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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Executive Master Thesis
Organizational energy
The leader’s awareness of energy and
emotions in organizations
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Content
1 Executive summary 3
2 Research overview 9
2.1 Research context 9
2.2 Research question 9
2.3 Initial literature review results 10
3 Research plan 19
4 Results 21
4.1 Introduction 21
4.2 Pilot group en pre-workshop experiences 21
4.3 Preparation with HR managers 22
4.4 Participants in the study 22
4.5 Energy assessment from the survey 24
4.6 The energy workshop 29
5 Discussion and conclusions 55
5.1 Organizational energy 55
5.2 Emotions 57
5.3 Leadership 60
5.4 Followership 64
5.5 Conclusion 64
6 Appendices 67
Appendix 1: Schematic overview of research plan 67
Appendix 2: Results of organizational energy survey (OEQ) 68
Appendix 3: Pre workshop awareness of energy concepts 69
Appendix 4: Results of Transformational Leadership score (MLQ) 70
Appendix 5: Results of Emotional Contagion Scale (ECS) 71
Appendix 6: Evaluation of workshop per module 72
Appendix 7: Development of energy level, lessons learned and applicability of the concepts
presented 73
Appendix 8: Brief explanation and presentation of Energy Concepts 75
7 Bibliography 80
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
1 Executive summary
A year ago a ‘skating fever’ took possession of the entire Dutch nation. It was very likely that
our famous ‘Elfstedentocht’ (Eleven cities tour) could be held for the first time since 1997. I
was amazed by the sudden emergence of so much energy and thought how wonderful it would
be if, as a leader, I would be able to have this same kind of energy in my organization. It was
then that I decided to write my thesis on organizational energy.
Energy lies at the essence of life and all leaders are aware of the fact that, under the right
circumstances, individuals and teams are capable of realizing almost unimaginable objectives.
They know that having a team with high, positive and well directed energy is key to achieving
results. Highly energetic companies and individuals have a substantial and predictable effect
on performance and innovation (Cross & Parker, Charged up: Creating energy in
organizations, 2004). Yet many organizations seem to be unable to increase and direct the
energy of its employees, leading to low engagement, low performance, apathy or even
counterproductive behavior. My reason for studying organizational energy emerged when I
felt that my personal energy diminished structurally in 2012 and I experienced a structural
change in organizational energy. The high positive personal and organizational energy that I
always felt seemed to evaporate and negativity set in. Therefore I decided to dedicate my
master thesis studied on the awareness and management of organizational energy of leaders in
organizations. Specifically aimed at the differences in energy level between three insurance
companies. My aim has been to assess the skillset necessary for leaders who want to optimize
energy for organizational performance and the applicability of energy related concepts. My
key hypothesis was that managers, in their attempt to maximize organizational energy, use a
skillset that is too rigid, too much based on intuition, past experiences and their personal
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
energy and mood preferences rather than really understanding the development of and the
management of the motions of their environment. By being too little aware of the importance
of unconscious processes leading to energy gain or energy drains this knowledge leader fail to
steer energy and emotions in the desired direction. My study has proven that managers are
aware of the fact that emotions drive behavior and thereby results. I was astonished to read
research from Bruch which shows that 90% of managers are either too busy, resigned or
detached. Making them fail to effectively steer on emotions. My research the participating
leaders indicate that they predominantly use goal setting, individual and team attention and
the measurement of results as ways they try to generate positive organizational energy. Few
managers mention external based strategies based on contributing to a higher social value or
beating a competitor. The study als has proven that managers are not aware or
underestimating the effect of some key psychological process that shape organizational
energy like goal achievement, social defense mechanisms, visualization and competing
objectives of their followers.
Discussing energy and the role of the leader in generating the right energy ensures a deep and
worthwhile reflection for every manager with regard to his personal contribution to
organizational energy and the affects of organizational energy on his personal well being.
The motivational leader (in literature also referred to as transformational leader) has the
emotional aperture to understand the key emotions of his followers and the customers of his
organization. Many leaders dream of achieving this ideal, yet they lack the experience or
courage needed to give their followers either the direction or the space needed to fully use
their potential. Or they are simply too little aware of the prevailing mood in their organization
or the effects of lacking negative capabilities. My study did not show a structural difference in
organizational energy and the transformational leadership capabilities in the three
participating organizations. I attribute this to the fact that transformational leadership assessed
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
by self rated questions as in MLQ is weaker than assessment through a 360-analysis. However
on an individual basis it was shown that managers with better (self rated) transformational
leadership capabilities do perceive a higher organizational energy.
The ability to mobilize and sustain positive organizational energy (the motivation, enthusiasm
and intense commitment of individuals) appears to be a key determinant of successful change
(Isern, 2007). My assumption was that leaders can easily learn a broader range of strategies
available to influence the energy level of their organizations than they are currently aware of.
Bruch (Bruch, 2011, pp. 7, 21) argues that leaders can swiftly and purposefully influence
organizational energy and that companies with productive energy promote success-critical
core activities by mobilizing and channeling emotions, attention, and efforts towards common
goals. The more an organization lays these goals externally and the better they are achieved,
the higher the energy experienced.
In my research situation managers indicate that they are aware of the goal setting process. My
study shows a substantial difference in organizational energy in the company that focused on
one product/market-combination versus the companies with a more diversified product range.
In these companies many managers are battling for the attention of the senior management
team and never feeling they get the attention their product line deserves.
It was a great pleasure discussing Organizational Energy with the leaders I encountered last
half year. Invariably I encountered two basic reactions to the theme. Firstly every manager is
highly interested in knowing more about increasing the energy level of his or her organization
and often also his personal energy level. The positive reactions are such that they can’t wait to
understand “the magical trick” they hoped I would present. But there is also secondary, a
more unconscious, reaction. This has to do with the idealized picture that many leaders feel
they have to exhibit: always high on energy, always busy and taking actions and positive in
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
their mood. This interpretation of the leadership role leads to overemphasis on positive
capabilities of the leadership team and to teams not discussing their (negative) moods and not
addressing the sources of these moods resulting in manager not getting their organization to
reach it’s potential. My second assumption therefore was that leaders are too little aware the
effects and positive and negative spin offs of mood and mood contagion in organizations. I
assumed that , by increasing their mood aperture ( (Sanchez-Burks & Huy Nguyen, 2009 vol
20 No 1), managers could better tap into the prevailing mood of the organization and set the
organization into action effectively. The relationship between transformational leadership
qualities and mood aperture found in this study is rather low however. In fact the organization
with managers least sensitive to negative emotions turned out to have the highest
organizational energy. I found a big difference between genders in discussing and valuing
emotional related themes in the workshop. Male leaders tend to underestimate and
underutilize the emotional spin offs of processes in the organization and indicate they learn
substantially from these themes. Female leaders indicate they learn much less from the
emotion related topics, but they report to gain a lot of personal energy from the discussion of
emotions. Female leaders also express being much more sensitive to negative emotions than
male leaders. As emotions are so contagious and that it might be the case that a certain level
of insensitivity to negative emotions stimulates positive organizational energy I wonder if this
is a specific point of attention for female leaders in their personal development. At least their
capability of containing these emotions should be better developed.
All managers indicated they learned a lot from the Energy workshops in which they
participated and they indicated that they can apply the theories explained in the workshop in
practice. This strengthens my belief that the effectiveness of many (and especially male)
leaders can be increased with a better insight in the relations between behavior, emotions,
energy and results.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
A thorough discussion on organizational energy should start with a discussion with top
management and requires substantial time in a leadership program to be of value to leaders.
My personal learning experience as a ‘trainer’ in this field is that especially more insights in
social defense mechanisms, what shapes goal achievement of followers, the effect of differing
strategic horizons and the link between emotions and energy are valuable new insights for
almost all leaders in the study. In my research I could not prove that insights in emotional
contagion and the role of the leader to assess and steer negative and positive emotions and
their personal energy level correlates to organizational energy. But I am positive that this
exists. The differences in the three organizations under study and the sample of 41
participating managers were too small to draw this conclusion and the data of my sample
could not be compared to similar international studies.
All managers who participated in this research valued a lengthy discussion of organizational
energy, it’s root causes and strategies to improve it highly. Even though I could enthuse
almost all managers with new insights and experiences, a good workshop on organizational
energy should be much lengthier than the four hours I had scheduled and also use a wider
variation in working formats that I could develop in the short period of this study. The time of
four hours for workshops and the format of group discussions that I predominantly chose
leave too little personal practice with all the concepts for the managers to really master them.
Nevertheless it has been a very good and useful personal journey for me personally to
explore, explain and discuss organizational energy with middle and top management of three
organizations. My enthusiasm on Energy and Emotions made some of them to express that a
hidden career as ‘energy inspirer’ should be explored and lead to a new possible self.
In order to have more impact on the leader’s behavior I would replace some self evaluation
questionnaires with 360-type of analysis to better and deeper touch the leader in his or her
leadership journey and train my self as a workshop facilitator.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
I do thank all managers who volunteered to help me with this study, the staff of INSEAD and
especially Sheila for her continuous support during this personal adventure. Together with the
many new friends I found in Fontainebleau they made Consulting & Coaching for Change at
INSEAD a wonderful experience!
Just this week as I write the last sentences of this thesis a new Dutch record of traffic jams has
been set because of unexpected winter conditions. Chances of a next 11 stedentocht are
increasing will the collective energy surge again, reaching the peak that inspired me a year
ago?
Marcel van der Meulen
Amsterdam, January 2013
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
2 Research overview
2.1 Research context
The key objective of this master thesis is to demonstrate that every leader has a basic
understanding of the importance of the link between organizational energy and organizational
performance or in brief “the capacity to do work”. Yet many leaders seem unaware of the key
determinants of organizational energy, the unconscious processes influencing it and the
skillset necessary to optimize organizational energy and how to become a transformational
leader. I will demonstrate that with an increased awareness of organizational, energy leaders
will obtain a more positive mood and increased strategic effectiveness. Finally I have tried to
compare the results of the energy workshop of followers to the self-assessment of the CEO on
his energy awareness. My research took place in leadership teams of three financial services
organizations ASR, ONVZ and VvAA, trying to compare the differences in leadership style,
mood, energy level and perceived organizational performance. During the writing of this
thesis I announced my departure from ASR. The communication of this decision immediately
changed my position within the organization and, presumably, also the type of managers that
volunteered participating in the survey and workshop.
2.2 Research question Does a better understanding of energy in organizations lead to a higher energy level of the
leader and their personal capabilities to become a transitional leader?
Corollary question 1: to what extent are managers aware of the importance of (positive)
mood, mood aperture and the unconscious processes that stimulate or hinder organizational
performance?
Corollary question 2: to what extend do managers understand the importance of goal setting,
goal pursuit and the resulting social defense mechanisms in their organization?
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
2.3 Initial literature review results
2.3.1 Energy
Bruch has defined organizational energy as ‘the extent to which an organization, division or
team has mobilized its emotional, cognitive and behavioral potential to pursue its goals
(Bruch H. a., 2011). Emotional energy being ‘the degree of passion and enthusiasm its people
show for the company’, its cognitive energy ‘the degree to which its people are awake,
creative and primed to spot new opportunities or possible threats in pursuit of company goals’
and behavioral energy as to ‘how much the employees make an effort, stretching themselves
to their limits to achieve shared goals.
Energy can be categorized in many ways: with respect to organizational entity (personal,
team, organizational), with regard to valence (positive or negative), source (physical,
emotional or mental energy) and intensity.
Combining the energy level and valence of the mood of the organization, Bruch developed the
concept of the energy matrix based on intensity (what level of emotional involvement, mental
activation and engagement does the organization have) and the quality of the organizational
energy (do emotional, cognitive and behavioral energy all focus on the corporate objectives or
is part of the energy (unconsciously) directed to other, more hidden, objectives?).
