Is Your Team Burning With Passion or Burning Out?

There's an unseen force that can propel your team to breakthrough performance or drag it into stagnation: organizational energy. What are the principles behind managing this energy effectively and use them to improve your leadership style, transforming conflict into innovation?

Many years ago, as I was sitting in an Open Office Space, everything was quiet and we were all busy on our tasks - when suddenly, a senior expert stood up, loudly proclaimed, "Ok folks, that's it - I've had it. Bye." He markedly packed his stuff into his backpack and stomped for the door. What had happened? We can only muse, but from the bits and pieces we could fathom, his overtime was already taking a toll on his private relationships. After an all-nighter, he had received a mail that his manager wasn't content with a minor detail. Reading that mail, he snapped and left without further ado - never to look back.

What had happened? The principle behind this experience was a mismanagement of Organizational Energy - a seemingly simple, yet profound and impactful concept every leader must grasp in leading people with maximum effectiveness.

Organizational Energy - what's that?

At the heart of the leadership challenges lies Organizational Energy - the force driving your organization's performance.

The manifestations of Organizational Energy

Three factors contribute to this energy and determine how effectively your organization turns potential into results:

Cognitive Energy: The intellect and information - the ideas, strategies, and know-how that drive your business. It's "why we do what we do."
Affective Energy: The emotions and feelings within your team - the passion, morale, and overall mood. It's "how we feel about working here."
Behavioral Energy: Actions - the pace, intensity, and actual work done on the ground. That's "how we do things around here."

Together, these three factors constrain what and how much your organization can handle. In harmony, they fuel creativity, progress and efficiency; at odds, they will derail performance.

2. Polarity: The Dual Nature of Organizational Energy

Organizational Energy isn’t just about having more or less - quality matters! The same forces can drive you forward - or into the ground!

Positive Energy: Drives performance and results.
Negative Energy: Drains resources and generates stress.
Null State: When negative forces completely cancel out positive ones, the organization gets stuck and becomes unproductive.

We've experienced many times that employees in large corporations had a great idea that could save them effort, save their company money, and potentially even become something the company could sell to others - for profit! That's a peak of positive cognitive energy.
And then reality hits: "how do I convince my manager, how do we get approval from the Compliance committee, who will fill in the paperwork for the Innovation Office, how do I free time on my calendar to prepare a presentation? What does my manager need in order to get finance to commit some budget to the change? We got a hiring freeze - so we need to relegate resources, but we can't jeopardize our goals." That's negative behavioural energy - the system working against the idea. And thus, the idea goes to die.
Once you've been there, done that, more than once - you'll learn to keep your ideas to yourself. The excitement about having found an improvement opportunity Wanes. You will reach an Emotional Null State - just do as told, change is someone else's problem.
Sometimes, we talk with these people and their fire has died down. They already lost hope that it can be rekindled. Unfortunately, it's how companies turn their high performers into husks that hardly resemble the potential they bring.

3. The Four Quadrants of Organizational Energy

The above is an illustration of the four quadrant zones of organizational energy. Each of these zones means something else for you as a leader:

Passion Zone (High/Positive)

The Passion Zone is the sweet spot of performance: people do a great job, and they care. As a leader, if your people are here - you're doing great! People who are passionate do not need to be told what to do, how or when - they do what it takes, because they want to.

Teams in the Passion Zone are engaged, enthusiastic, and naturally motivated to drive progress. Passionate workers enjoy showing up. They see the benefit of interacting with their colleagues. They like to tell others about how good their work is. And they have a sense of pride in what they do.

And they get stuff done: the sheer speed and quantity of results per person in such teams seems like an outlandish claim for bureacratic, process-laden workplaces where employees are merely a staff number in a spreadsheet.

Comfort Zone (Low/Positive)

People should be comfortable at work, right? No! Then should they be uncomfortable? No! Then what? Work isn't an evening of Netflix, where little gets accomplished and the only thing you need to remember is bringing pretzels. Of course, great work has a place for receding into comfort: There must be a time for simply and quietly getting things done. But in the best working environments, people show up at work because they want to achieve something, because they care. Because it matters. And this sense of accomplishment won't be created if work comes at a slow pace, requiring little thought or emotion.

The risk? Without sparks of high energy, truly novel discussions are rare—and when challenges arise, comfortable teams may be unequipped to deal with turmoil and quickly slide into resignation.

Combative Zone (High/Negative)

In the Combative Zone, people exhibit high energy, but destructive energy. They don't deliver - they attack!

But is that kind of conflict good or bad? It depends. And as always - "on what?"

Think of this zone as the phoenix’s cradle. It’s a critical phase where passionate, even aggressive, energy is necessary to challenge and dismantle things that deprive people of the sense of accomplishment they want to have.

