Richard Boyatzis of Case Western Reserve, in HRB Blog Network, spoke to the need for teams to have what he calls resonant leaders.  Richard states such leaders “are able to build trusting, engaged and energizing relationships with others around them” and as a result the team is able to “adapt, innovate and sustain performance. “  But what makes one able to do this?

Whether it is a team or an entire organization it would seem that trust, engagement and energized relationships are paramount to the success and sustainability of any endeavor requiring the collaborative effort of people.  After all for people to engage toward productively working together they would have to trust each other, and for them to persist in their efforts their interactions and relationships would have to be inherently motivating and enlivening.

To this point Richard also suggests that such leaders “provide the social glue” via a shared vision.  As many have asserted teams—a collective of individuals cooperating—need a shared vision.  As previously discussed, there is little doubt a vision can provide the glue and the context for meaning that is so necessary.  However these will be realized if and only if the vision is both unifying and vivifying—any vision won’t do, even if it is shared and/or bought into.

A unifying and vivifying vision is not a vision that people have to ‘buy into’!   Such a vision inherently resonates within people, thus it is not something that people have to be persuaded to support or be provided incentive to support in a quid pro quo arrangement.

So how would such a vision arise?  Its emergence begins with the inner knowledge that the value of people does not begin and end with the instrumental value they provide in support of some goal or mission.  Accordingly its emergence is likely only when those in authority—often called leaders—are themselves in touch with the unchanging aspect of their very being, with their humanness.  When this happens those in authority are able to exhibit the courage to relate to and connect with people core-to-core.

It is all about the energy field from which those in authority operate.  If the leader uses the triad of fear-desire-pride as the bases of his/her practice then all that will emerge will be rigidity of mind, divisiveness and competitiveness—in general whatever can be born of fear will spring forth.  However if courage-neutrality-willingness (a.k.a. self-initiation-non-attachment-engagement) is the energy field that forms basis of one’s management practice then trusting relationships will develop; and with trust comes wonderful and unique capabilities—the actualization of human potential.

When there is mutual trust, people acknowledge their interdependence and their interactions not only become helpful and collaborative they become synergistic. Moreover performance can be sustained because positive energy attractors make it possible for human energy to increase through synergetic (i.e. energy producing) relationships. That is to say our energy is increased not decreased when the nature of the relationships with work and each other resonates within our very being.