We Are Beings of Both Reason and Emotion – Olivier Bas

Excerpt from the new collective book from the Cercle du Leadership: “Envier ou avoir envie”
By Olivier Bas, Vice-President at Havas Paris, author, and lecturer at Sorbonne Nouvelle
“Nothing great is built without desire, nothing lasting either.” – Olivier Bas

A Community of Desires
Raphaëlle Laubie: You’ve guided nearly 200 companies and their leaders over 25 years. Why focus on envie (desire)?
Olivier Bas: Seven years ago, I began exploring the concept of envie. Companies invested heavily in human resources, training, and psychosocial risk management, yet engagement barometers showed a persistent deficit. Motivation had been studied extensively, but envie had been largely overlooked.
I realized the company is not a community of destiny like in the old career-focused model, nor is it truly a community of values. It may be a community of interests, but these are often conflicted between shareholders, clients, and employees. So I concluded that companies are communities of desires—people coming together to pursue a shared purpose, and this idea shaped my exploration of envie.

Envie vs Motivation
Unlike classical motivation, which is largely rational and individual—based on effort and reward—envie is generated by emotional states. Emotions are the oxygen of life, and because they are contagious, envie operates collectively. Many companies, in the pursuit of performance, inadvertently destroy the very envie that fuels it.
Freud’s concept of envy highlights the “mnemonic image of the mother’s breast” as a source of lack, but I focus on the positive energy of envie. When we feel envie, we are engaged, alive, and driven.

The Power of Emotional States
We are as much beings of reason as of emotion. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s work shows that our brain has two systems:
System 1: intuitive, emotional, automatic
System 2: reflective, analytical, effortful
We perceive the world first emotionally and only then rationally. This explains why some mornings we wake without energy or desire, while other days, a positive emotional state propels engagement.

Leaders Who Awaken Envie
Everyone in a company contributes to regenerating envie: leaders, HR, managers, communicators, and employees. Leaders’ mindset is critical: companies exist not merely to make profit, but to achieve progress—social, economic, environmental, technological. Profit is a byproduct of meaningful progress.
The language leaders use also shapes desire. Olivier Bas illustrates this with examples:
Carlos Ghosn: fear-based, “succeed or die” – effective short-term but destructive long-term
Xavier Niel: anger/revenge-based – mobilizing energy but limited in durability
Stéphane Richard: joy-based, confidence in success – inspiring, sustainable
Fear and anger can ignite short-term performance but cannot sustain a project or collective cohesion. True collective motivation comes from a purposeful project that engages employees over time.

Reference: Interview with Olivier Bas, 10 February 2022 – YouTube link

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