The two dimensions lead to four types of energy in organizations: resigned inertia, corrosive
or destructive energy, comfortable energy and productive energy. Both corrosive energy and
productive energy lead to change albeit in an entirely different way. Bruch distinguishes three
common traps in managing an organization’s energy: the complacency trap when
organizational performance decreases as a result of past success or failure; the corrosion trap
which can occur when trust in the organization is destroyed and conflicts about priorities and
solutions escalate and the acceleration trap that may result when the leader keeps pushing too
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
ferociously and relentlessly to achieving higher results. Burnout, resignation, inertia or fatigue
of the entire company may result. On an individual level a similar model can be constructed.
This leads to four basic mood quadrants: negative deactivated (e.g. bored), positive
deactivated (e.g. calm), negative activated (e.g. distressed) and positive activated (e.g. elated).
The challenge for leaders is to take the organization to the optimum energy level given the
circumstance. Not developing a positive mood (trust, co-operation) between teams and
individuals will lead to corrosive energy. Bruch argues that leaders and in fact entire
organizations can fundamentally be divided into either building dreams (“winning the
princess”) propelling their organization with positive energy toward a desired future, or
reacting to threats ( “slaying the dragon” (Bruch H. a., 2011) using predominantly negative
energy to drive their organization for change. Management attention is one of the sources of
energy, where not paying any attention to followers will lead to the poorest results. In my
study I will include two companies with a broad product range (i.e. top management attention
has to be divided) and one mono product company (i.e. top management attention is focused
on one product market combination). The rate of positive to negative attention of management
needs to vary between 3 to 10 positive comments to one negative comment. Too many
positive or insincere comments will deteriorate motivation as much as too many negative
comments. People are more susceptible to negative affects as the survival of our ancestors
depended more on taking care of threats than grasping positive opportunities (Rath, 2004).
Steve Jobs and Apple can be categorized as using mainly corrosive energy to drive change,
whereas Sony is much more based on creating productive energy. Managers need therefore be
well aware of their own preferred energy style and that what is in the DNA of the organization
they lead.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
2.3.2 Mood, Emotional Contagion Theory and Emotional Aperture
Human behavior is motivated by goals ( (Aarts, Custers, & Holland, 2007). Aarts and Holland
have demonstrate that mood has both a conscious and an unconscious influence on
performance. A mood is an emotional state. Moods differ from emotions in that they are less
specific, less intense, and less likely to be triggered by a particular stimulus or event. In the
Circumplex Model of Affect (Larsen & Diener 1992), define mood to differ on two
dimensions: valence and arousal. Clark & Isen (1982) define mood as generalized feeling
states of relatively low intensity with no clear antecedent causes. Positive mood includes
states such as enthusiastic, excited and elated, whilst negative moods include states such as
hostile, nervous and distressed (Watson, Clark, Tellegen, 1988). Neumann (Neumann &
Strack, 2000 Vol 79 No 2) argues that feelings usually arise from different forms of cognitive
processing. Baumeister argues that it is widely accepted that emotions cause behavior, but
also that the opposites is true and that behavior causes emotions (Baumeister, Wal, Vos, &
Elquist). In this thinking the emotions emerge after the behavior of the individual by the
realization of his behavior. From this perspective, feelings are either a by-product or an end
product of cognitive processing. However cognitive processes are not the only source of
feelings. Feelings can also be elicited by patterns of facial, postural and behavioral
expressions. Hatfield, Cacioppo and Rapson (1992) speculate that people ‘catch’ someone
else’s feelings by unintentionally mimicking her or his emotional expression. Given that
individuals unintentionally imitate the emotional expression of interactants (Neumann &
Strack, 2000 Vol 79 No 2) it is conceivable that this imitation results in a congruent mood
state in the observer by a feedback mechanism. Weiss & Cropanzano (1996) have developed
the Affective Event Theory (AET). AET suggests that positive and negative workplace
situations serve as affective events, giving rise to changes in employees’ affect, attitudes and
behaviors. Leaders expressing positive mood are attributed greater level of charismatic
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leadership (Johnson, 2009 Vol 20). Barger & Grandey (Barger & Grandey, 2006 Vol 49 No
6) have demonstrated that also in the encounter between employee and customers the process
of emotional contagion takes places and that the mood of both groups influence each other. In
my research study I have found many examples in which effectively priming of followers
with moods (through expression of the leader, customer contact or internal communication)
leading to an unconscious guidance of the organization towards the desired mood state.
A lot of research has been done on the relationship between the mood of the leader and the
mood of followers. Johnson notes that ‘Leaders’ affect not only influences leadership
perceptions and follower performance, but can also influence followers’ affect through
emotional/mood contagion’. Contagion has been described in the form of Social Contagion,
Mood/Emotional Contagion and Performance Contagion (Ahmadi & Mirsepassi, 2010, Vol
49, No 1). Leaders frequently experience moods, but the consequences of leaders’ moods on
their subordinates are unclear (Brief and Weiss). Understanding the effects of mood contagion
is critical since moods of leaders, followers and even customers influence the way each of
these parties feel, think and act. Transformational leaders therefore are masters in influencing
followers and customers in the unconscious transfer of moods, whereas mediocre leaders tend
to hide their (negative) emotions, focus too much on the negative elements of a situation or
threats thereby unconsciously increasing the negative energy affects in their organizations.
Groups may experience different feelings and exhibit different actions depending on the mood
of the leader. Emotional aperture can be defined as the ability to recognize the composition of
diverse emotions in a collective (e.g., group or business unit) (Sanchez-Burks & Huy Nguyen,
2009 vol 20 No 1). The ability of the leader to actively pick up the emotions of a collective
and to respond to it appropriately is key to guiding followers through change. Sanchez-Burks
state that recognizing the emotions in an individual is no guarantee to recognizing emotions in
a collective and that measurement has yet to be developed.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
In his book Your brain at work Rock describes the relationship between various hormones
that our body produces in various emotional states and the role of the limbic system and
prefrontal cortex on our behavior (Rock, 2009). Especially the role of the energy demanding
prefrontal cortex which we use for decision making, planning, prioritizing, impulse control
and social behavior made me decide to touch upon this neuroscience approach to behavior
and emotions.
In order to optimally perform physically, cognitively and emotionally a member of an
organization needs to have an activation level that matches his environment (Ozcelik, 2005).
If the emotional state of an individual deviates structurally from the emotional climate of the
organization, emotional exhaustion is likely. The Activation Theory holds that every
individual has a characteristic level of activation that he/she is motivated to maintain in
his/her environment. An emotional climate with a relatively higher affective climate than the
employee will overwhelm the individual. On the other hand a lower activation level will lead
lack of sufficient emotional stimulation and to sensory deprivation and boredom. A structural
misfit of an employee’s emotional resources will increase the tendency of psychologically or
physically withdraw. Nevertheless employees whose activation level is higher than the
emotional climate will express a stronger commitment to the organization objectives and they
will be more confident in expressing their emotions (Ozcelik, 2005).
2.3.3 Transformational Leadership and Volition
Where groups of people are trying to reach an objective, some form of leadership is required.
Energizing an organization to achieve exceptional performance requires charismatic
leadership. Weber (1920) referred to the emotion, passion and devotion that ensue from
charismatic authority. Transformational or charismatic leaders make each follower feel
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
special, give each follower needed support and engage each follower in a personal
relationship. (Johnson, 2009 Vol 20).
Ghoshal (Ghoshal & Bruch, 2003) argues that only a small minority of leaders have a strong
will power (volition) to put their followers on the highest level of achieving goals. When
managers learn to activate this willpower, performance of the organization go to incredible
heights. Ghoshal states that most managers and followers are “motivated” for their role (i.e.
they have the desire to do something), but that they lack the volition, the absolute
commitment, to achieving organizational goals. Ghoshal states that the traditional ‘carrot and
stick’ approach for motivating followers is too simplistic, that people only commit to action
for more subtle reasons and that people will refrain from action for more subtle reasons. In my
workshops I want to test a number of these more subtle, unconscious processes with the
participating leaders. Managers with volition have the intensive inner struggle for certainty in
both head and heart regarding what they want. Volitional managers have the power to deal
with setbacks and persevere through the long energy-intensive journey from vision to its
realization and display positive energy. They maintain excitement about the work by
deliberately defending themselves against negative emotions converting adversities into
inspiration (Leventhal 1989). Transformational leadership can be measured and developed
over time and empirical research largely supports the effectiveness of transformational
leadership. (Abrell, Rowold, Weibler, & Moenninghoff, 2011). As stated before in this thesis
proposal many managers tend to focus too much on their positive capabilities resulting from
their imposed view on leadership. Growing the achievement capacity of their organization by
increasing their negative capability (i.e. their power to withhold from acting or doing) will
give their followers the space necessary for achievement and personal development (French &
Simpson).
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
2.3.4 Goal setting and goal pursuit
People are energized by interactions in which a compelling vision is created and realized
(Cross & Parker, Charged up: Creating energy in organizations, 2004). The process of
defining the corporate objective (goal setting) and reaching the objective (goal pursuit) are
well studied. Corporate distractions can take the attention away from purposive actions.
Ghoshal states that the best way to build effective organizational commitment is to build it
bottom up. In my research it is therefore critical to venture into the level of commitment of
followers with regard to the defined corporate or departmental objectives and how the
organizations measure this commitment. If followers do not find their dreams and deepest
wishes (hopes) incorporated defining and realizing the strategy of the organization, or their
willpower is not used and diminishes to ‘motivated’ at the best. Another reason for energy
loss in the organization is ill communication of corporate objectives, lack of focus or different
organizational interpretations of objectives. In my research I have tried to establish whether
the goal setting process or the definition of the vision are a source of ill directed energy. The
initial survey showed that managers are very aware of the importance of goal setting and they
also indicate that they apply it frequently in their daily routines.
Effective execution or goal pursuit lies at the heart of achieving superior business
performance. Research (Bruch & Ghoshal, Management is the art of doing and getting things
done, 2004) shows that only 10% of the managers are capable of effectively organizing
themselves and the collective they lead. The other 90% have clear objectives and well defined
projects, but they do not achieve extraordinary performance or any performance at all. The
real problem for those managers is not whether they know what to do, but that they are not
effective. Even though they are seemingly busy and active, their goal orientation is just too
low, they are overburdened, lack prioritization and time for reflection. In order for objectives
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
to be achievable the attainability and time horizon of the objective need to be in balance with
the organization. Effective goal pursuit depends on goal progress, goal proximity and
expectancy of goal attainment (Louro, Pieters, & Zeelenberg, 2007). In his multiple-goal
pursuit model Louro states that six possible effort allocations may arise for goal pursuit.
