Inviting Resonance
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the essence of my work. Whether I am coaching my clients for their leadership, facilitate a workshop with a team to create the psychological safety in their culture, or advise what to reconsider in the organization to build the healthy culture for my clients, what is the essential quality that truly matters in my work?
Reading Oliver Burkeman’s book, Meditations for Mortals, I got the answer: it’s resonance.
What is Resonance?
In acoustic systems, resonance occurs when a subject receives an external vibration whose frequency matches a resonant frequency of the subject. When this happens, the subject absorbs energy from the external force (“object”) and starts vibrating with a larger amplitude. They do not merely return the received sound but speak “with their own voice,” as shown in the tuning fork.
Just like that, Resonance is a quality of human relationships with the world proposed by Hartmut Rosa, the professor of sociology at the University of Jena. He defines resonance as follows:
(It’s )…a kind of relationship to the world, formed through affect and emotion, intrinsic interest, and perceived self-efficacy, in which subject and world are mutually affected and transformed.
Resonance is not an echo, but a responsive relationship, requiring that both sides speak with their own voice. This is only possible where strong evaluations are affected. Resonance implies an aspect of constitutive inaccessibility.
Resonant relationships require that both subject and world be sufficiently “closed” or self-consistent so as to each speak in their own voice, while also remaining open enough to be affected or reached by each other.
Resonance is not an emotional state, but a mode of relation that is neutral with respect to emotional content. This is why we can love sad stories.
Resonance is critical, Rosa argues, as it provides a solution to the modern burnout crisis, environmental issues, and mass alienation caused by social acceleration in late modernity.
In how we relate with the world, Rosa explains that our relational abilities and sense of our places in the world are influenced and reformed by such resonant experiences. Resonance is therefore a way of approaching the question of successful relations between us and world in the sense of “good life”.
What Does Resonance Mean for Us?
Resonances are ubiquitous in every direction of our relationship with the world, according to Rosa.
- Horizontal resonances is about resonant encounters between people, in love and family relationships, friendships, teams or political space.
- Diagonal resonance is a two-way relationship with the world of things, practices and activities, such as tasks, routines, school or sports practice.
- Vertical resonance axes are relationships to abstract, ontological categories, such as nature, art, history, shared ideals or religion.
- A recent fourth addition to resonance theory by Rosa is the axis of the self, the extent to which one feels a non-alienated sense of relation with their own body, emotions, stories and psyche.
For instance, a horizontal resonance is present in the relationship of co-founders of startups, when they feel “met” and “seen” by each other rather than merely aligned. Engineers and designers “riff” off one another in brainstorming to develop a new product. Diagonal resonance is probably what many people are experiencing when ChatGPT talks back revealing profound insight about themselves. Feeling part of nature, an epoch of history, or a moment of worship is accounted for in the vertical resonance. When an entrepreneur is able to discern what truly matters to her and her work by noticing what doesn’t feel true to herself, she’s resonant in the axis of the self.
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Whichever it is, in all these contexts, resonant experiences are different from instrumental relations with the world, determined by domination and acquisition, which are primarily concerned with the achievement of a useful goal. For example, for tourists, the Grand Canyon tour can either be a resonant experience (as an opportunity to confront the beautiful but challenging walk), or a more purpose-oriented and instrumental experience, if they consider it simply “checking it off their list”; therefore, “mute” experience.
Relations that are controlling, hostile or anxious result in “silent”, non-resonant experiences. Rosa argues that much of consumer culture promises resonance. He says, “Buy yourself resonance! is the implicit siren song of nearly all advertising campaigns and sales pitches.”
Rosa notes three essential manifestations of the current crisis of modernity, as a result of the loss of resonance.
- the ecological crisis due to the rapid extraction of nature’s finite resources feeding an unlimited expectation of increase.
- the political crisis, arising from democratic negotiation processes being too slow to keep up with accelerated technological change, resulting in social changes which are therefore regarded as ineffective or obsolete.
- the psychological crisis of the subjects, overwhelmed by acceleration and therefore experiencing burnout.
So, What Creates Resonance?
Rosa argues that mediopassivity, a stance of the subject being not entirely active or passive in an experience allows enough uncontrollability for resonance to take place. A “middle-voice” stance in which we are fully active and fully receptive at once — we participate in an event without trying to steer it, yet we are not inert spectators. It’s important to note that the the attempt to control the experience of resonance ends up inhibiting the experience by instrumentalizing it.
Another prerequisite for the establishment of resonances according to Rosa are the strong evaluations of the subject. “Strong evaluation” for us mean the deep-seated value judgements that tell us why something matters in moral or existential terms, not just that we like or want it. They give us our “own voice” in the encounter of resonant experiences.
Resonance needs a corridor of uncontrollability. If I clutch the steering wheel (pure activity) or slump into couch-scrolling (pure passivity), the world can’t talk back. When I meet it mediopassively and through a value-laden lens (“this matters to who I am”), the conditions are right for the mutual ‘click’ that changes us both.
Inviting Resonance
Whether I coach, facilitate, advise or consult clients, I realize now what I am doing is helping them invite resonance by designing the conditions and letting people and the world answer back to them. It’s not either “creating” or “generating” resonance, because we can’t simply produce resonance by making an active move toward it. Also, we don’t simply “wait and receive” resonance, either, because we have to do hard work to get to know ourselves better, creating the right condition to invite resonance.
Seeing my clients encounter resonance is the best privilege of my work. In the beginning of my journey with People+Culture, I used to measure the success of my work with the external metrics, whether my clients get to achieve whatever goals they had in mind — professional, financial, or business goals. Sure, they matter. But to be frank, they are secondary. What I’ve seen over and over is that’s just one of many amazing byproducts of having the resonant relationship with the world.
In resonance, my clients become their best selves: the most conscious and effective leaders & founders, the most caring partners, and the most genuine humans. With resonance, they show up for one another in their startups, teams, families and communities with compassion. Most of all, they feel whole through resonance, becoming more courageous and well-grounded.
Doing this work with People+Culture (https://www.peopleculture.co) is my way of inviting resonance, too. Encountering resonance of my clients, my work vibrate with a larger amplitude. Working with fellow coaches, facilitators, and learning from amazing coaches I admire, the resonance continues. I feel truly humbled by inviting resonance.
I am grateful for everyone who I met on this journey.
