulate connectivity in your company. Remember, only transmutation generates resonance—not just consumption. So, start mixing and you will feel the resonance.