Positive emotions signal faster-than-expected goal progress. Paradoxically slightly negative
emotions prompt increased effort toward focal goal pursuit whilst highly positive or recent
success might lead companies into the trap of reducing effort on the focal goal and direct
resources to less important goals. In their research to the pursuit of seemingly impossible
goals Sitkin et al. have developed the Paradox of Stretch Goals (Sitkin, See, Miller, Lawless,
& Carton, 2011). In theory one would expect that companies with a high recent performance
and large slack resources would be best positioned to cope with extreme challenges. Yet they
found that companies lacking recent success and low slack resources are more likely to take
higher risks as they face a more disruptive future. Ghoshal also identifies the pitfalls of over
commitment: persisting in taking actions even when the undesirability of a project becomes
manifest or falling in love with a task that they cannot disengage after success. As the role of
leadership can be described ‘to achieve those objectives that the organization would not
achieve by itself” (Manzoni, CCC-program 2012) and change as ‘going from the known to the
unknown’, people often initially don’t like either the task or the leader associated with a
newly formulated objective. As change requires adaptive behavior all individuals typically go
through a typical learning curve: initial resistance, denial, gradual exploration and eventual
commitment with large variations between individuals in the speed of transition through each
phase. Hope, visualization and anxiety play an important role in this phase. The belief that the
objective will be worthy and that it can be attained sparkles energy in the early phases of
change processes. As long as people feel they get the truth from their leaders they will support
his objectives often even if the results are not necessarily pleasant. Not upholding
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
commitments can dash energy instantaneously. Managers often focus on the technical side of
change, ignoring the human elements (Bovey & Hede, 2001). Whether the cause is real or
imaginary, anxiety produces the same physiological responses for an individual. The
imaginary dangers may be external, or experienced internally as a result of past experiences,
fears or worries. Unconscious forces can have more power over an individual’s behavior than
conscious have (Bovey & Hede, 2001). Unconscious forces have a tendency to direct and
divert energy elsewhere and away from the task of change. These forces (social defense
mechanisms) are considered to be the main causes of inefficiency both in individuals and
organizations (Bovey & Hede, 2001). The more an individual resorts to maladaptive defense
mechanisms, the less mental energy the individual has to direct toward the change objective.
Social defense mechanisms can be adaptive (humor, anticipation) or maladaptive (denial,
dissociation, isolation of affect, projecting or acting out). The higher the adaptive defense
mechanisms and the lower the maladaptive defense mechanisms, the less an individual and an
organization will resist change and therefore the better the performance will be. In short,
constructive coping skills will enhance results. In my workshop with leaders tried to discover
to what extent they are aware of these mechanisms and what mechanisms are predominantly
acted out in their organization. Much to my surprise managers indicated in the workshop that
they were hardly aware of the presence and consequences of social defense mechanisms.
There are many cases in which the performance of organizations is compared to athletic
performance. Today goal visualization is a key element in enhancing performance. (Cheema
& Bagchi, 2011). In my study of energy I want to discover to what extent managers use
visualization and storytelling to stimulate followers the identify with corporate objectives.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
3 Research plan
The methodology chosen to study the energy treatment in organizations and the way
managers manage energy and emotions has been an action research project focusing on three
organizations in the Dutch insurance industry: ASR Nederland, a large (4700 full time
equivalent) , general insurance company with a wide product range (retail and wholesale);
ONVZ a medium large (400 fte), insurance company specialized in health insurances and
VvAA a medium large (650 fte) insurance company specialized in serving medical
professionals with a broad product range. After CEO-approval a brief intake with the HR-
manager took take place to obtain back ground information with regard to the company, its
strategic challenges and recent (leadership) developments. After this interview a target
leadership group was identified. This target leadership group comprised of managers leading
managers. In all instance the CEO and other board members were not part of the identified
group. This interview was supposed to be a preparation for a workshop to be held with 5 to 8
managers of each organization to the conscious and unconscious causes leading to the current
energy level of their organization, their personal readiness for transformational leadership and
their awareness of the theories that increase or decrease energy in their organizations and their
followers. The research will not focus on cognitive aspects the organizational aspects (i.e. do
we have the right strategy?). In brief the next steps have been taken (detailed approach in
appendix 1):
- Write Thesis Proposal with literature research and research plan
- Develop survey to be sent to leaders of 3 participating companies
- Hold workshops with management of each companies to discuss organizational energy
- CEO debrief on workshop results
- Draw conclusions and debrief participants
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
The key in assessing the learning of the respective management groups was based on my own
observations and an evaluation after each module of the workshop. Every participant was
asked to fill out a brief questionnaire with regard to his or her personal insights, his personal
action plan, how much the individual learned from module their insights gained and personal
action points from the module (open ended questions) and to indicate on a scale from 0 to 10
the amount of new insights, applicability of the concepts presented and the actual energy level
of each module. After the workshop the questionnaires were scanned and sent back to every
participant together with the presentation slides used. In addition to that every workshop
participant received a personal overview where his personal results on Organizational Energy,
Personal Energy, Transformational Leadership and Mood Aperture were compared to the
company’s and the entire group average. This in order to provide each manager with the
possibility of generating his own action plans and to facilitate further personal learning on the
topics presented.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
4 Results
4.1 Introduction Once you start reading on the elements that influence organizational energy, one realizes that
a vast number of cognitive and unconscious factors determine the capability of an
organization to obtain results. It was difficult for me to find a balance between sticking to a
simple model and and focusing on just a few elements that determine organizational energy
and trying to add to the manager’s awareness of organizational energy with a number of new
concepts. Especially after the pre-pilot workshop where every manager present indicated his
interest in all selected topics.
Even though my study focusses on energy, I was aware that many managers might lack the
additional energy to fill out a questionnaire and participate in a workshop. In my preparation I
focused on limiting the time needed to fill out a pre-workshop questionnaire to 30 minutes
and the workshop time to 4 hours. On average a manager took 25 minutes to fill out the
questionnaire and the workshops lasted exactly four hours. Trying to include a relevant
number of leaders from three different organizations in a survey and having them participate
in a time consuming workshop required quite some extensive planning.
4.2 Pilot group en pre-workshop experiences As I am inexperienced in developing a questionnaire for measuring the various aspects of my
study as well as running workshops on organizational energy, I found that a good pilot period
was necessary. I therefore piloted both the questionnaire and the workshop with a group of 12
managers from my own division. Various questionnaires (EOQ, MLQ, ECS) had to be
translated to Dutch as I did not find any Dutch researches using these questionnaires earlier.
Even though I checked the translation of these questionnaires with professionals in the field,
there might be some bias in my results because of the translation and lack of a large database
to compare the results. The pilot showed that the questionnaire was well designed and
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
understood on most items and appealed to managers. In the pilot workshop I found that
receiving structured and useful feedback from the workshop was difficult. Many participants
did not fill out the evaluation form, did not complete it and found it to cumbersome. Therefore
I introduced the ‘Energy booklet’, containing the four simple evaluation pages, and a number
of sheets on how to deal with low or negatively energized people. Every participant was
promised his or her personal comparison to the group on Organizational Energy experience,
Personal Energy, Emotional Aperture and Transformational Leadership perception if they
handed in this Energy Booklet after the workshop. Later on in the other workshops it turned
out that filling out the evaluation forms increased to 100% as everybody was curious in this
personal feedback in addition to the workshop presentation.
4.3 Preparation with HR managers I had planned to have a structured interview with the HR managers of each of the
organizations. In practice a telephone call or short meeting of less than an hour proved to be
sufficient. The topic was clearly of high interest to each of them and all of them showed great
trust in my approach.
4.4 Participants in the study The target group managers were all sent an email to invite them to cooperate in the study.
This invitation was sent from the HR Managers of ONVZ and VvAA and by myself within
ASR. Once a manager indicated his willingness to participate an invitation was sent from
Qualtrics, the survey tool I used for sending out and scoring the questionnaires. A first
indication of the organizational energy can be found by assessing the leaders’ participation in
this study:
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Questionnaires Questionnaires Response Workshop Workshop
Sent completed rate participants Response
ASR 29 25 (86%) 12 (41%)
ONVZ 10 9 (90%) 7 (70%)
VvAA 13 7 (54%) 4 (31%)
Total 52 41 (79%) 23 (44%)
Figure 1: Response rate of managers and participation rate in workshops
Later I concluded that the productive energy level of the three organizations follows a similar
pattern to the participation rate in the questionnaire and the workshop. However also other
influences must be considered. ASR-managers must have been influenced by the fact that I
announced my departure of the company early October. Secondly my familiarity with the HR
Manager of ONVZ is better than with the HR Manager of VvAA. Thirdly ONVZ had ‘Energy
and vitality’ as a leadership theme for the period 2012 and 2013 which also increased
participation rate. The key characteristics of the participating leaders in the survey of every
organizations showed some remarkable differences:
# mngrs in survey Male Female Avg age
Years in org.
Years in role
ASR 25 81% 19% 44,7 12,5 2,7
ONVZ 9 89% 11% 39,9 9,4 4,2
VvAA 7 75% 25% 41,3 3,1 1,4
Total 41 81% 19% 41,9 8,3 2,8
Figure 2: Key characteristics of participating managers
All organizations can be described as predominantly male led companies. At VvAA managers
are clearly relatively short in the organization and short in the current role. Later on in this
study I will conclude that VvAA has a relative high personal energy level, but a relative low
organizational energy level. My assumption is that managers who are relatively short in their
role or employed shortly in the organization can be highly energized personally, but are not
experiencing that their personal effort do not yet lead to the desired organizational results.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Also a person in a relative new environment will be focusing more on himself rather than on
the environment. Managers with ASR and ONVZ are relatively long with the company and
will probably therefore focus more on their environment rather than their own department.
4.5 Energy assessment from the survey In the survey four open questions explored how managers currently experience and deal with
energy in their organizations. I have grouped these answers in the some main categories and
drawn some preliminary conclusions on it. I noticed that in general only a small minority of
managers attribute an influence of their leaders or the leadership team of the company to be a
source of the current energy level of their organization. Also in the workshop the role of the
leader was not addressed a lot. For me this underlines the relative hierarchical nature of
insurance companies and a reluctance to openly discuss the role of the CEO in creating
organizational energy. The four questions and the corresponding responses were:
- 1. Describe what comes to your mind: “Energy in my organization…”
The manager describes the type of energy or lack of it 47% 23
Achieving results
31% 15
Teamwork
18% 9
No reaction
4% 2
100% 49
Figure 3: Responses to open ended question “Energy in my organization…”
Most managers respond to this question by addressing the productive or lack of a productive
state of their organization. A third of the responses are closely linked to the definition of
energy namely the capability to achieve results. Some 20% of managers relate the energy
level in their organization to the existence or absence of teamwork. Most managers only
report one or two issues on this question. Given the many factors that shape energy I would
have expected to get more and a wider variety of answers.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
- 2. What gives you energy (in your work environment)?
Achieving results
36% 27
Teamwork
32% 24
Autonomy
9% 7
Positive mood, inspiration, humor 9% 7
Vision
7% 5
Leaders of my organization 7% 5
100% 75
Figure 4: Responses to open ended question “What gives you energy?”
It is good to notice that manager relate energy to results. Achieving results (36%) and
teamwork (32%) stand out as the most important answers to this question. On average each
respondent cited two issues that lead to his or her personal energy state. I would have
expected a higher contribution of leaders in the organization and the existence of an appealing
strategy to lead to a high energy level. Also teamwork outnumbers autonomy quite
substantially in the responses.
- 3. What are the main energy drains in your organization?
Procrastination, bureaucracy, aimless meetings 44% 24
Lack of cooperation, egotistical behavior
18% 10
Unclear objectives
16% 9
Negative atmosphere, anxiety
16% 9
Lack of autonomy
5% 3
100% 55
Figure 5: Responses to open ended question “What are the main energy drains in your
organization?”
Again in this question I would have expected that managers would have addressed a far
greater role for the most senior leadership team in the organization to be responsible for
energy level. Even though it can be argued that the management style of the most senior
leadership group determines whether procrastination, bureaucracy and aimless meeting persist
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
in any organization, my assumption that behavior of the leadership team would have been
addressed much more directly in a Dutch management environment. Wasting time and energy
directed to goals other than corporate objectives seem to be the main leakages of energy.
Energy drains directly related to an emotional state are only accounted to as 16% of
responses. One can argue the procrastination, bureaucracy and aimless meetings are a result
from the social defense mechanisms operating in the organization.
- 4. How do you generate energy in your organization? Please mention 3 to 5 items.
Setting objectives
26% 23
‘Walk the talk', being energetic myself
14% 12
Measure and celebrate results
14% 12
Delegate, give autonomy and show trust
13% 11
Personal attention
11% 10
Open communication
11% 10
Ensure personal fit of employee to the job 11% 10
100% 88
Figure 6: Responses to open ended question “How do you generate energy in your
organization?”