Leaders can harness this intensity by prompting, "I want you to be angry at processes that don't work. Feeling irritated by those inefficiencies and blockers is exactly right. They shouldn't be there. Let's eliminate them and build something better. Together."

The goal of entering the Combative Zone isn't chaos - rather, it’s channeling the combative energy with a clear purpose. Without guidance, this energy will quickly dissipate or devolve into resignation. Or worse - it becomes a festering wound.

Resignation Zone (Low/Negative)

Resignation is where productivity goes to die: The team’s energy has collapsed. Work stagnates and engagement is minimal. People stopped caring, do only what's necessary, and ideas are far and inbetween.

Resignation is more dangerous than Combat - people who fight, still care. Once your people are beyond that point, rekindling the flame becomes an overwhelming effort.

Organizations with teams in the Resignation Zone squander their potential, opportunities - and ultimately, their market position.

An Act of Balance
There's a delicate interplay between these zones. Without intervention, teams may slip into resignation. Rarely will the short-term excitement generated by a team event will improve the situation: if you have negative energy, it will drive the nails in deeper. A leader’s challenge is to navigate the team back to the Passion Zone - even if that means temporarily guiding them through constructive, combative situations to shake up the status quo.

4. How Energy Imbalances affect Organizational Performance

If organizational energy were linear, it' woul'd be easy to handle. The challenge of leadership is that it isn't - and there are interactions to be aware of:

Cancellation Effects:
Even the most positive opportunity can swiftly be nullified by negative forces, much like a spark that's smothered before it could ignite a fire.
Power Surges:
High-energy teams can be taken from great heights to rock bottom by a single misstep - “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” A small surge, if unaddressed, could plunge a team into resignation in the blink of an eye.
Labor Efficiency:
Optimal performance is achieved when cognitive, affective, and behavioral energy are actively monitored and fostered. Only when all three forms of energy are in the positive zone, work flows efficiently and progress becomes a natural outcome.

5. The Forge of Transformation – The Combative Zone

The Combative Zone is where transformation is kindled. It's where the organization will either misstep and lose its potential - or take the opportunity to reinvent itself:

It is a Crucible for Change. Think of the Combative Zone as the birthplace of the phoenix. It’s the space where leaders and teams must confront inefficiencies head-on. Challenging the old ways creates room for new, innovative practices.

In the Combative Zone, as a leader, you becomes a:

Catalyst for Constructive Conflict: Encourage your team to be passionately dissatisfied with processes that hinder progress.
Strategic Disruptor: Guide the energy from mere complaint into a structured critique. Ask, “How do we completely eliminate outdated practices and build a system that drives excellence?”
Balancing Actor: Be vigilant. Without clear direction, this energy can dissipate, leaving nothing constructive behind—just scattered ashes.
Transition Facilitator: It’s your job to ensure that after the necessary conflict, the team is steered back toward the Passion Zone where productive, positive energy reigns.

Do not be afraid of the heated Combative Zone. Both avoiding it and ignoring when your team enters it will spell disaster. It takes courage to go there, and the diplomatic finesse of a courtier to become a forgesmith of creation!

VXS Decision: A Tool for Harnessing Organizational Energy

Do you feel overwhelmed with the idea of channeling and improving your organization's energy level? VXS Decision has you covered. With VXS Decision, you will have:

Assessment: VXS Decision asks you guiding questions to quickly and effectively evaluate of your team’s cognitive, affective, and behavioral energy.
Visibility: VXS Decision makes the hidden dynamics of Organizational Energy visible - highlighting where and how you need to act.
Performance Impact: VXS Decision clearly maps out how your organization’s energy influences performance and bottom line outcomes.
Guidance on Transformation: VXS Decision sends signals when it might be time for leaders to enter the Combative Zone and disrupt inefficiencies - and it provides crucial guidance on how to leave that zone in a way that kindles, recaptures and reinforces the positive forces that drive productivity and growth.
Actionable Insights: VXS Decision offers suggestions specifically tailored to your context to boost positive energy and mitigate negative energy, helping you build and maintain a high-performance workforce.

Final Thoughts for Leaders

Left unaddressed, the natural equilibrium of Organizational Energy is resignation - a state where potential is lost and performance suffers. As a leader, your mission is to actively shape a system where your team thrives in the Passion Zone. By understanding and managing Organizational Energy—including effectively navigating the Combative Zone—you can preempt major disruptions and keep your organization on a steady path toward innovation and excellence.

Use VXS Decision to harness the power of Organizational Energy—not as an abstract theory, but as a practical, day-to-day tool for transformational leadership.