What bosses can learn from secondary school ‘spirit’

One of my Teneo colleagues who works in our bespoke research team recently published a report on how ‘spirit’ affects achievement and resilience at secondary schools in the USA.

For those outside of the United States, or who aren’t aficionados of teen films from the same country, ‘spirit’ is a short form for a heightened sense of belonging and pride in an institution. Which is why it caught my attention. You might swap spirit for the commonly used term ‘company culture’ or, perhaps more comfortably, the ways of working of a company. In reading Sarah Meirama’s research I could quickly see areas where the two can align. It might be a stretch, but it’s also an interesting way to come at an issue that is increasingly of interest to the corporate world.

So, let’s have a look together.

Working with Varsity Brands, one of the USA’s foremost academic and sports memorabilia and apparel companies, Teneo Research surveyed coaches, students, parents and administrators to try to pin down what spirit meant to people. The value of spirit came through in areas like higher academic ambition, increased participation is school activities, greater personal resilience, and greater acceptance and diversity.

The payoff then for schools, in ensuring they have and foster strong school spirit, is in a greater student experience and inoculation against the negative impact of hardships, such as the those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.? In the UK and in Europe such things have traditionally been seen with some scepticism. Although that is changing too.?

(Some efforts to promote company spirit have a slightly checkered history. Company songs, for example. The Japanese electronics and parts business, Horiba, has this song . Closer to home there’s this We Built This Starbucks . Or There is a Dream from McKinsey & Company.)

However, it can be too easy to simply dismiss what works for secondary schools as irrelevant. Surely companies want to see greater ambition in people, increase participation, build resilience and drive greater acceptance of diversity?

Maybe there’s something that this Spirit work can teach us?

There are certainly issues raised in the report that are relevant to work. The report says, for example, that spirit has decreased in the last ten years – with a strong dip seen during the pandemic – not surprisingly. Similarly, there has been an increase in a similar timeframe of issues with mental health. Both of these are identified as being connected to a loss of overall connectedness.

People don’t feel as engaged in their institutions as they once did. This reflects the greater flexibility that institutions have offered people who interact with them. The world is becoming more electronically connected, but less connected on a human level.

The deal, to use an old Human Resources term, has changed. What I offer the organisation, versus what the organisation offers me, has shifted. The opportunities for interaction, for informal debate and discussion, for those unique human moments where people share a common experience – those have all become more rare.

The upshot is that the real world can make it easier for people to stay divided and isolated in their experience. When institutions do not bring people together consistently and as a matter of course people can retreat into spaces, work and relationships that they are comfortable with – or simply remain isolated.

Parents of young children, educators, social workers all recognise this as an important societal issue in 2024. To phrase it simply: we can lack spirit.

However, the Teneo Research report on spirit also offers us an important clue to a challenge that organisations face. Parents, teachers, administrators and school principals all feel that spirit is higher than the students do. This is a phenomenon I can attest to cutting across all institutions. In the 35 years I have been working with businesses on their ways of working… their ‘culture’… or their spirit… I know that bosses generally overestimate the sense of belonging, commitment, drive and ambition of employees.

This isn’t to say that employees in large, complex organisations lack the ability or energy to meet their company’s ambitions. Research has shown for decades that employees are very keen to do more, to be more engaged, to be given more responsibility, to help their businesses take on the world.

What organisations need to do is understand, and actively audit and manage, the things that might help and hinder the ‘spirit’ that their employees can offer to the business.

There is a clear technical side to this: control systems, power structures, and organisational structures are all really important to how people interact with their businesses.? Few companies pay enough attention to what these structures and systems actually are, and how they are interpreted by people. However, at the same time, there are softer areas like routines and rituals, the stories people tell in business, and the symbols that carry weight in companies, that are very rarely reviewed, understood or actively managed.

Paying more attention to ways of working is not a complex or a costly exercise. It doesn’t need a ton of resources or risk distracting from the focus that difficult trading conditions often require. The biggest challenge to better understanding, owning and managing a company’s ways of working is the reticence of leaders. There is an anxiety created by any sort of review or consideration of factors that are unknown.

Like many other initiatives and changes that organisations face, the hardest part can be the first step. That is acknowledging that there is an opportunity to improve our ways of working, to lift the spirit of the institution.

If high schools across the USA can manage it, you and your company can too.

/df