A fairly large part of respondents report that setting objectives and measuring goal
achievement is part of the way they try to generate energy. Also the use of the ‘pygmalion
effect’ to inspire and show support to corporate objectives is mentioned frequently. Much
more than I would have expected managers report that fitting the right person to the job is part
of their energy strategy. These results coincide with the results I found later in the energy
workshops. In these workshop managers indicate that setting objectives and ‘emotional fit’
are part of the energy strategy of managers. As I asked managers to report 3 to 5 items and
this question was at the beginning of the survey, I do conclude that managers find it relatively
difficult to express explicitly how they create energy in their organizations. Of the 41 manager
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
only 2 to 3 reported 3 to 5 actions that could be described as containing a well thought
strategy.
The other results of the survey (energy, emotions, leadership, followership) will be discussed
in the various parts of the workshop where these concepts were discussed with managers.
The survey concluded with the question to managers to rate 16 concepts that are related to
organizational energy on: (1) whether they are familiar with the concept; (2) if it has high or
low effect on organizational energy and (3) if they apply this concept in practice. The results
are summarized in figure 7. One can conclude from this table that 68% of managers indicate
they are aware of quality of energy. Managers indicate to be familiar with goal setting, focus,
story telling and the role of the leader in change processes. They indicate they are aware of
the positive effects of a well balanced work pressure, emotional reactions to change,
visualization and goal proximity, story telling but that they do not apply these concepts in
practice or take actions. That managers are relatively unaware of the effects of emotional
contagion, emotional fit and steering on emotions. They do indicate to be aware of the
performance consequences of emotional reactions to change, but that they are hardly taking
any practical measures to direct these emotional reactions. Relative few managers are aware
of the concept of positive and negative capabilities of the leader. I found this to be confirmed
with my debriefing interviews with the CEO’s.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 7: Response of 41 managers on knowledge, effect and application of 16 organizational
energy related concept
Next I analyzed the differences between the three organizations. Managers of ASR indicate
more awareness of the 16 energy concepts and managers of VvAA indicate less awareness
and application of the concepts presented. I was surprised to find that managers of ONVZ
were so aware of emotional fit, hope and expectations and fair process, but in my debrief with
the CEO I understood that quite some managers of ONVZ followed leadership courses at
INSEAD.
Total group
Familiar Effect Applied
Energy quality 68% 89% 68%
Effect of continuous high work pressure 66% 63% 42%
Inertia 47% 61% 26%
Emotional contagion 47% 50% 45%
Emotional fit 29% 55% 21%
Emotional reaction to change 89% 82% 55%
Steering on emotions 47% 53% 37%
Emotional sensitivity 87% 95% 71%
Positive and negative capabilities of leader 55% 82% 47%
Goal setting and competing objectives 92% 89% 82%
Focus 95% 97% 89%
Hope and expectations 47% 50% 34%
Fair process 61% 66% 58%
Visualization and goal proximity 68% 82% 55%
Story telling 95% 87% 55%
Role of leader in change processes 95% 97% 82%
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 8: Relative awareness, expected effect and application of energy concepts of the three
participating organizations
4.6 The energy workshop As there are many sources of energy and emotions that influence the capability of an
organization, I had to simplify to some extend the basic roles in an organization and the
processes that lead to organizational energy. Figure 9 shows the basic roles that I introduced
in the workshop that served as a framework using only Customers, Leaders and Followers.
Figure 9: Basic framework used in the workshops
ASR ONVZ VvAA
Familiar Effect Applied Familiar Effect Applied Familiar Effect Applied
Energy quality 11% 2% 7% -18% -2% -18% -18% -6% -2%
Effect of continuous high work pressure 5% -5% 4% -16% -1% -5% 1% 20% -9%
Inertia 11% -2% 7% -10% 14% -1% -31% -11% -26%
Emotional contagion 3% 0% -3% -10% -13% -7% 3% 17% 22%
Emotional fit -4% -5% -4% 9% 20% 16% 4% -5% -4%
Emotional reaction to change 6% -2% -5% -2% 6% 7% -23% 2% 11%
Steering on emotions 3% -11% 1% 3% 10% 1% -14% 31% -4%
Emotional sensitivity 5% 1% 0% 1% -7% 16% -20% 5% -21%
Positive and negative capabilities of leader 3% -2% -10% 7% 6% 28% -22% 2% 3%
Goal setting and competing objectives 8% -6% 6% -5% 11% -19% -25% 11% 2%
Focus 5% 3% -2% -20% -10% -2% 5% 3% 11%
Hope and expectations 3% 4% -1% 15% 13% 16% -31% -33% -18%
Fair process -6% -12% -12% 27% 22% 42% -11% 18% -8%
Visualization and goal proximity 11% -2% -1% -18% 6% 20% -18% 2% -22%
Story telling 1% 1% -1% -7% 13% 7% 5% -20% -5%
Role of leader in change processes 1% -2% -7% -7% 3% 18% 5% 3% 2%
Average 4% -2% -1% -3% 6% 7% -12% 2% -4%
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
In the model the only role of employees (followers) is to execute a predefined task and to
change in a predefined direction (chapter 4.6.5). As each of the three parties involved brings
energy and emotions when interacting with each other, a key role of the leader is to assimilate
and to manage these. In every workshop I ran I felt that most managers had never interpreted
their role in this way.
I found during the pilot workshop that participants want to both know where they are in the
entire process and they want to see the bigger picture of organizational energy. I therefore
used five clear parts in the workshop: (1) Results achieved (chapter 4.6.1), (2) Organizational
Energy (chapter 4.6.2), (3) Emotions (chapter 4.6.3) , (4) Leadership (chapter 4.6.4) and (5)
Followership (chapter 4.6.5). Every part started with a brief introduction, the explanation of
some theory and background information, followed by a discussion and then evaluated in the
‘Energy Booklet’ spending around 45 minutes on each topic. It turned out that every
workshop a lot of discussions were around the results, the energy matrix, emotions and
followership. I also developed a simplified model of the emergence of organizational energy:
Figure 10: Dynamics of energy, leadership, motivation and organizational performance
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 11: Simplified models for the emergence of organizational energy
At this moment in the workshop I felt that the participating groups were both anxious to know
more about the energy in their organization, and still quite distant to the topic. I also felt that
the group was very much aware of their role in dealing with the emotions of the group they
lead, but in practice had many scattered strategies in dealing with these emotions. I
deliberately did not start the workshops with some kind of ‘entertaining energy video’.
Partially because I could not find a good video related to organizational energy and partly
because I did not want to influence the organizational energy that every participating manager
would bring into the discussion.
4.6.1. Workshop introduction: Results achieved
As Energy has been defined as the capacity to reach the objectives of the organization I
focused quite some time at the start of the workshop on getting a collective view on the results
achieved on a scale from 0 to 10. As shows in figure 12, the management of the three
companies can be described as critical to negative with regard to the results their
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organizations have achieved in the recent past with one company being critical on almost all
KPI’s and the others on many KPI’s except customer satisfaction and employees1.
Discussing the results achieved already gave some insight into the energy level within the
organization. Management of two companies have clearly set an objective to achieve highest
customer satisfaction and believe they have attained this to a great extent. When discussing
the results of the organization I noticed a big difference between the small and large company.
In the large company a reason for the low marks was attributed to someone else within the
organization. In the smaller companies managers showed they felt more responsible for the
results of the entire company and a faster and deeper inward reflection to the personal
contribution to the results emerged.
Figure 12: Managers’ perception of organizational recent performance of three organizations
As insurance companies face a lot of market changes with a lot of pressure on existing
business models, this appraisal of current performance did not surprise me. On the other hand
1 ‘Employees’ KPI was defined as the quality of the organization to attract talent, have an engaged workforce
and have a well educated workforce
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
it will be hard for managers to install a spirit of pride in the organization if they are that
critical on their past performance.
A second sheet with the ‘results achieved’ focused more on the underlying forces that
management can influence and that result in a specific energy pattern (figure 13).
Figure 13: Underlying forces that shape recent organizational performance
Discussing the results achieved and how they are achieved provides a good preliminary
insight into the energy pattern that results in the organization and that was discussed later in
the workshop. The reason for briefly discussing the ‘supportive arguments’ for achieving
results was to briefly explain why a certain energy topic was included in the presentation. For
example when talking about ‘risk taking’ I could explain the paradox of stretched goals and
indicate that companies with the lowest past success were most likely to engage into risky
strategies. In fact this study shows that management of the company with the lowest past
success (company C) has the highest risk profile. Also the character traits of the most senior
leadership team or person is more easily discussed around these so-called ‘supportive
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
arguments’ than when the energy-level in the organization is discussed. My assumption is that
when discussing the underlying assumptions the discussion is more focused on a number of
elements that are the root cause of organizational energy. When the results of organizational
energy is discussed (see chapter 4.6.1) every participant tends to have his or her own
interpretation of the source of energy leakages, making discussions less focused. When all
‘underlying causes’ are discussed some root causes will appear. Also directly blaming top
management for the existence of a certain energy type requires more courage from the
workshop participants. In my workshop this varied between an unsatisfactorily strategy
process, too little time for reflection and the company being stuck in the acceleration trap.
Only when one manager mentioned a specific energy destructing behavior from the top
management team the others tended to follow.
4.6.2 Workshop Module 1: Organizational energy
The second part of the workshop introduced the Energy matrix as developed by Bruch, the
relationship between energy and emotions, discussion of the energy traps and strategies to
enhance organizational energy.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 14: The energy matrix
The energy matrix was introduced in three stages. First the matrix was presented, then the
prevailing emotions of organizations in each of the quadrants. Next the group was asked to
identify companies in each of the quadrants. All groups didn’t have problems identifying
‘passion’-type of companies with Apple and Google being most frequently mentioned. Most
groups were able to identify one or two ‘comfort’-based companies. But the identification of
negatively energized companies with low or high energy levels was much more difficult. The
companies with a broad product line identified themselves as being in motion from low
positive energy to another quadrant with a lot of differences in strategy followed. ASR-
managers expressed that they felt the organization went from low, comfortable energy to low
negative energy to high negative energy at this very moment as so many drastic changes were
implemented recently. They also mentioned that energy was much higher in smaller, more
autonomous parts of the organization than large, more integrated parts of the organization.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
VvAA-managers expressed that the organization was in different phases for different parts of
the company.
In the next phase the energy level of each of the organizations was presented. The energy
pattern of the three organizations are quite similar with some typicality per organization
(figure 15). All three companies are showing too much destructive energy and too much
inertia whilst scoring relatively low on comfortable and productive energy with one
exception. This aligns well with the development of the Dutch insurance industry. High
profitability in the past, currently a lot of turmoil. The problem with the interpretation of the
energy matrices is that the described ‘ideal’ situation by Bruch is predominantly based on
Swiss/German companies. Therefore there may also be a Dutch culture related assessment of
negative energy states. All companies had a target to maximize customer satisfaction. The
management of the mono product company has evidence that the customer satisfaction of the
company is amongst the highest in the market. The productive energy of this company is
remarkably higher than the peers. Even if a larger database for comparison is lacking, the
energy states of the companies as measured was close to the energy that I felt running the
workshops.
