The idea that love is “just damn good business” (as I suggested in my previous posts) is equally easy to embrace or dismiss, depending on your personal bias or point of view.
Assuming for a moment that you’re one who accepts the idea (and if you’re not, consider this anyway—you may surprise yourself) how do you go about putting it into practice in your business? How do you take the idea (or ideal) of love-at-work and translate it into the ways that you and yours make things happen every day?
It’s a huge challenge, but you can start by taking a lesson from superstar technical talent agency, Kineticom. Love is not an idea for this $60 million dollar, award-winning, Inc. 500 company, it’s a practice that their employees are hired for and measured on.
Cultivating Love is not only one of Kineticom’s core values, it’s part of their performance evaluations, too (as well as the other practices of Extreme Leadership: Energy, Audacity and Proof). They’ve made Love a cultural expectation and, therefore, a day to day reality.
Pretend for a moment that you work at Kineticom, and it’s time for your evaluation. Here’s how you’d be sized up, love-wise (thanks to the Kineticom gang for their permission to share):
Their eval defines Cultivating Love like this:
“Demonstrating love (of the future we’re working together to create) in the way they work with, serve, and lead the people around them. (Leadership includes peer level.) Love in this sense is a feeling of strong attachment induced by that which delights or commands admiration; preeminent kindness or devotion to another. At its core, being an Extreme Leader means doing what you love in the service of those who love what you do.”
Their description of the lowest rating in the Love category:
“Views daily actions and efforts as part of a job, not part of a broader future that employee has a key role in creating. Does not understand or connect personal or organizational opportunity to make a difference in the world.”
And the highest rating:
“Fully and actively embodies love in the way they work with, serve, and lead the people around them. Consistently cultivates love of the future we’re creating together in teammates, contractors and/or clients through tangible actions.”
Sure, that may still sound a little subjective—maybe that’s the nature of the beast—but the implications are anything but: those who consistently rate high on this attribute (and the others) are given greater opportunities, more money and, potentially, stock in the company.
How do your measurements and performance standards stack up?
Try putting a little heart in there, and see if you can’t make the experience of working with you a practicum in the Business Theory of Love.
This article was published on Steve Farber's Blog, where you can read more articles by Steve Farber.
Steve Farber, author of Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership, the president of Extreme Leadership, is a leadership consultant and speaker, and the author of the national bestseller The Radical Leap, and The Radical Edge.