Sense congruence of multiple‐diverse top teams: a common path which always lies ahead
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Sense congruence of multiple‐diverse top teams: a common path which always lies ahead
The usual paths in such cases begin with events and measures that are supposed to create community through, for example, staged pseudo‐boundery experiences: Outdoor activities, rafting challenges, survival training, karaoke. Or one finds common amusement in luxurious escapism. There, people want to be »really honest« with each other and let themselves be illuminated along the seven‐course menu by highly paid rock’n’roll philosophers celebrated in the feuilleton, have the functioning of human beings explained to them, mostly by emeritus brain researchers, be held up to the mirror by highly remunerated jesters or really given a piece of their mind by other commissioned artists. – Then, in workshops, a common vision and strategy are developed, or a purpose slogan, only to return to the dysfunctional routines of everyday life within the ecosystem of the top level of the organisation after the approximately short‐lived cathartic effect has worn off.
The other way around becomes quite another cup of tea. And the way to go is also the other way round: Visions and strategies are not suitable to act as a foundation and starting point (sic!) for team behaviour at the top. (Dierke, Houben, p.47).
A team’s congruence of meaning in the sense of a common striving for something that is directed towards a common future is a path of orientation to be taken by a top management team that is to be constantly followed along a common dialogue. It is explicitly not their starting point, and it is certainly not found in the (compromising) composition in the present as something like the common denominator of the narrative of an (unconnected) past! In my estimation, this is due to the profoundly ›own‹ existential character, the ›final‹ orientation of the dimension of meaning of the person seeking meaning, who wants to achieve something, and who cannot simply be filled with life by the decision of a committee on the visualisation of what is desired in the future. This describes the term introduced into logotherapy by Viktor Frankl in 1946 as ’noodynamics‹ for the polar field of tension between the ›being‹ of the human being and the ›ought‹ of the situational claim to meaning that awaits realisation by the human being. In contrast to psychodynamics, in noodynamics the human being experiences himself as free and is therefore attracted by values instead of being driven by urges. (Frankl, 1996).
After all, and the many things Viktor E. Frankl has handed down to us, two steps belong, so to speak, to the DNA of logotherapeutic methodology and existential analytic insight. In order to step out of neurotic entanglements, a very specific sequence of steps is indispensable on the path to a sense of meaning: first, as a necessary condition, so to speak, stepping out of self‐reference. This means entering into the distance to oneself, into the self‐distancing of which the human being is capable (Frankl, 1996). But the second sufficient condition is self‐transcendence, in which the human being – starting from his self‐distance – orients himself towards something that is not himself again:
»Only to the extent that we hand ourselves over to the world and to the tasks and demands that radiate into our lives from it, only to the extent that we are concerned with the world out there and the objects, but not with ourselves or with our own needs, only to the extent that we fulfil tasks and demands, fulfil meaning and realise values, do we also fulfil and realise ourselves.« (Frankl; 2002, p. 103).
Self‐transcendence has as an inner prerequisite self‐distancing and as an outer reference point values that provide orientation standing in a context of meaning. This intentional constitution of the person is accompanied by the capacity for dialogue and encounter.
In my view, this corresponds not coincidentally to the sequence of steps that Daniel Kahneman (2019), for example, has also described for the development and learning of new (counter‐heuristic) insights within a reflexive mental system 2 as a prerequisite for the formation of new routines capable of action within system 1.
And this applies in a very special way in the case of multiple top management teams:
If one follows Dierke & Houben (2013), then there self‐discipline … is probably the most frequently propagated ›antidote‹ to dysfunctional behaviour patterns in the top team. (p. 67).
This is exactly the opposite of what is needed in the first step of entering into self‐distance: it is not about holding on to inner tension and self‐centred goals and one’s own success orientation, but about letting go of psychodynamic over‐tension and getting involved in the development of a top performance community into a ›reflection community‹ (ibid, p. 81). Their central task to be learned is therefore, quite in the sense of Franklian self‐transcendence, to connect again and again to the – however – constantly preceding common task:
According to this, only a team that frees itself from its routine psychodynamic copings and dysfunctional coping patterns can lead effectively at the top of the company. A team that learns and repeatedly summons the strength to concentrate on its actual task. (Dierke, Houben p. 90). And that means, quite fundamentally, to refrain from oneself in each case and to transcend the common task into the future.
The better the process competencies ›perception – dialogue – consensus‹ are learned and coordinated with regard to the ›Umwelt‹-›Mitwelt‹-›Eigenwelt‹-›Uberwelt‹ dynamics of the top management members, the more likely it is that tensions and potential conflicts that arise from their factually existing differences that fundamentally may enrich the organisation (e.g. in functional terms, membership of a professional group, ethnicity, company affiliation, gender, etc.) can be made fruitful and contribute to the success of the organisation.
Basically, it can be said that under conditions of high environmental turbulence, diversely designed top management teams will then be able, due to their functional and multiple differences, to achieve effective implementation of the strategy, which is good in itself because it reflects the advantageousness of diversity, provided that they equip themselves with the mechanism of inter‐functional coordination in this context. Under these prerequisites multiple diversity of the top management team will be able to lead to greater effectiveness in the practical implementation of their objectives even under conditions of high environmental turbulence. (cf. Auh & Menguc, 2005).
Then the social system succeeds in processing the shocks that affect the system as a whole from the tectonic shifts, which are carried into the ›Mitwelt‹ and ›Eigenwelt‹, e.g., starting from changed, closely linked environmental conditions, in such a way that a sustainable ›Uberwelt‹ can be constructed in the sense of the realisation of a common processual future orientation at the top level, whose (noo-)dynamics will radiate to the entire organisation.
What seems indispensable to me is the insight that diversity and respect are based on the understanding of shared responsibility, which reflects the individual freedom of being one’s own in the same way as it simultaneously requires it in togetherness. And this sheds light on the understanding that the search for enrichment in the otherness of others is at the same time to be sought and also found in the unconditional recognition of the Conditio humana as shared but at the same time not divisible!