Managers of the lower productive state organizations expressed that ‘we are managed too
much as separate entities rather than as an entire organizations’, ‘we have high personal
energy, but lack real cooperation leading to disappointing results’, ‘we have too little time for
recovery, we are afraid to lose momentum if the bar is not continually raised’, ‘we never
relax, people even don’t join important meetings’. For me a key learning here is that
discussing high energy states or a low positive energy state (comfortable) is easier to discuss
than a low negative energy state. Also in my evaluation with CEO’s I found that they find it
difficult to give the right attention to low negative energy state departments.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 15 also contains the individual energy level of the managers in each of the
organizations. Even though the differences are small, I felt distinct energy differences
between the organizations. At organization A, managers have the highest individual energy
state, but the complexity of the organization, top level management style and the felt inertia in
large parts of the organization make this personal energy not effective in practices. Managers
in this organization experienced very little control over their own change environment relative
to the other peers. Company C has a different pattern. There I sensed a high personal energy
level, but lack of true corporation between managers (pillar type of organization) again
leading to too little group energy effectiveness. Also managers were relatively short within
the company and in their role. In my assumption leading to high focus on the self rather than
on group performance. Knowing the CEO, I also recognized his personal style to continually
strive for better, using relatively little time for reflection and stressing long working days. For
me this also reflects that having a lot of managers with high individual energy levels does not
per se result in high organizational energy. This because managers might be too much focused
on the individual task forgetting to cooperate and achieving corporate objectives.
I noticed that few managers discussed the existence of departments or managers with
structurally low and negative energy states. The existence of the high negative energy states
(destructive energy) for me also indicate that a lot of managers have not yet accepted the
structural change of the identity of insurance companies in the Dutch market. Traditionally
they were positioned somewhat ‘below the radar’ having low interest products that people felt
they bought compulsively resulting to comfortable energy spheres. To date speed of change,
product transparency and structural lower costs lead to the transformation of this industry to a
low cost, no nonsense environment to which many managers still have to adopt.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 15: Organizational and personal energy levels of the three companies
The first round of discussion was finished by filling out an evaluation form. On this form
every manager took note of his/her personal insights, defined actions for him/herself and a
rating of how much was learned during the session, whether the theory and results discussed
were applicable in practice and an indication of the current personal energy level. Figure 16
summarizes the takeaways from the first module:
Learned Applic- Energy
ability Level
ASR 7,1 7,7 7,6
ONVZ 7,2 7,4 7,2
VvAA 7,5 8,0 7,8
Avg 3 groups 7,3 7,7 7,5
Male resp. 7,3 7,6 7,5
Female resp. 7,0 8,0
8,0
Figure 16: Evaluation results after ‘Energy module’ of the workshop
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
My personal conclusion of this evaluation is that discussing energy as a stand alone topic and
only basing the discussion on the Energy Matrix leads to relative little new learning of the
individual manager. The energy matrix is easily understood, but interpreted as relative simple
and not giving enough common direction to the source of energy leakages. It is clear that the
level of analysis needs to go a little deeper, discussing more concise theories that influence
organizational energy. The organization with the lowest productive and comfortable energy
level showed a far higher level of lessons learned, applicability and energy level than the
organization with a high productive energy state.
The key lessons that managers report as takeaways after this module of the workshop were:
1. It is possible to identify organizational energy levels based on a short questionnaire,
however it is too hard to explore the sources of energy leakages from a workshop
discussion only;
2. Many managers assume that a high personal energy state of themselves automatically
lead to a high organizational energy state. Many managers focus on their personal
energy level and focus relatively little on influencing organizational energy. They
believe that collective energy can be high if individual energy is optimized and that
balancing high and low work pressure is key to achieving high organizational energy.
3. Many managers expressed that their capacity to use well proportioned negative energy
(conflicts) to generate results could be improved. They also report noticing low or
negative energized departments without taking action to improve this. Sometimes a
negative organizational entity is common knowledge but nobody seems to take action.
Not even top management;
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
4. Sources of energy traps (especially over acceleration) are well recognized, but in
practice poorly dealt with by managers. The overwhelming pressure to keep
improving is hard to combine with giving the organization time to recuperate. This
problem was also recognized in the debrief with the CEO’s;
5. Leaders tend to focus too much what is going wrong, complaints and errors. The use
positive customer experiences to increase organizational energy by this emotional
contagion is practiced too little;
6. Even though this study doesn’t focus on gender differences, I have analyzed
differences in gender reactions. Female managers tend to experience their
organizations to have a 10% better with regard to productive and comfortable energy,
whereas they experience both the high and low negative energy the same as male
respondents. Further more they report a 10% lower personal energy level than their
male colleagues. This seems to be similar in the three organizations. I am curious as to
why it seems that people who experience a positive energetic environment, seem to
report a lower personal energy level. Could it be that they are less exaggerating their
personal energy state as they feel more comfortable towards their environment
whereas managers who experience there environment to be low or negative in energy
unconsciously try to protect themselves by expressing a high personal energy level;
7. Managers can also experience a structural difference between their personal energy
level and organizational energy level. In the reflection I received both reactions from
managers with low energy who concluded that they should re-attach to or leave the
organization as well as managers with high energy who concluded that they should re-
energize their environment or else look for a more energizing organization;
8. If well managed, energy is not a byproduct, but it can be the result of a well thought-
out strategy. Energy can actually be managed.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
4.6.3. Workshop module 2: Emotions
The third part of the energy workshops focused on emotions. This section started with a brief
introduction of how emotions emerge from our (energy efficient) limbic system, how the
(energy consuming) prefrontal cortex is important in decision making, planning, social
behavior and impulse control and how various hormones influence our emotions (oxytocin,
testosterone, dopamine etc.). Next the importance of emotions to our survival, the existence of
mirror neurons and the reason why negative emotions have a vast more important influence
on our behavior than positive emotions as this is much more linked to our survival of our
species.
Next the role of the leader in identifying individual and collective emotions, containment of
these emotions and guiding the collective emotions in the right direction was explained as
well as a number of concepts that relate to emotions: emotional fit, the effects differing
structurally in energy with the environment, emotional contagion and the concept of steering
on emotions in addition to traditional KPI’s (Quy Huy, module 8).
In the discussion that followed managers reported many incidents or decisions in their
companies that have occurred in the recent past or many years ago that still to date have a
negative impact of the emotions of the group. The introduction of Organization 2.0, the not
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
well communicated and executed downsizing of a part of the company or examples of
individual behavior of top management were easily identified as sources of energy leakages in
the organization that still persist even though the source of the negative emotions is long
gone. I was surprised by the number and type of past events that still have negative impact on
current energy in the three organizations and the fact that in all three organizations top
management didn’t have a good discussion about it. Most managers would report that their
organization is ‘open’ in sharing emotions. Nevertheless all three organizations studied still
suffer from events that greatly impacted the organizational energy, but that have not been
discussed and processed in the right way. In my debrief with the CEO’s I spent some time on
discussing this issue and found differing openness to tackling these ‘old pains’. Discussing
this properly would have required much more time than I had available in my workshop.
Nevertheless for a good discussion on organizational energy, discussing past events is a
fundamental part for understanding the present.
When discussing mood contagion I was surprised by the fact that most managers seem to
underestimate the relation between their personal moods, the moods of their followers and the
resulting performance. Also their inability to express their emotions in the right way in order
to be authentic in one way but also a strong leader in the other way. In my workshop I lacked
a simple game or simulation to have the manager experience personally what the practical
effects of mood contagion can be and it’s results on performance.
When reading the literature about energy in organizations, the role of emotional contagion
and the importance of emotional aperture in the leader (Sanchez-Burks & Huy Nguyen, 2009
vol 20 No 1), I expected to notice differences in emotional contagion results in the leadership
teams of the various organizations under study. As Johnson (Johnson, 2009 Vol 20) there is a
connection between the leader’s positive or negative mood, his charismatic behavior, his
expressed mood and the follower’s positive and negative mood and follower performance. As
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Johnson proves it is predominantly the negative mood of the leader that influences
(negatively) follower emotions and therewith follower performance. The effect of the leader’s
positive mood on follower performance is much more unclear.
I chose to work with ECS and Emotional Aperture to measure the leader’s capability to assess
emotions rather than with measurements for Emotional Intelligence. This because I found in
literature that other EQ-measures have been found susceptible of faking (Day, Carroll, 2008).
I expected to find from comparing the ECS-scores (figure 17) from each of the organizational
energy-scores to find the organization with the highest productive energy would also have the
highest score in ECS. However figure 17 shows that the organization with the highest positive
energy has a significant lower on mood aperture on negative moods. My conclusion is that
managers who are less sensitive to negative emotions also tend not to spread those negative
emotions and on average radiate more positive energy. In my preparation of the workshop it
could have helped to provide each manager with his personal ECS-score compared to the
group for a deeper and more personal discussion.
Female managers report a 10% higher emotional aperture than male managers on all items,
but a 20% higher sensitivity on their aperture on feeling sadness. (For detailed data see
Appendix 5). For me this indicates that female leaders can very effective in steering
organizational emotions if they have the capability of containing there own emotions is done
well. If the containment of negative emotions is ill developed in an individual and emotional
aperture to negative emotions is high, I assume this leader will not be effective as he or she is
contaminating his environment (unconsciously) with his or her negative energy. Discussing
emotional aperture proved to be much more difficult during the workshop. This because the
ECS-results presented did not show a clear pattern or differences between the three
organizations and benchmark data were lacking.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 17: Results of ECS-score of the three participating companies
The workshop evaluation forms showed the following conclusions drawn by managers
present on the chapter on emotions:
1. Managers report that they are too little aware that (positive and negative) emotions are
the root cause for motivation and thereby for actions by individuals and that they often
ignore to assess current emotional state of their follower group. Many believe that the
objective of ‘management by walking around’ is predominantly giving individual
attention to followers rather than an act of unconscious exchanging of the personal
beliefs of the manager in the corporate objectives and his well being and a means of
assessing the emotional state of followers;
2. Many managers in my research reported not being aware that their emotions can’t be
hidden and that they have to invest in well balanced communication with regard to
their own and the organizational well being on an energetic level. How do deal with
personal and organizational emotions is certainly an area they feel that is left
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
undeveloped. Especially in low productive environments leaders need to be
encouraged to express their emotions in high productive organizations the need for
this lower as managers in these organizations feel more free to express their feelings;
3. Managers report being aware that ‘old trauma’s’ can still greatly influence current
organizational energy, but that they are not investing enough energy in addressing the
emotional effects of these trauma’s leaving them to continue to effect current
performance;
4. Managers are under consciously aware of the role of emotions as they are leaders of
the group and it’s effect on performance. Emotional contagion and the effective use of
it in a management context is too little used on consciously. Specific education on this
topic in a leadership program will greatly influence their leadership effectiveness.
Steering on emotions as taught in CCC module 8 is of great help to managers, but
requires a specific training environment.
In the evaluations it became clear that managers learned relatively a lot of new insights from
this module. Even though the female presence in my sample is relatively low, there is a
remarkable difference in the evaluation of this module between the sexes. Women indicate
they learn far less than the male respondents (5 vs 7,5 on a scale from 1 to 10), but they find
the applicability of the emotion-concepts much higher and also their personal energy level
increases significantly more than male participants (8,5 vs 7,6). This reflects the fact that
women are more aware of emotional processes and get more energy from talking about
emotions and seem to find that they can apply the concepts easier in their daily routines
(Figure 18).
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Learned Applicability Energy level
ASR 7,4 7,6 7,7
ONVZ 7,4 8,0 7,4
VvAA 7,5 7,8 7,8
Avg 3 groups 7,4 7,8 7,6
Male resp. 7,5 7,8 7,6
Female resp. 5,0 9,0
8,5
Figure 18: Evaluation of the module ‘Emotions’ in the Energy workshops
4.6.4. Workshop module 4: Leadership
The next part of the workshop aimed at discussing the role of the leader specifically. As
introduction a number of statements and the concept of Transformational leadership was
introduced. The statements were based on four important personal takeaways that influenced
myself during the CCC-course:
- leaders are not paid to achieve the predictable, they are paid to achieve what otherwise
would not have been achieved;
- most changes require that someone has some sort of change in behavior;
- leadership is the power to influence someone’s behavior;
- research (Bruch & Ghoshal, Management is the art of doing and getting things done,
2004) shows that only 10% of manager can be considered to be effective, 20% of
managers have ‘resigned’, 30% of managers can be considered procrastinators and
40% as ‘busy’, having high energy, but lacking focus.
