I was talking to a friend about setting the tone for a leadership workshop by infusing love into it. Her response was “It’s a professional leadership workshop. Why would we need to create love?” My own answer surprised me when I heard myself say, “Leadership is all about love.” The next few days Tina Turner was in my head asking me "What's love got to do with it?"
I co-led a workshop last week on Gender, and we decided to be really intentional about showing love between the co-leaders. It was at a big, serious, old, corporation. But we figured, hey, who couldn’t use a little love right?
Can we teach gender, leadership or any topic for that matter, without love?
Love doesn’t have to be kumbaya. Just because we set the “container” for a meeting or workshop with love, it doesn’t mean that he participants have to turn into hippies. In fact, they might not even be aware that the tone of ‘love’ has been set. What they might notice is that they feel at ease, not judged and they feel safe.
Meetings go smoothly when you set them up with love. When did we extract love out of the work world? When meetings are injected with a little love, things go smoother. I see this over and over when I insist that teams have a “team dinner”. The team that shows up before that dinner and then after the dinner is markedly different. They’ve bonded after the dinner, and as a result, work gets done faster.
Change the world, one meeting at a time. You might be thinking, “I can’t change the world, I have too many meetings.” What would happen if your meeting was the bright spot in people’s day? What if your meeting is the meeting that gets them motivated to make it through the rest of the day? Let your meeting, or a meeting you are in, be the injection of love that people need.
Sending love can be silent. You don’t need to (and you probably shouldn’t), run around your office telling people you love them. Maybe someday we’ll be there, but most workplaces aren’t there yet. You can practice love simply by sending feelings of love their way, creating a safe place, expecting the best from people, that type of stuff.
How have you brought love into your workplace? Let us know!
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