Can You Measure Morale?

Morale is one of those forces in business everyone agrees matters—and yet almost no one can define with precision, let alone measure. And while plenty of organizations attempt to track it through employee satisfaction scores, most of us know, intuitively, that something deeper is at play.

Because satisfaction is what people feel and can tell you. Morale is what people feel but often can’t explain.

If you’ve ever walked into a meeting and felt a mood you couldn’t quite name, you already understand this. The energy was real. You felt it in the silence. Or the spark. Or the slouch of the room. This is the realm of esprit de corps—the shared spirit of a group. It's intangible, yes, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be observed.

The Shared Spirit That Shapes Performance

The term esprit de corps comes from military history, where it described the mysterious cohesion that enables people to act not just with discipline but with devotion—especially under pressure. Over time, it’s come to mean something broader: the mood of a group, the collective force that animates how people move together toward a common goal.

For the past two decades, we’ve been studying that force inside organizations. And after thousands of assessments and years of statistical analysis, we’ve identified six recurring emotional “states” that tend to inhabit groups at different moments. We call them the Six Spirits.

The Six Spirits of Organizational Morale

1. Purpose: The Spirit of Fruitful Synergy

This is the spirit most companies aspire to: a healthy, high-functioning culture where integration breeds momentum. Teams move with clarity, energy is focused, and collaboration feels natural rather than forced. These organizations are united not only by goals, but by belief. And often, their greatest challenge is time—there’s more vision than hours in the day.

Think of Apple in 2007. Jobs had returned. The iPhone was launching. And a small team, laser-focused and deeply aligned, quietly redefined the future.

As Anatole France once said, “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”

2. Hubris: The Spirit of Unbridled Ambition

Hubris can feel a lot like purpose—until it doesn’t. It often emerges when success begins to outpace discipline. Confidence turns into overreach. Strategic focus starts to splinter. Leaders chase new markets or pet projects, not because they must, but because they can.

Circuit City exemplifies this fall. In the early 2000s, they were dominating electronics retail. But the leadership team, riding high, diverted its attention to launch CarMax. They lost strategic coherence, failed to prepare for market shifts, and never recovered.

As Marianne Williamson warned, “Empires always have the hubris to think they are indestructible, when in fact they are always unsustainable.”

3. Animus: The Spirit of Confident Misalignment

A strange and dangerous spirit. In animus, the organization is steady on the surface but fractured within. There’s no existential threat on the horizon—revenues may even be rising—but internally, people have disengaged. Misalignment becomes normalized. Dysfunction becomes subsidized.

You see this in government institutions like the DMV, where job security is high and pressure to improve is low. But you also see it in monopolized industries or large tech players, where the moat protects the business long after the culture has started to rot.

Thomas Sowell described the logic well: “It is so easy to be wrong—and to persist in being wrong—when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.”

4. Hindrance: The Spirit of Self-Sabotage

This is the most corrosive spirit of all. In hindrance, progress isn’t just blocked: it’s actively undermined. People hoard credit, deflect blame, and compete internally in zero-sum ways. Alignment is absent. Trust is fractured. The organization becomes a bucket of crabs, pulling each other down instead of climbing together.

We’ve seen it firsthand: high-potential companies where brilliant teams are reduced to infighting and inertia. In these environments, even well-meaning leaders struggle to shift the tone. The cultural gravity is strong—and dark.

Jean Renoir once asked, “Is it possible to succeed without any act of betrayal?”

In hindrance, the answer often feels like no.

5. Paralysis: The Spirit of Demoralized Standstill

Paralysis is rarely self-inflicted. It tends to follow an external shock like a market collapse, a disruptive technology, or a geopolitical surprise. Teams lose confidence. Decisions stall. No one wants to be wrong, so no one moves at all. Energy drains out of the room.

Kodak knew the digital revolution was coming. But the weight of legacy systems—and the fear of being first to jump—kept them frozen. This is what it looks like to see the iceberg and still hit it.

Amelia E. Barr captured the descent best: “No man was ever ruined from without. The final ruin comes from within—when you turn hopeless and lose courage.”

6. Resilience: The Spirit of Aimless Perseverance

Resilience is the spirit of down-but-not-out. These organizations are trying—genuinely—but have lost their way. Culture is strong, but focus is scattered. Teams believe in the mission, but disagree on the map. It’s the feeling of rowing with strength but without direction.

Companies like LEGO in the early 2000s, or Marvel before its cinematic resurgence, lived in this space. Their teams were capable. Their customers still cared. But until strategy caught up with spirit, momentum remained elusive.

Wally Amos once said, “You may not be responsible for getting knocked down. But you are responsible for getting back up.”

Resilience is that moment between the fall and the rise.

Lead the Spirit You’re In

Different seasons demand different leadership. A team in animus needs accountability. A team in paralysis needs movement. A team in hubris needs humility. Your job as a leader isn’t to wish for better conditions. It’s to understand what spirit is present—and what that spirit demands of you.

Because morale isn’t just mood. It’s momentum. And if you can name the spirit in the room, you can finally start leading it.