This very brief introduction on some key aspects of leadership together with the ‘underlying
causes of results’ (figure 13) clearly had impact on the participants in the workshop,
triggering a personal evaluation of the manager’s leadership effectiveness. Due to limited time
available and my personal learning point that exploration of this very personal leadership
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
issue requires a different, safer, research approach, I feel that I did not obtain the optimal
results from this chapter. My assumption is also that most managers were eager to learn a
trick to increase organizational energy and than having a module that requires deep
introspection is slightly out of balance with the rest of the workshop. My lesson learned here
is that discussing leadership requires a different research approach based on a 360, an even
more safe workshop environment and some knowledge of managers amongst each other so
that they can give each other concise personal feedback.
Figure 19 shows a very short description of Transformational Leadership and the scores of
managers of the three participating organizations on MLQ. A calculation error in the
spreadsheet I used for calculating the MLQ per organization were a cause that the workshop
discussions were done on wrong data. During the discussion I also found that it is rather
difficult to discuss an average organizational leadership style.
Nevertheless with the organizations (ASR), where I had the right data available, a fruitful
discussion could take place about using conflict as a source for stimulating creativity and
broadening perspectives. And especially the fact that conflicts may lead to consequences that
the organization might not want to face and solve.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 19: Results of MLQ of the three organizations
The results of the MLQ surprised me to the extent that both ONVZ and VvAA are companies
with a strong focus on a specific market segment making it easier for managers to appeal to an
ideal, whereas ASR is focusing more on a broad product range. In my debrief with top
management at VvAA I also recognize their focus on motivating/inspiring and intellectual
stimulation. Management of VvAA also recognized the more limited attention of management
on individuals and influencing ideals. The discussion with ONVZ managers was based on
wrong data and therefore left out of the thesis. My debrief with the CEO did show a
discussion in management about the role of each management layer in developing the vision
and the strategy. This coincides with the low score of ONVZ on this area.
In addition to discussing Transformational Leadership we also discussed positive and negative
capabilities of the leader.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 20: Explanation of positive and negative capabilities in the workshop
To my surprise most managers indicated to be aware that focusing too much on their personal
positive capabilities can limit organizational development. At the same time I sensed that
many managers became aware of the discussion that they operate for too large part of their
time on areas where they are familiar and focusing too little on the areas of ambiguity, areas
where the leader should make the difference in driving organizational behavior and change.
In the evaluation forms managers indicate the following key learning points:
- the focus/energy-matrix on effectiveness of leaders with the surprisingly low 10% of
managers considered to be effective makes managers reflect on their personal
contribution to organizational development. Even though not always stated explicitly,
the 30% disengaged managers were also to be found in my study as well as the 40%
busy managers focusing too much on operational issues and comfortable areas of
work;
- some managers experience their lack of negative capabilities and consider their modus
operand as too operational and experience these same shortcomings in their leaders;
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
- developing negative capabilities is essential to all leaders; many indicate believing that
they give far too little space for their followers to operate in.
Due to the abstract analysis of the transformational leadership qualities and the discussion
methodology, too few managers report taking personal actions from this module.
The evaluation of the Leadership module indicate that managers learned least from this
module. The relative high knowledge in this area is also reflected in the fact that most
manager indicate a high applicability of the theories discussed and the increase in energy level
immediately after the module.
Learned Applicability Energy level
ASR 6,8 8,3 7,6
ONVZ 6,4 7,8 7,2
VvAA 7,0 7,8 8,5
Avg 3 groups 6,7 8,0 7,8
Male resp. 6,7 8,0 7,5
Female resp. 5,5 8,5
9,0
Figure 21: Evaluation of the module ‘Leadership’ in the energy workshop
4.6.5. Workshop module 4: Followership (Change and Execute)
The final part of the workshop focused on followers. The reason for adding this topic to the
workshop was my learning from the CCC-program and the literature study that people
sometime do not change in the direction that is envisioned by top management and that people
sometimes do not execute the task they are hired for even though they are technically well
able to do so. My assumptions was that a selected number of topics would increase the
awareness of managers of unconscious processes that can be dominant in organizations and
affect the effective use of the available organizational energy. In a short presentation I
presented 6 topics to managers which were new to me when I started studying Energy and
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Emotions in organizations. The presentation was concluded by a broad discussion in the
group. As it was my objective to use simple yet applicable models which drive organizational
energy I reduced the task of followers to two items: A follower has to execute a predefined
task (a role in the chain in serving the customer of the organization) and has to change his
behavior in this task according to a vision (mostly of the leader). The six topics chosen were:
(1) The generic change process: Moderately new for managers;
(2) Goal achievement: Rather new for managers;
(3) Strategic horizons: Very new for managers;
(4) The paradox of extreme goals: Very new for managers, but not very practical;
(5) Hope and Expectations: New for many managers;
(6) Social Defense Mechanisms: Very new and useful for managers.
Goal Setting was not taken into the discussion as almost all managers indicated in the survey
that they spend considerable time on this when energizing their followers. Even though the
presentation of these topics demanded a lot of energy from the workshop participants to
process a lot of information in a short period near the end of the workshop and their working
day, it became clear to me that most managers had little awareness of these topics and that
discussion of these topics had not taken place collectively in any of the organizations included
in this study. A broader description of the concepts and the sheets used are included in
appendix 8.
I knew beforehand that it was very ambitious to discuss six vital processes that shape
organizational energy in 45 minutes and still have a valuable discussion on it. Yet I felt I had
to find a right balance between a relative short (4 hours) workshop, providing the participating
managers with some key new insights, whilst I would personally observe the value of the
various concepts to the group. This focus on providing more content to the participants was
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
also a learning experience for me: I could and probably should have relied more on the
process discussing only a few important processes and gather my data this way. However the
results from every workshop (and predominantly the pilot workshop) confirmed that every
area covered in the workshop was of high interest to the leaders involved. This also became
clear in the evaluation of the chapter on Followership. In their evaluation managers reported
the following lessons learned:
- “Even though you covered a lot of ground, I found all topics on Followership new for
me, of high interest and to be very applicable in my daily activities. With these new
insights on Followership we can improve most as an organization, but I do have to
find time to regularly reflect on my/our progress in this area;
- “I wasn’t aware of the social defenses that emerge in the organization, now I am and I
accept that they will always be there and I wonder how I can actively do something
about managing it’s unproductive consequences”;
- “I feel I do to little to tell a compelling change story to my people. Now I understand
the value linking organizational objectives and contribution to a higher value for my
followers and why this must be told on an abstraction level that meets their thinking”;
- “Now I understand why the strategy formulation process in our organization does not
touch the hearts of people. They don’t feel involved and it is not communicated on the
level that matches their strategic horizon. My team’s objectives are not linked well
enough to our organizational objectives”;
- “In the turmoil of daily activities we tend to forget that we have to keep focusing on
the progress of executing our primary task. Too many activities seem to distract us
from our core strategy”;
- “We hardly visualize our objectives to our people. This leads to many interpretations
of the strategy and the tactical execution”;
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
- “I recognize that most of my people have a ‘competing objective’ and different
‘hopes’. After so many restructuring they primary concern is to keep their job rather
than to improve corporate performance”;
- “I thought that with my personal energy level I would inspire my people. I was aware
that different personality types (MBTI) have different motivations, but I was not aware
that goal setting, the interpretation of strategy and social defense mechanisms can be a
large source of energy leakage.”
Figure 22 summarizes the scored evaluations in the evaluation sheet and proves the added
value of this module to the leaders:
Learned Applicability Energy level
ASR 7,7 7,7 7,8
ONVZ 8,2 8,2 7,4
VvAA 8,3 8,3 8,0
Avg 3 groups 8,1 8,1 7,7
Male resp. 8,0 8,0 7,8
Female resp. 7,5 8,0
8,0
Figure 22: Evaluation of the module Followership
From the table above it is clear that all managers show that the selected themes on
followership were of great interest and managers indicate that they experience a high
applicability of these themes in practice. The overall energy level drops a little after this
fourth module, but this can be expected as people had been exposed to a lot of new material
and a lot of discussions. The energy level at ONVZ remains relatively low. This can be due to
the fact that I had been ill three days prior to the workshop and a relatively low personal
energy level on my side when running the workshop. ASR managers also indicated prior to
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
the workshop that they were more familiar with a number of energy related concepts than
managers of ONVZ and VvAA, which also relates to the indication that they learned
relatively less from this part of the workshop.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
5 Discussion and conclusions
5.1 Organizational energy From my study it is apparent that the concept of organizational energy is of high interest to
every manager and that the awareness of the link between emotions and organizational
performance can be increased especially with male managers. I found managers to participate
in my study for two reasons: (1) The positively engaged managers eager to learn more on
creating high, positive energy and (2) the manager who rates the organizational energy as
negative wanting to understand or discuss the reasons for these emotions whilst being curious
whether he should reattach or definitely separate from the organization.
The concept of the energy matrix appeals to managers but is a relative weak basis for
discussion as the root causes are difficult to address. Explicitly discussing the underlying
causes that explain recent organizational performance and discussing the various
psychological processes that shape organizational energy proved to lead to a lot of insights for
managers. Insights they indicate they can easily put in their daily routines.
Finding relevant differences between the three organizations under study proved to be more
difficult than I would have expected beforehand as the energy patterns are quite similar.
Repeating this questionnaire in a number of entirely different environments could have
distinguished between the typical Dutch interpretation of the questionnaire and the specific
characteristics of the insurance industry. Even though 41 managers participated in the study,
the sample of managers is still relative small. Nevertheless explicable root causes of
difference in organizational energy can be found, addressed and turned into concrete actions
for three organizations under study.
I found a negative correlation between personal energy and organizational energy (figure 23).
I attribute this to two reasons. One is that having a lot of highly energized people does not
necessarily lead to a highly energized organization. Especially with high energy individuals
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
the role of the leader to contain and direct this energy is even more important as high energy
directed on the wrong targets will have more damaging effect than low ill-directed energy.
Secondly I found in the survey that the managers in a high energy environment indicate they
get relatively little energy from their leaders and that they would like to free more time for
long term objectives. All managers in the study indicate they about the same amount of
energy from their peers or their own teams.
Figure 23: High Personal Energy negatively correlated to Productive Energy
As I found this difference on an organizational level, I wanted to explore if there exists a
general correlation between personal energy and the experienced organizational productive
energy. Figure 24 below indicates a low positive correlation between personal energy and
positive organizational energy, for me proving that the organization can substantially differ on
organizational level if the sum of individual energy is well managed.
0
20
40
60
80
3,60 3,70 3,80 3,90 4,00
Pro
du
ctiv
e E
ne
rgy
(OEQ
-re
sult
s)
Personal Energy
Productive Energy
Productive Energy
ONVZ
VvAA ASR
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 24: Low correlation between personal energy and perceived organizational energy
5.2 Emotions In their spontaneous reactions managers tend not to lay a direct relationship between quality
of energy, quality of prevailing emotions in leaders and followers and organizational
performance. Also the awareness of emotional contagion and the fact that emotional
contagion always takes place was new to many (male) managers.
I expected to find a positive correlation between managers with a high score on emotional
contagion (ECS) and productive energy. I found no differences in the emotional contagion to
positive emotions between the differing organizations or between male and female leaders.
