Love is usually reserved for our family and friends; does it really belong in corporate America?
Yes.
Leadership experts agree that not only does love belong in the workplace, it’s necessary for success.
We celebrate love in February, but we hardly ever associate love with business. Maybe we need to rethink the role that love plays in the life of a leader. According to Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner of The Leadership Challenge, “Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the most lasting.”
In order to bring more love into our work, we first need to understand: “What is love?”
We use the word in a variety of ways including describing our affection for someone, detailing our preference for particular foods, and even pledging our loyalty to a certain sports team.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary has many definitions that allow for all these scenarios. For the purpose of this post, I want to focus on one aspect of the definition: an unselfish loyalty, benevolence, and concern for the good of another.
In a world filled with headlines about aggressive and combative leaders, it’s hard for us to see the role of love. Love feels soft and ambiguous, and our western culture favors strong and stoic characteristics.
However, Kouzes and Posner describe effective leaders who are just the opposite. When you stop and truly think about what a leader does, “it’s hard to imagine leaders getting up day after day, putting in the long hours and hard work it takes to get extraordinary things done, without having their hearts in it. The best-kept secret of successful leaders is love: staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations produce, and with those who honor the organization by using its work. Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart.”
We now understand what love is and where it fits in the business world. But how can we demonstrate love to be a better leader?
SHOW EMPLOYEES THAT YOU CARE ABOUT THEM
Take time to get to know your fellow employees, and let them get to know you personally. Learn about their lives outside of work. Understand their strengths and weaknesses as well as along with their preferences and dislikes for certain aspects of the job. Invite your colleagues out to lunch, to after-work drinks, or suggest an outing to a sporting activity. Getting outside of the office enables you to have different types of conversations you may normally have, and get to know another side of someone.
Seek to understand their strengths and weaknesses as well as their preferences and dislikes for certain aspects of the job. Learn enough about the person’s role that you can help them understand how much they matter in your business. When you understand and are grateful for their contribution, your colleagues can tell.
Find ways to help them navigate their careers and roles in the company. Remove obstacles and help them be successful.
Theodore Roosevelt is famously quoted: “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Show them how much you care with action.
GIVE AND RECEIVE FEEDBACK
In 5 Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, Patrick Lencioni says that giving feedback is an act of sincere love.
Think about it.
Only a friend would tell you that something about your attire is askew. An enemy will let you walk around all day with some embarrassing, unknown mistake for everyone to see.
It is an act of love to give accurate, genuine, heartfelt feedback.
I’m not writing about the formal annual evaluation. While those are important, giving regular feedback, both positive and negative, on a regular basis helps build trust. The annual evaluation is only bad if it’s filled with surprises that the employee hasn’t heard throughout the year. Informal feedback that shows you care about the employee’s growth and success is the key to demonstrating love.
Also, you must receive feedback with the same openness and vulnerability that you share it with others.
We all have blind spots.
We will never grow and challenge these areas of our lives without an objective look in the mirror. You demonstrate how much you care when you receive feedback graciously and give effort to improve.
EXPRESS YOUR PASSION
Like I mentioned, our western culture teaches us to be to be stoic and objective. These are great qualities that show steadiness, patience, and personal resolve. The people around leaders need to see this kind of purpose and willfulness.
At the same time, they need to see our passion for the work we do together. Professional passion is the flame inside of you that helps form strong ideas, ignite gifts, and engender the resolve to move forward. This passion moves you toward success and excellence.
What do you love about your work? How are you making a difference for the organization, your co-workers, and constituents? What sustains you when things are not going as you hoped and planned? What pushes you to grow and develop to be an effective leader?
The answers to the questions should be apparent in how you conduct your work. If your passion and purpose show through in everything you do, it will inspire others to be more transparent with their passion as well.
SHOW SOME LOVE
Love has everything to do with success in business. We may hesitate to use the word “love” in the business context, but we should never extinguish the flame or hesitate to show our genuine concern for our co-workers.
Mark, Great article!