Leaders and brand makers have been hearing it flying around their ears for years: start with why. In all kinds of marketing and communications, organizations tell the outside world “why we do what we do. An approach that is probably most sustainable if, in doing so, you tell an honest, true story that also resonates within the organization.

In the process, that why can, for example, increase employee engagement. And for a more pleasant work culture. This is evident when we speak to Jef van den Hout. In his office in the Qlubhouse in Tilburg, he talks about his research into team flow, the influence of a shared ambition, and the role that stories play in this.

“At first I thought: work happiness, that’s way too soft,” he said.

Challenge and focus

In 2009, Jef worked at a housing consulting firm. He wrote business plans for housing associations – looking one step ahead. “I thought: if the employees can get into a ‘flow,’ the organization will be fine, too.”

He had come across the term during his graduate internship. “That company initially asked me to develop a work happiness meter. I thought: work happiness, that’s way too soft, they’ll see me coming on the job market soon. Then I graduated in competency management in construction and design teams. That’s where the link to teamwork arose.”

“In my literature review, I read a piece from positive psychology, by Cziksentmihalyi and others. In it I came across flow. I thought: I recognize that feeling. If you challenge yourself and focus, as I did while running and spinning, you can get into that.”

“I realized that you can evoke flow as long as you create the right conditions,” he said.

Holy grail

“When I went running, I knew exactly when I could reach the runner’s high. Along the water, with the sun right in front of me, around four o’clock. I realized that you can summon flow as long as you create the right conditions.”

“There had also been a lot of research that showed that you can organize flow in your work. And that it has multiple benefits. You are more satisfied with your work, both in the short and long term. And you deliver better work. I thought: if you can manage that together, you’ve got the holy grail.”

Was there any knowledge about flow in teams back then? “There was Keith Sawyer’s book Group Genius that described group flow, but otherwise there was hardly any research on it,” says Jef. “That’s when I got to work. It seemed too much to ask to get an entire organization in flow right away, so I wanted to focus on smaller work groups. It also seemed logical to me that flow would occur in teams. That’s what I started calling team flow.”

Thus began Jef’s quest. In 2016, he successfully defended his dissertation on team flow. “I conceptualized it, described the conditions and developed a process approach to guide teams to Team Flow. In August 2019, my research was published in the book “Team Flow: The psychology of optimal collaboration. The foreword was written by Cziksentmihalyi, the founder of flow theory. He was also my co-mentor. With that, he actually approves it as an extension of his work. I’m kind of proud of that.”

Creating a good climate for collaboration

Because he wrote his dissertation alongside his regular work, it was a long haul, Jef says. “I also wanted to research it with one leg in practice. By walking with teams, working with teams. I hopped from one organization to another.”

“We work according to our own model. At the heart of it is the collective ambition.”

As his research progressed, Jef became increasingly in demand as a speaker. Therefore, he founded a company: Flow Concepts. “First I wanted to build an inspiration platform, share knowledge about team flow and its model. Then I thought: it seems fun to bring it further into practice. Then we started several training courses. We give trainees tools to create a good collaborative climate. We have now trained 75 people. After 2020, that will double.”

“In the beginning I worked alone, but now we are a small team. We work according to our own model. At the heart of it is the collective ambition.”

What is the collective ambition of Flow Concepts?

“We believe that people flourish most when they are allowed to do what they find challenging, fun and meaningful. We also believe that great challenges can only be realized when there is a real team behind them. But working together is not as easy as it seems. With our expertise in flow and team development, we help teams and organizations achieve an optimal (positive, healthy and productive) collaborative climate.”

Solar Team Eindhoven

Why do organizations report to Jef and his colleagues? “That’s twofold. Either they suffer from issues that get in the way of enjoyable and successful work. Ó they are doing very well together and want to understand why it is that they experience flow. So they can hold on to that.”

“In training, we try to provide cross-pollination. There are entrepreneurs participating who want to develop the optimal collaborative environment for their organization. There are independent coaches who are looking for a tool for their work. And there are professionals among them who know individual flow and want to know how to make that happen with their team.”

“They became world champions every time. I was curious: how do they do that?”

Jef has also coached several teams. “Especially the first time and to a limited extent still. We are now at Lightyear testing our app. With that you can measure how your team is doing. We are also going to do interviews there to get a picture of the working climate.”

Jef has done the same with Solar Team Eindhoven, which has been in the news several times with their achievements. “They became world champions every time. I was curious: how do they do that? What turns out? Their work revolves around a strong collective ambition: they want to show the world that passenger vehicles can drive very well on solar energy. That ends with an exciting race, but it gives a lot of opportunity for flow even in the run-up.”

Unraveling how your team can get into flow

The Solar Team had that clear ambition from the start. In older and larger organizations, this is less obvious, says Jef. “Within a larger organization, of course, you have to deal with history. There can be a lot of obstacles to flow there.”

“Then you find out why people go to work whistling – or why they don’t.”

“We also work for Buurtzorg, a well-known organization by now. They score high, both in terms of their care delivery and their employee satisfaction. An organization of 15,000 people, with two leaders and with 48 people in the back office. Meanwhile, their model is also widely adopted. Management layers out. That’s very difficult if you didn’t, like Buurtzorg, work with that model from the beginning.”

It is therefore to be careful. “The danger of working with a model is that it becomes dogma and starts to distract from the work. It has to be about the work. You create the conditions to do that work well together. Therefore, when we start unraveling how your team can get into flow, we start with the collective ambition. Who are you there for, and why? And so on. Then you find out why people go to work with a smile on their face. Or why they don’t.”