The relation between positive organizational energy and the leader’s emotional aperture to
negative emotions shows remarkable differences. It is widely accepted that negative emotions
are more contagious and of higher influence on performance. It surprised me to find a strong
negative correlation between the ECS-score on negative emotions (the sum of the ECS-score
on Anxiety, Anger and Sadness) and productive organizational energy (figure 25). The
difference between ONVZ and ASR/VvAA (figure 7) is so substantial that I wonder what
process is going on. To what extent are these managers different from the other two
organizations? Are managers of ONVZ consciously denying the negative emotions that may
arise in themselves and others thereby spreading relatively more positive emotions? Or could
4,0
5,0
6,0
7,0
8,0
9,0
3,0 3,5 4,0 4,5
Po
siti
ve o
rgan
izat
ion
al e
ne
rgy
Personal Energy
PositiveOrganizationalEnergy
Lineair (PositiveOrganizationalEnergy)
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
it be that unconsciously positive energized managers develop a habit to decrease their
sensitivity to negative emotions adopting the Pygmalion-effect in their organization as a trait?
Figure 25: Negative correlation between productive energy and emotional contagion of
leaders
Analyzing my data further I notice the same pattern between male and female leaders. Female
leaders score substantially higher on their aperture on negative emotions than male leaders
(Appendix 4).
If this negative correlation exists on an organizational level, I wanted to find if this correlation
can also be found on an individual level. Here I found no correlation at all (figure 26). This
supports the hypothesis that in an organization managers might unconsciously suppress their
sensitivity to negative emotions in order to create a positive work environment.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
5,60 5,80 6,00 6,20 6,40 6,60 6,80
Pro
du
ctiv
e E
ne
rgy
(OEQ
-re
sult
s)
ECS score on negative emotions
ECS-score on negative emotions vs Productive Energy
Productive Energy
ONVZ VvAA
ASR
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 26: All group analysis of relation between ECS on negative emotions vs experienced
productive energy.
On an organizational level there seemed no differences between high ECS and high
experienced productive energy. Therefore I analyzed the existence of a relationship between
the score on negative emotions and the perceived productive or destructive state of the
organization. On an individual level there do seem to be small correlation between these
factors (figure 27); individual managers who score higher on aperture to positive emotions
also perceive their organization as being slightly more productive.
2,0
2,5
3,0
3,5
4,0
4,5
5,0
3,0 5,0 7,0 9,0 11,0
Pro
du
ctiv
e e
ne
rgy
ECS score on negative emotions
Productive Energy
Lineair (ProductiveEnergy)
4,0
4,5
5,0
5,5
6,0
6,5
7,0
7,5
8,0
2,0 3,0 4,0 5,0
Po
siti
ve o
rgan
izat
ion
al e
ne
rgy
Score on positive emotions in ECS
Positive ECS
Lineair (Positive ECS)
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 27: Low correlation between individual managers’ ECS on positive emotions to
perceived productive organizational energy.
Figure 28 indicates that managers who score high on emotional contagion to negative
emotions perceive their environment as being slightly less destructive.
Figure 28: Low negative correlation between ECS on negative emotions and destructive
energy
5.3 Leadership For a proper discussions on the role of (top management) leadership on organizational energy
different discussion technique and a 360-analysis would probably have led to better insights
for the managers involved and for me on studying organizational energy. This because
managers in a workshop setting in their own offices have a tendency to keep discussions
relatively safe and giving too little attention to the role of leaders in the shaping of
organizational energy. As organizational energy is created or destroyed by current behavior of
top management a fundamental discussion of the role of top management behavior could and
2,0
2,5
3,0
3,5
4,0
4,5
3,0 5,0 7,0 9,0 11,0
De
stru
ctiv
e e
ne
rgy
Score on negative emotions in ECS
Destructive Energy
Lineair (DestructiveEnergy)
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
should be part of an energy discussion. The debriefing sessions I had with the CEO’s showed
a clear match between their leadershipstyle with regard to goal setting and goal achievement
and the perceived energy sources and leaks the managers indicated in the survey and the
workshop.
I expected to find that organizations with a high score on Transformational Leadership (MLQ)
would have a higher productive energy. My research however indicates a strong negative
correlation (R2= 0,9%) between MLQ and OEQ on an organizational level (figure 29).
Figure 29: Transformational Leadership seems not or negatively related to Productive Energy
on organizational level
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
6,7 6,75 6,8 6,85 6,9 6,95 7 7,05
Pro
du
ctiv
e E
ne
rgy
(OEQ
-re
sult
s)
Transformational leadership (MLQ-results)
Productive Energy
Productive Energy
ONVZ
VvAA ASR
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 30: Transformational Leadership does not seem related to destructive energy
Next I tried to find a pattern between MLQ and negative energy. But this also does not appear
to show a correlation (figure 30). Therefore I decided to analyze on an individual level the
correlation between Transformational Leadership qualities and the perceived Organizational
Energy. Even though the diversity is quite large, there is a clear correlation between the
individual’s MLQ-score and his experienced productive energy in the organization (Figure
31). Individuals who rate themselves as being high on transformational leadership also rate
their environment as being more positively energized. This seems to be in line with the
generic thoughts on emotional fit: people who believe they are emotionally fitter than their
environment tend to experience this environment as more positive.
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
6,7 6,75 6,8 6,85 6,9 6,95 7 7,05
De
stru
ctiv
e E
ne
rgy
(OEQ
-re
sult
s)
Transformational leadership (MLQ-results)
Destructive Energy
Destructive Energy
ONVZ
VvAA
ASR
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 31: Transformational Leadership and Productive Energy on individual level
Finally I analyzed the relationship between the perceived transformational leadership qualities
(MLQ) and mood aperture (ECS) of the leaders (figure 32). In general it can be stated that
managers who believe to score high on mood aperture also report a high sensitivity to
emotions.
Figure 32: Low correlation between MLQ and mood aperture of individual leaders
2,0
2,5
3,0
3,5
4,0
4,5
5,0
3,0 3,5 4,0 4,5 5,0
Pro
du
ctiv
e E
ne
rgy
(OEQ
-re
sult
s)
Individual Transformational Leadership (MLQ)
Productive Energye
Lineair (Productive Energye)
3,0
3,2
3,4
3,6
3,8
4,0
4,2
4,4
4,6
4,8
5,0
2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5
Mo
od
Ap
ert
ure
(EC
S)
Transformational leadership qualities (MLQ)
MLQ
Lineair (MLQ)
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Conclusion: Even though there is a wide spread around the average, there is a clear
correlation between the individual manager’s Transformational Leadership qualities and his
perceived productive energy of his environment.
5.4 Followership Before the workshop managers indicate to be relative unfamiliar with concepts such as
Emotional Contagion, Emotional Fit, Steering on Emotions and the role of Hope and
Expectations on organizational energy and organizational performance. From the workshops
it became clear that four of the six concepts presented four concepts (Goal Achievement,
Hope and Expectations, Strategic Horizons and Social Defense Mechanisms) where new to
almost all leaders and that learning these concepts energized them a lot. Furthermore they
indicated that they find that this knowledge can be put into practice. I would be very curious
to develop a broader training to familiarize managers with these concepts and find out if high
awareness of these concepts does indeed increase performance of leaders.
5.5 Conclusion In this study I have shown that managers do relate organizational energy to the achievement
of organizational objectives. However if asked to indicate how they generate organizational
energy they will indicate only a few strategies predominantly by setting objectives, being
energetic themselves (setting the examples), the measurement of progress and attention to the
individual. All of the strategies mentioned by leaders were inward focused instead of outward
focused like creating a unique market position or beating a rival. None of the managers
indicated the conscious use of negative energy to enhance performance.
Clear differences in organizational energy can be found and explained. Even though a certain
minimum personal energy level of the leader is needed to obtain a high organizational energy,
it is also clear from this study that a slightly lower personal energy of the leader can well lead
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
to a higher organizational energy supporting the theories of negative capabilities. If the
organization is more focused on a limited number of product market combinations it easier to
direct organizational energy to a common target as attention of top management automatically
addresses all followers.
There seems to be a negative correlation between personal energy level, transformational
leadership qualities and the existence of productive organizational energy. Leaders who rate
themselves as being a transformational leader experience their environment as more positive.
For top management a specific point of attention is sensitivity for, attention to and the dealing
with emotions and especially with negative emotions. My research indicates that on an
organizational level managers can unconsciously limit their sensitivity to negative emotions.
Even though this can contribute to more contagion of the positive emotions in the
organization in the short term, I would feel that this is an area of attention in the long run as
followers would feel their feelings are ignored by top management. In my study I did find a
clear difference between male and female leaders. Male leaders indicate that they can learn a
lot from the role of emotions in organizations, emotional fit and emotional contagion. Female
leader in contrast indicate being very aware of emotions and not having learned from the
module on emotions in the workshop. Female leaders also tend to express that they are far
more sensitive to negative emotions than male leaders. Especially as I found that the
organization with the most productive energy scores substantially lower on emotional aperture
to negative emotions, it would be interesting to further investigate whether there is a link
between this higher female sensitivity to emotions and organizational energy. The
organization with the lowest percentage of female leaders reported the highest organizational
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
energy. The sample of female leaders in this study is too small to draw conclusions in this
area.
In my study I have found that many managers struggle with the need to keep the pressure in
their organization high to achieve objectives on time, their own positive capabilities and the
need of the organization and it’s leaders for reflection and recuperation. One of the managers’
fears I found in this study is being perceived as low on energy and developing the negative
capability to giving the followers space for finding the maximum speed of delivering results.
Finally I conclude that energy and emotions are an important theme in leadership
development. Managers I met in my study proved to learn a lot from a session on
organizational energy and the processes that shape it. The emotional aperture of the manager
to (low) negative emotions and it’s effects on organizational performance is an area that I will
explore in the coming period.
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6 Appendices
Appendix 1: Schematic overview of research plan 1. Literature research
2. Preparation
2.1. Develop pre workshop questionnaire for managers;
2.2. Development of structured interview with HR Director;
2.3. Develop workshop program and workshop presentation;
2.4. Test questionnaire and workshop presentation with leadership consultant;
2.5. Dry run of questionnaire with pilot group of managers;
2.6. Dry run workshop with pilot group of managers;
2.7. Meet with HR Director of the three organizations;
3. Send pre-workshop questionnaire to workshop participants measuring:
3.1. Various personal information items (age, sex, years of employment by the company,
years active in current role);
3.2. Questions with regard to how the managers experience the energy in their
organization, what gives them energy, what drains their energy and what departments are
specifically known to have good or bad energy;
3.3. Questions with regard to how they create energy in their department;
3.4. Measurement of Energy-level and mood using OEQ (Organizational Energy
Questionnaire; (Bruch H. a., 2011));
3.5. Measurement of the personal energy level of the manager using a set of questions
developed by myself;
3.6. Measurement of the Transformational Leadership qualities of the individual using
MLQ (Management Leadership Questionnaire (Bass and Aviolo 2000);
3.7. Measurement of the emotional aperture of the manager using ECS (Emotional
Contagion Scale (Doherty, 1997));
3.8. Questions with regard to a number of concepts that influence organizational energy:
the familiarity with the concept, the perceived effect of the concept on organizational energy
and whether the manager applies this concept in his daily work;
3.9. Recent corporate performance on a number of KPI’s based on the personal judgment.
4. Hold three workshops with the identified managers of each company aimed at
discussing 5 topics:
4.1. The perceived recent performance of the organization. This in order to clearly
establish a link between performance and organizational energy with the managers;
4.2. Organizational energy: The results of the OEQ, the link between energy and emotions,
energy traps and strategies for increasing organizational energy;
4.3. Emotions: Why are emotions important for human beings, how does our brain work
with regard to emotions and impulse control, emotional fit, emotional contagion, emotional
aperture and steering on emotions in addition to steering on traditional KPI’s;
4.4. Leadership: What makes an effective leader?; Transformational Leadership and the
performance of the group on Transformational Leadership (results of MLQ);
4.5. Followers perspective: Changing and executing. In this part of the workshop a number
of principles with regard to changing and executing were discussed such as the change
process, goal achievement, strategic horizons and social defense mechanisms.
