Love at work

I love, love, love when people talk about love in the workplace. Not romance, but a genuine love of the work you do, the people you work with and the purpose you serve. And it is a conversation that people are having more often and for very good reasons. Reasons beyond serving the bottom line, although creating the environment where people are nourished and feel seen and valued will have that outcome.

As I started my practice just before COVID hit (my timing has always been impeccable), I did some work with Thought Leaders Business School whose raison d'être was to support practitioners to

"do work you love, with people you love, the way you love".

I think it's a goal that resonates widely. If people are doing things they enjoy in good company and with a degree of autonomy, that's a recipe for engagement and achievement. And where leaders are able to tap into this and create the soil where this can flourish, magic happens.

With people questioning the meaning of work and creating waves of movement in the current labour market, Hubert Joly, a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and former CEO, talks about the fundamental shift in identity and mindset that leaders need to undertake to transform the workplace - and act as a salve on our current wound of disengagement.

We can't think our way out of this current crisis/opportunity. We need an epiphany that puts people and purpose first. As Joly says,

"Leaders should be able to lead with all their body parts. With their brain, but also with their hearts, their soul, their guts, ears and eyes."

This re-remembering of the whole of our person as leaders had me thinking about the (not entirely undisputed) derivation of the word 'religion' from the Latin, meaning to bind together again or to reconnect. And Joly describes a deeply personal, almost spiritual transformation that completely shifted his thinking and behaviour as a leader.

And, granted, these are uncomfortable conversations for some. Not things that belong in the cut and thrust of the business world. But, if Joly is right, and there is growing interest and support from many other people that suggests he is, then we do need to re-member ourselves.

We need to put together how we think, how we feel, our deepest purpose, listen to our instincts and to others, and make each and every employee feel seen. By putting ourselves back together - re-membering, reconnecting, binding together - parts that have become disparate, we can lead with passion and purpose that builds an organisation we all want to be part of.