This Valentine's Day?

I would like to discuss love at work today. It is important to note that we are not talking about an office romance. This is a discussion about love as it is expressed through gratitude, appreciation, friendship, and support. Love that can provide your organisation with energy and lasting power.

A while back i read an article on how it was while training to lead 2000 soldiers to clear roads of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan that Colonel Joe Ricciardi developed an interest in the concept of love at work. When Ricciardi was preparing for deployment, a general advised him, "just love your soldiers." Ricciardi took the advice to heart, and later returned home to earn a?Ph.D. in values-driven leadership.

What does love look like at work??Ricciardi set out to answer that question through his dissertation research on “Love and Leadership.” Love, he determined, shows up as three things:

#1: Intimacy:?knowing and caring about the personal lives of your team members in an authentic and appropriate way.

#2: Passion:?the positive energy you bring to your work, and to your organization’s mission and values.

#3: Commitment:?a dedication to the well-being of others and to the shared task.

How To Share The Love

Valentine’s Day can be a convenient excuse to playfully express appropriate intimacy, passion, and commitment. I understand from a Linkedin post I read yesterday that all this week, employees at national non-profit?Teach for America?are using the hashtag #ShareTheLove on an internal Slack channel to publicly celebrate team members’ commitment to the organization’s core values. Of course, showing love isn’t reserved for employees, and it doesn’t have to be reserved just for Valentine’s Day either. After being overwhelmed with vendor gifts during the winter holiday season, digital marketing agency?BeFoundOnline?realized they needed to take a different approach to stand out with their clients. This year, they surprised some clients and vendors with a custom video and a pancake breakfast on Groundhog’s Day. “We realized we needed to say thank you at a different time than the rest of the world,” says Dan Golden, president.

Year-Round Love

As anyone in a lasting relationship can tell you, love cannot be reserved for one day a year. Showing real intimacy, passion, and commitment toward employees takes more than a box of chocolates. It also cannot be faked or self-serving.

Use this Valentine’s Day to share the love with your team members, and more importantly, to launch a year-round campaign of (appropriate) intimacy, action, and commitment toward one another.

Megha Singh Nandiwal