In practice I held 4 workshops. As the response rate of managers ASR was very high I
decided to run 2 workshops for ASR.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Appendix 2: Results of organizational energy survey (OEQ)
Organizational Energy Personal
Energy
Pro
du
ctiv
e
Co
mfo
rtab
le
Re
sign
atio
n
De
stru
ctiv
e
ASR 3,6 3,4 2,5 2,5 3,7
ONVZ 4,1 3,5 2,3 2,6 3,7
VvAA 3,5 3,1 2,3 2,9 3,9
Average 3 groups 3,7 3,3 2,4 2,7 3,8
ASR 3,4 3,3 2,5 2,6 3,6
ONVZ 4,1 3,4 2,3 2,5 3,8
VvAA 3,7 3,4 2,3 2,6 4,2
Average attending workshop 3,7 3,4 2,4 2,6 3,8
ASR 3,8 3,5 2,5 2,5 3,9
ONVZ 4,3 3,7 1,7 3,3 3,1
VvAA 3,4 2,8 2,3 3,1 3,7
Average not attend. workshop 3,8 3,3 2,2 3,0 3,6
Total group 3,7 3,3 2,4 2,7 3,8
Total attending workshop 3,7 3,4 2,4 2,6 3,8
Total not attending workshop 3,8 3,3 2,2 3,0 3,6
Male 3,7 3,3 2,4 2,6 3,8
Female 4,0 3,6 2,4 2,6 3,5
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Appendix 3: Pre workshop awareness of energy concepts
Figure 33: Managers rating before the workshop on a number of concepts related to organizational
energy.
Managers were asked to rate these concepts on three items: how familiar they are to the concept,
how large they judge the performance consequences of this concept to be and whether they apply
this concept in practice. Note that the awareness of emotional contagion, emotional fit and steering
on emotions seem to be rather unfamiliar to managers just as positive and negative capabilities of
the leader and dealing with hope and expectations. Managers are aware of the negative effects of
continuous high work pressure, fair process, visualization, goal proximity and story telling, but report
not applying these principles in practice. It was the objective of my study to test whether a few
simple concepts could help managers obtain a better understanding of these concepts and being
able to apply them in practice.
Preworkshop indication of managers to the concepts used in the Energy workshop
Total group
Familiar Effect Applied
Energy quality 68% 89% 68%
Effect of continuous high work pressure 66% 63% 42%
Inertia 47% 61% 26%
Emotional contagion 47% 50% 45%
Emotional fit 29% 55% 21%
Emotional reaction to change 89% 82% 55%
Steering on emotions 47% 53% 37%
Emotional sensitivity 87% 95% 71%
Positive and negative capabilities of leader 55% 82% 47%
Goal setting and competing objectives 92% 89% 82%
Focus 95% 97% 89%
Hope and expectations 47% 50% 34%
Fair process 61% 66% 58%
Visualization and goal proximity 68% 82% 55%
Story telling 95% 87% 55%
Role of leader in change processes 95% 97% 82%
Average 68% 75% 54%
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Appendix 4: Results of Transformational Leadership score (MLQ)
Transformational Leadership
Individual Motivating Intellectual Influencing
attention
Stimulation Ideal
ASR 3,7 3,8 3,6 3,9
ONVZ 3,7 3,6 3,8 3,9
VvAA 3,6 3,9 3,9 3,8
Average 3 groups 3,7 3,8 3,8 3,9
ASR 3,8 3,8 3,8 4,0
ONVZ 3,7 3,6 3,8 3,8
VvAA 3,7 4,0 3,8 4,0
Average attending workshop 3,7 3,8 3,8 3,9
ASR 3,6 3,8 3,5 3,9
ONVZ 3,7 3,5 3,5 4,3
VvAA 3,5 3,9 4,0 3,7
Average not attend. workshop 3,6 3,7 3,7 3,9
Total group 3,7 3,8 3,8 3,9
Total attending workshop 3,7 3,8 3,8 3,9
Total not attending workshop 3,6 3,7 3,7 3,9
Male 3,7 3,8 3,8 3,9
Female 3,8 3,8 3,7 4,0
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Appendix 5: Results of Emotional Contagion Scale (ECS)
Emotional contagion scale
Happiness Love Anxiety Anger Sadness Total
ASR 3,2 3,0 2,1 2,1 2,4 2,5
ONVZ 3,2 3,0 1,8 1,8 2,2 2,4
VvAA 3,3 3,1 2,1 2,1 2,4 2,6
Average 3 groups 3,2 3,0 2,0 2,0 2,3 2,5
ASR 3,2 3,1 2,2 2,3 2,6 2,7
ONVZ 3,2 2,9 1,9 1,9 2,2 2,4
VvAA 3,4 3,2 2,1 2,0 2,6 2,7
Average attending workshop 3,3 3,1 2,1 2,0 2,4 2,6
ASR 3,1 2,9 1,9 1,9 2,3 2,4
ONVZ 3,2 3,2 1,8 1,8 2,1 2,4
VvAA 3,3 3,0 2,1 2,3 2,3 2,6
Average not attend. workshop 3,2 3,0 1,9 2,0 2,2 2,5
Total group 3,2 3,0 2,0 2,0 2,3 2,5
Total attending workshop 3,3 3,1 2,1 2,0 2,4 2,6
Total not attending workshop 3,2 3,0 1,9 2,0 2,2 2,5
Male 3,2 3,0 2,0 2,0 2,3 2,5
Female 3,2 3,3 2,2 2,3 2,8 2,8
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Appendix 6: Evaluation of workshop per module
Summary of evaluation per module of the Energy Workshop as scored by workshop participants
directly after each module. Note the rather positive scores on Energy and Emotion, the low score on
Leadership and the high score on Followership.
Managers were asked to evaluation each module in terms of lessons learned, the applicability of the
concepts presented and their personal energy level.
Energy Emotions
Learned Applic- Energy Learned Applic- Energy
ability level ability level
ASR 7,1 7,7 7,6 7,4 7,6 7,7
ONVZ 7,2 7,4 7,2 7,4 8,0 7,4
VvAA 7,5 8,0 7,8 7,5 7,8 7,8
Average 3 groups 7,3 7,7 7,5 7,4 7,8 7,6
Male 7,3 7,6 7,5 7,5 7,8 7,6
Female 7,0 8,0 8,0 5,0 9,0 8,5
Leadership Followership
Learned Applic- Energy Learned Applic- Energy
ability level ability level
ASR 6,8 8,3 7,6 7,7 7,7 7,8
ONVZ 6,4 7,8 7,2 8,2 8,2 7,4
VvAA 7,0 7,8 8,5 8,3 8,3 8,0
Average 3 groups 6,7 8,0 7,8 8,1 8,1 7,7
Male 6,7 8,0 7,5 8,0 8,0 7,8
Female 5,5 8,5 9,0 7,5 8,0 8,0
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Appendix 7: Development of energy level, lessons learned and applicability
of the concepts presented
Figure 34: Development of energy level of participants during the Energy Workshop
Figure 35: Evaluation of the manager’s learning during the Energy Workshop
Figure 36: Perceived applicability of the Energy concepts presented in the evaluation per module
Development of Energy-level during workshop
Energy Emotions Leadership Followership
ASR 7,6 7,7 7,6 7,8
ONVZ 7,2 7,4 7,2 7,4
VvAA 7,8 7,8 8,5 8,0
Average 3 groups 7,5 7,6 7,8 7,7
Male 7,5 7,6 7,5 7,8
Female 8,0 8,5 9,0 8,0
What managers learned from workshop
Energy Emotions Leadership Followership
ASR 7,1 7,4 6,8 7,7
ONVZ 7,2 7,4 6,4 8,2
VvAA 7,5 7,5 7,0 8,3
Average 3 groups 7,3 7,4 6,7 8,1
Male 7,3 7,5 6,7 8,0
Female 7,0 5,0 5,5 7,5
Applicability of concepts presented
Energy Emotions Leadership Followership
7,7 7,6 8,3 7,7
7,4 8,0 7,8 8,2
8,0 7,8 7,8 8,3
7,7 7,8 8,0 8,1
7,6 7,8 8,0 8,0
8,0 9,0 8,5 8,0
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Appendix 8: Brief explanation and presentation of Energy Concepts
8.1 Energy concepts 1: The generic change process
Figure 37: Explaining the basic change process. (Source: Petriglieri, INSEAD, CCC)
I found the presentation and the following discussion with managers on this view on change
processes to be extremely useful. Especially the awareness it creates with managers that
people do change if they trust the leader and if they feel support during the change process.
8.2 Energy concepts 2: Goal achievement
A large part of managers indicated that they tend to focus to much on the content of change
processes and far less on these soft elements that determine followers will to achieve an
objective. Upon reflection managers indicated they tend not to evaluate the progress of their
organization n to these psychological items.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
:
Figure 38: Workshop sheet on goal achievement. (Derived from Louro)
8.3 Energy concepts 3: Strategic horizons
One of the sources of misunderstanding between leaders and followers is the interpretation of
strategy and the involvement in time in the strategy process. As was indicated in the survey,
managers spend a lot of time on goal setting to energize their organization, but the awareness
of differing perspectives and involvement on strategic horizons was very new to most. The
presentation of this theme to the leaders in the workshop proved to be a real eye opener. In all
three organizations that were part of this study, managers indicated that they spend too little
time on these differences in strategic horizons per hierarchical level in the organization and
their role in the translating and communicating it. Also they showed to be less appreciative of
understanding and managing the time gap that results from the strategy process between the
development and the execution of the strategy. Especially with management of ONVZ it was
felt that the strategy process was far too much centralized and limited to a too small group of
managers which caused employees not to fully engage in the execution of the strategy. Here
we identified a clear path to increase organizational energy and reduce inertia and corrosive
energy.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 39: Workshop sheet on Strategic Horizons. This provided a lot of insights for
managers.
8.4 Energy concepts 4: The paradox of extreme goals
I had formulated a hypothesis that many managers would complain about the availability of
resources as a reason for not being able to achieve their objectives. Therefore I included some
slides on the Paradox of stretched goals (Sitkin, See, Miller, Lawless, & Carton, 2011) and to
discuss the relation between past performance, (over-) capacity and the risk of extreme
objectives (figure 25). Especially within the ASR management group, where the assessment
of past performance was rated the lowest, managers felt that the organization was tilting to
too high risk strategies. In my opinion the paradox of stretched goals is more useful as a tool
for discussion with top management and/or CEO’s.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
Figure 40: Workshop presentation on the paradox of stretched goals.
8.5 Follower concepts 5: Hope and expectations
Figure 41: Hope and Expectations of followers
The module on hope and expectation of followers, fair process, competing objectives and
visualization (figure 41). The mere concept that followers have difficulty in goal achievement
because of competing objectives, resistance resulting from feeling that the process used is
unfair or that the planned timeframe for targets are just too far away or difficult to visualize
was found to be very useful for the participants of the workshop.
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
8.6 Follower concept 6: Social defense mechanisms
The emergence of social defense mechanisms in organizations is one of the great sources of
energy leakage in organizations, yet managers’ awareness of this process and how to manage
it’s consequences is far too low. In all three organizations many example of social defenses
(extensive planning, anti-task behavior, blaming, rationalization, task fragmentation) became
clear in the discussions. Apart from the wrong use of humor and denial, the other sources of
social defense were not recognized as having the source in risks related to the primary task.
Figure 27: Introducing the concept of Social Defense Mechanisms
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Marcel van der Meulen EMCCC January 2013
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