There is an image in the work of Dr. Gerald Hüther that has stayed with me since I first encountered it. Two people sit down for breakfast. The table is set, the rolls are fresh, the coffee is fragrant. From the outside, everything can be measured: the time, what is on the table, how rested both of them are. And yet something is decided in that moment that cannot be measured at all. Whether the two people actually meet each other, or whether they simply have breakfast together.

Hüther draws a clear distinction between relationship and encounter. We have many relationships, he writes, constantly, everywhere, including in the digital world. Most of them are object relationships: we use the other person, consciously or not, as a means to our own ends, as a resource, as a role that needs to perform. An encounter is something different. It arises when two people perceive each other as subjects, as equals, with genuine interest in one another as human beings. From a real encounter, people leave strengthened. From a mere relationship only if it leads, at some point, to a genuine encounter. Otherwise it costs energy that has to be replenished elsewhere, through holidays, distraction, hobbies.

What this has to do with organisations

I think of this image when I observe how AI implementations unfold in practice. Meetings take place, presentations are given, everyone is present. The structure runs. But whether anyone in those moments truly encounters another person, whether anyone is seen as a human being rather than as a resource that needs to adapt, is decided in instants that no project plan can capture.

There are teams in which a great deal is said together, and teams in which something actually happens. This is not wordplay. The difference does not lie in the content of conversations, nor in the frequency of meetings, nor in the quality of the tools being used. It lies in whether people have the possibility to show themselves, without being immediately evaluated or pushed into a role. Hüther describes communities in which genuine encounters take place as communities that require little energy and generate a great deal. The opposite, stagnating systems in which everyone merely fulfils their role, consumes enormous amounts of energy without anything truly alive emerging from it.

What I observe in workshops

There is a moment I experience regularly in my training sessions. Someone stops playing their role and simply says what they actually think. Sometimes it is a question they have not allowed themselves to ask before. Sometimes it is an observation they had been keeping to themselves. In that moment, the energy in the room shifts. For everyone. That is an encounter. It does not require a special format or a dedicated agenda item. It requires someone to take the first step, to show themselves, to step out of their role. Hüther writes that sometimes a small smile is enough, a glance that genuinely asks, a signal that says: I see you here as a person, not as a function.

I was once in a meeting where everyone spoke and no one was heard. That sounds like a communication problem. In my experience it is almost always something else. When people experience themselves as objects, as executors, as roles that are supposed to function, they speak. But they do not show themselves. They say what is expected, and the rest stays inside. What can open up in a room when that moment is broken through, and how rarely it happens under genuine pressure, is one of the things that occupies me most in my work with leaders.