Executive Master Thesis - INSEADmaster thesis studied on the awareness and management of organizational energy of leaders in organizations. Specifically aimed at the differences in

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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

22


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:

23


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.

24


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.

25


- 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

26


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

27


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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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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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%

30


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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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

32


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

33


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

34


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.

35


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.

36


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.

37


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.

38


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

39


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;

40


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.

41


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

42


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

43


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.

44


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

45


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).

46


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


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

47


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.

48


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.

49


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;

50


- 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.


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


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

51


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

52


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”;

53


- “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:


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


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

54


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.

55


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

56


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

57


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)

58


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

59


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)

60


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)

61


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

62


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

63


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)

64


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

65


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

66


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.

67


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.

68


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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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%

70


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

71


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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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

73


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


Male 7,5 7,6 7,5 7,8

Female 8,0 8,5 9,0 8,0

What managers learned from workshop


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


Male 7,3 7,5 6,7 8,0

Female 7,0 5,0 5,5 7,5

Applicability of concepts presented


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

74


75


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.

76


:

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.

77


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.

78


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.

79


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

80


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Documents

Executive Master Thesis - INSEADmaster thesis studied on the awareness and management of organizational energy of leaders in organizations. Specifically aimed at the differences in