Love in the Corporate World

What is the value of cultivating companionate love within your organisation?
Love evokes sensations and ideas that span multiple cultures and generations in ways that are very much connected to a common song, and also worlds apart: some love a little, some love a lot, some confuse love and lust, some equate love with romance, others with companionship and family connection, and some base love on conditions, while others love unconditionally.
When I address love in the corporate world, I speak of ‘companionate love’, which you may equate to the love of a good friend; a love fostered over time, characterized by feelings of affection, intimacy and commitment. This article outlines what companionate love looks like in an organisation and the value to the organisation of cultivating loving qualities.

The value of Love in the workplace:
When Mandy O’Neill, an assistant professor in the George Mason University School of Management, carried out research (‘What’s Love got to do with it: The Influence of a culture of companionate love in the long-term care setting') with the University of Pennsylvania management professor Sigal Barsade, they demonstrated that “companionate love” in the workplace boosts teamwork and job satisfaction and leads to less burnout and absenteeism.
The study surveyed 185 employees, 108 residents and 42 family members of the residents. The embedded researchers rated the culture of love each time they spent at least 20 minutes in a particular unit of the facility. Employees and administrators also rated the emotional culture in the various units. The researchers found that employees in the more compassionate units showed greater engagement and less withdrawal than their colleagues elsewhere in the facility.
Barsade and O’Neill also surveyed 3,201 employees from 17 organizations in seven industries, including financial services, real estate, engineering and higher education, and the results were the same; the people who worked in a culture where they felt free to express affection, tenderness, caring, and compassion for one another were more satisfied with their jobs, committed to the organization, and accountable for their performance.
In a 2016 study on preferences in leadership style, it was found that 70% would prefer a ‘collaborative & supportive’ working environment, while 26% would prefer a ‘task-focused and goal-oriented’ working environment.

The challenges to growing a loving corporate culture: More companies are beginning to understand the benefits of monitoring employees’ emotions and are concluding that a culture of love can generate a brand of loyalty and commitment that is good for business, however, the reality of fostering this culture can be a challenge.

• Living from love is not natural for everyone: Some people lead and live from the heart naturally, for others there may be a steep learning curve with many adaptions and personal changes to work through. Often this comes with the challenge of vulnerability, which for those who choose to adopt a ‘strong persona’ means revealing the illusion of a created identity, that may reflect invincibility, to expose a softer and ‘weaker’ self. Of course, to be vulnerable is a choice of great strength, but it can be hard to convince the mind of this truth at times and let go of a false identity.

• You have to love yourself first. The ‘Inner work’ is essential to growing love because you cannot truly embrace understanding, acceptance, empathy, care, kindness, respect and trust of others until you can apply these qualities to yourself. Those who try may, albeit unconsciously, also project or transfer their internal conflicts onto others, and exhibit contradictory behaviours which can damage trust and result in the challenge to the authenticity of what they may, with all good intentions, be trying to foster. The ‘Inner work’ involves learning to love, like, accept, respect, value and believe in yourself, it means learning to be empathic towards self, resolving inner conflicts, processing unresolved emotions in a healthy and loving way, learning to manage your emotions and feeling world in a professional and healthy manner, and connecting with your authentic self, so that you can truly project your sincerity and foster cherished connections with the people you live and work with. For some people, this process requires adjusting focus and making time for the inner work, and when they do, they can see results almost immediately. For others, this can be an arduous journey that requires processing trauma, resolving unhealthy relationship patterns, letting go of anger, processing grief, creating a healthy and positive mindset, learning emotion regulation techniques, and learning to connect with a self that may have been damaged, hurt and repressed for so long, that the true self is, for now, a stranger that may belong in your distant past, and healing this can be a timely and costly therapy process. Nevertheless, to move from a survival, traumatised, hurt and damaged self, into a being of love is a process to be embraced by those who truly want to share their love in the world. Their investment in self will be transformational for the person, their relationships and their world.

The process of integration:

1. Define the qualities and values to be integrated: describe what the integration of each loving quality will look like and feel like. Outline the expected behaviours that reflect these values, and determine what is absolutely contradictory with a loving culture, and the consequences of such habits and behaviours to the individual and the organisation.
2. Identify who already lives from love: recruit them to be proactive in growing the culture company-wide
3. Provide coaching to leaders and managers: their actions will provide “a cultural blueprint” likely to be modelled by employees.
4. Provide ‘Inner work’ support where you can: In a structured and measured way, educate your people on the value and importance of their ‘Inner work’ and options they may like to explore privately, such as through personal therapy, reading, watching TED talks and enrolling on training courses, to support their personal evolution in living from love
5. Create companionate love-focused interview questions: ask prospective employees how they would handle a certain situation to give an indication of whether they would enrich or deplete a culture of love.
6. Hire positive people: By nature, they are more inclined to naturally engage in the kinds of interactions associated with companionate love.
7. Express your love: be warm, caring, and genuine to each person you interact with.
8. Highlight character strengths in others: people thrive on positive recognition.
9. Show appreciation: let a co-worked know why you appreciate them for specific strengths they have
10. Make compassion and commitment part of everything you do: this creates a ripple effect
11. Make a genuine effort to understand your team: make time to time to hear and understand what your employees are experiencing, using empathic and active listening techniques; this demonstrates care.
12. Embrace acceptance: No one is perfect, including me. When we give up trying to be someone we are not, and expose the true self, the acceptance of self that develops by its very nature leads us to become naturally more accepting of others. When leaders invite flaws and failure, they invite people to take new risks, challenge themselves, be brave and be real, this fosters genuine and loving connections with others and supports a psychologically safe place to discuss challenging situations, so that solutions and support can be provided sooner.
13. Be mindful of your mood and what you are projecting: When you know yourself and can regulate how you are feeling, you become a more powerful facilitator of a loving culture.
14. Recognise the impact of small gestures: A warm smile, a kind note, and a sympathetic ear embedded on a regular basis is love in action.

Love in the corporate world is long overdue, the time is now to facilitate the emergence of care, compassion and kindness, and the beauty of this process is that every single person has the power to make the choice and the personal changes to facilitate the emerge and growth of a beautiful new world.

References:
Preston Williams (2014) ‘Companionate Love’ in the Workplace Heightens Happiness, Productivity’ George Mason University News
Sigal Barsade and Olivia A O'Neil  (2014 )Employees Who Feel Love Perform Better. Harvard Business Review,
Fiona Beddoes-Jones, PhD (2017)Love Is The Answer: A New Model of Corporate Love in the Workplace. Occupational Psychology Division of The Bristish Psychological Society
Ryan L Nlelmec (2017) Love in the Workplace? Yes! Why and how love and other strengths are important at work. Psychology Today Magazine


Would you like to explore how to integrate a loving culture within your organisation?

Get in touch to arrange a complimentary call to explore what this could look like:
Antonia Behan - Coaching Psychologist BSc MSc MICF PCC MBPsS
0034 620 741 361 antonia@antoniabehan.com www.antoniabehan.com