LEADERSHIP
ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE: THE CASE FOR BRINGING GREATER PASSION TO WORK
Love is the most powerful emotion on the planet, yet we’ve been conditioned to check our feelings at the door when we arrive to work each day. Leadership consultant Steve Farber thinks that’s a mistake. In his new book, he explains why love is part of a successful strategy for business. Companies large and small can reap the rewards when both managers and employees make personal connections, share their passions, and invest in each other and their customers. Farber shares his vision in his book, Love Is Just Damn Good Business: Do What You Love in Service of the People Who Love What You Do. He recently joined the K@W radio show on SiriusXM to make the case for love at work. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: How did you first come to this theory about the importance of love in business?
Steve Farber: I’ve been doing this work of leadership development now for 30 years. I’ve had the opportunity to work with just about every kind of organization you can imagine and just about every kind of industry, and over and over again, I’ve seen this prove itself to be true. Behind closed doors, you’ll hear leaders talk about how much they love their team, how much they love their company, their mission, their cause, their customers. But then we have this stigma associated with it, which is unfortunate and potentially tragic because when people really connect their hearts with their work, that’s when we do incredible things.
46
DOMmagazine.com | nov 2019 We’ve been conditioned to believe
that love and business are anathema to each other, that love is important in every other aspect of our lives. We want to love our spouse; we want them to love us. We want to love our kids; we want them to love us. We love our friends; we want them to love us. Then we go to work, and suddenly it no longer applies.
Knowledge@Wharton: Leaders are usually worried about other things: profits, partnerships, the structure of the company. But you say a lot of those things can be affected by love.
Farber: Yes, exactly. In fact, that’s the entire point. We are afraid that love makes us appear weak or irrational or emotional and that we’re going to make decisions that aren’t really
based on anything practical because it’s all hearts and flowers. That’s not what I mean. Any business person worth his or her salt knows that our competitive advantage in our business comes from creating a product, a service, an experience that our customers are going to love. We all know by now that satisfaction is not enough. If a customer is satisfied, there’s no greater likelihood they’ll continue to do business with us or talk about us or be loyal to the brand. But when they love us, when they love the whole experience of working with us, that’s where the payoff comes from. But let’s back it up. The first step
is, in order to create that experience for customers in a meaningful and sustainable way over time, we have to
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72