Need for progress

That’s where the stories come in. “We do extensive interviews with employees. We turn that into a team portrait. That then comes in a nice little book. Doing that with many teams reveals common denominators that are valuable for my research. I did a lot of interviews at Buurtzorg. Only afterwards did I then show the team flow model. That often gave a lot of recognition.”

“High workload, power games: that hinders flow in teams.”

“Of course, you also have teams that are not doing so well. Then it’s probing: what undercurrent is there? We have to get a good picture of that before we do a session with a whole group.” Is that tedious to do, charting the negative issues? Jef shakes his head. “I find it very interesting. Everyone wants to surface that, too. Everyone naturally wants to do their job well. But the stuff around it, high work pressure, power games: things like that create obstacles. It hinders your sense of flow and progress. While that’s exactly what people need.”

“When you don’t feel appreciated for your work, when you feel too much controlled by management, when you feel your good intentions are misused, when you can’t use your talent…. It all frustrates. I believe every person has a talent, and you have to be able to capitalize on that talent.”

Chances are your talent is related to what you want to achieve. “We pick up that kind of ambition at the beginning,” says Jef. “That’s how we get to the collective ambition. That’s the breeding ground of a team. Why are you a member of this team, this organization? There’s a positive undercurrent there. We bring that to the surface. We look at where you want to go.”

“The balance between alignment and individual work is essential for team flow.”

Finding out for yourself what works

It’s not just about a dot on the horizon. It’s also about the short term. Jef emphasizes that it’s good to keep your goals close. “You have to create points where you come together and produce work. So that you feel: we are moving together, we are taking small steps every day.”

“It’s important for teams to find their own way of working together in this,” he says, springing to his feet. He returns to the danger of dogma. “You have, of course, Lean, Scrum, all kinds of things. The danger of that is that consultants start telling teams how to do it. Then the method is leading – and that’s something to avoid. Teams have to figure out for themselves how best to coordinate with each other on how it’s done, and then work on it individually.”

“People need autonomy in performing their tasks. That is well known. So you can release them in that. In addition, you want to have quick and practical moments of coordination. A working form from the Agile approach, for example, can serve this purpose perfectly well. In any case, the balance between alignment and professional autonomy is essential for team flow.”

“Does this contribute to our collective ambition? If so, we’ll do it.”

Intrinsic motivation

Short-term goals and collective ambition come together during alignment. “When people talk to each other about that, they know why they are there. Then when you have to make a decision together during those alignment moments, you can ask the question: does this contribute to our collective ambition? If yes, then we do it. If no, then we don’t.”

“There are many ways to get to the collective ambition. So I often gather stories through interviews, but you can also do a mission-vision workshop, for example. It’s often difficult to put the collective ambition into words, but very important, because everyone has to be behind it.”

With collective ambition begins the story of your team, Jef explains. And that story is “something alive”: “It has to stay in your mind, so you have to tell it over and over again. You can do that in all sorts of ways, from videos to customer stories. Then you continuously hook into the intrinsic motivation of the team members. From there, you can always have the conversation.”

“In the model you can also see: the challenging projects we are going to do together connect to the collective ambition. But there is also a line to communication. From that collective ambition you enter into conversations. With each other, for example about task allocation, but also with customers. Even at the coffee machine it has to be about the collective ambition.”

“I had never looked at storytelling that way.”

Outlining the future

“From it also comes a sense of security, which is also crucial for flow. Psychological but also physical safety. To my colleagues I can say anything, as long as it is formulated from our common ambition. Sometimes I have to say something unpleasant, which may bother someone. But as a team member contributing to the collective ambition, I have to say it anyway.”

And if a team has the conditions for collaborative flow in place? “Then you can look at alignment between teams, and make sure they know what contribution they are making to the organization, and know how to find each other. A bit like a flock of starlings. That consists of small groups that know exactly how they move in the whole.”

Had Jef considered the role of storytelling in teams before? “I had never looked at storytelling that way, but in developing collective ambitions it gradually surfaced. Especially so because once you’ve found that story, you have to keep telling it.”

“I had gotten into storytelling a little bit with design teams as well. What they design – a building, an urban plan – often has a story as well. You tell that to those who are going to realize it, but also to the people who will have to deal with it. It’s a way of visualizing the future.”

Psychology and physics

Then Jef takes an interesting sidestep: he talks about his interest in physics. “How the universe was created and how everything is connected. That’s also where I get a lot of inspiration for team flow. That may sound strange, but I think psychology and physics are close to each other.”

“The creation of the universe is the start of a story. The Big Bang created energy. Negative and positive energy. Matter is positive energy, the vacuum is negative energy. This cancels each other out. The whole thing expands, so the story grows, until at some point it ceases to exist.”

“That’s how we make the universe expand a little bit.”

By understanding that story, you can also understand team flow, Jef argues. As a team, you have a certain goal and get going. Along the way, you become more attuned to that goal and adjust your environment accordingly. This is how you proceed until you reach the collective ambition. Jef: “That’s how we make that universe expand a little bit.”

What is he working on in the near future? “We are in the process of further developing our TeamFlow App. We are also delving into Artifical Intelligence to see how that can help keep the conditions for Team Flow high. That’s why we will also sit in MindLabs in the Spoorzone in Tilburg starting in April. Furthermore, new research is coming up in healthcare, together with De Haagse Hogeschool and healthcare institutions in the region. I will also be speaking at the European Congress of Positive Psychology.”

And the list doesn’t end there. “I’m also going to interview MØ, a singer and producer from Denmark who has had several big hits. So then the setting is different: how do you achieve flow in the studio? I did the same with Kyteman at the time. There are also projects in the pipeline in education and technology. There is so much beauty in the world, so much to learn from.”

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Written by JOS ROUW