I mean, it was Valentine’s Day today. So commercially at least, love is in the air! Seriously though, I do want to talk about love and the world of business. If those two concepts had been put together in my mind ten years ago when I was still a management consultant, I might have been one of the first to laugh my socks off. But these days, considerably less so. I know that we coaches are a special breed of folk who don’t live on the same planet as the rest of the world and can talk endlessly about feelings! I say that as a fully committed coach albeit one who remembers her consulting days with a degree of fondness. But yesterday I saw a post on LinkedIn from an ex-consulting colleague, referencing Valentine’s Day and using it to highlight fourteen bosses who had influenced him for the good over his career. I thought it was a lovely gesture.
I also feel strongly that the world of business needs ‘humanising’ a good deal more! A lot of the work I do with teams and organisations is about creating more relational cultures and encouraging more humanity in organisational communities. Why? Because we are all human, after all, despite our best efforts to appear otherwise sometimes and cultures that care surely help bring out the best in people. Personally I would always prefer to work in and for organisations that treat people as, well, people and not machines; that show them compassion, appreciation and respect and even, dare I say it encourage them to bring more of who they are into the workplace. Workplaces have the capacity to engender abusive relationships that take advantage of people’s goodwill, that undermine their sense of self-worth and cause suffering and damage. I have heard awful stories over the years of individuals that have put years of loyalty and hard work into their employer with achievements and results to show for it, only to be treated like commodities whose shelf life is limited. The organisations that behave in this way are surely those that would laugh most derisively at the suggestion that love has a part to play in business and yet they are surely the ones that need to take it the most seriously.
With all the talk of wellbeing in the past year, one would think the tide might be turning. I do hope so and yet I still see vast expanses of transactional cultures where humanity is short changed. We must not allow it. We must challenge it where we see it. We must take a stand for humanity in the world of business and take the position that love has got a lot to do with it.
Happy Valentine’s Day.