What’s love got to do with it?
“If you keep your head down, nose to the grindstone, focus only on the work, and don’t get involved with people, you’ll succeed.”
As the eldest daughter in a family of immigrants, these sentiments were spoken to me quite often by my engineer father. While I got my work ethic from him, unfortunately, I also got his intensive focus, which eventually led to me becoming a workaholic (a topic for another day).
Now while I’d like to say my father’s philosophy was unique, it wasn’t. The work world is replete with idioms about how there’s life, there’s work, and there’s a distinct separation between them: from ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ and ‘Work your fingers to the bone’ to ‘Working for the weekend’. But the cherry on the sundae really is the statement: “It’s not personal, it’s just business.”
This line may just be the pinnacle of our feelings about the “cut-throat”, “dog eat dog”, “do whatever it takes to get ahead,” world of work and business, and the reason why so many people these days are weighed down by mental health and other illnesses in the workplace.
how did we
get here?
In 1972, The Godfather movie unleashed a line that went on to become one of the most famous and repeated quotes used in the work world: “It’s not personal, it’s just business.”
Most people know that it was spoken by the fictional character Michael Corleone, don of the Corleone crime family. But what most don’t know is that he was modeled after a real person. About 40 years earlier, it was the go-to saying of Otto Berman, former 1930's mob accountant, who spoke it when carrying out his shady, unsavory, unethical, and illegal dealings…“Nothing personal, just business.”
Almost 100 years later, those words can still be found in the halls of many organizations and workplaces. And if we’re honest, much like their originator, we use those words today almost like a boiler plate to cover up anything that’s not right, unsavory, or possibly hurtful.
From employee terminations and undermining someone’s work to get ahead, to agreeing to terms that have a negative ripple effect on a community, the words “it’s not personal, it’s just business” are like a ‘Get-Out-of-Jail-Free’ card. Somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that our work-self is a separate being from our personal-self, and that what happens at work and who we are at work doesn’t carry over into our personal life.
Couldn’t be further from the truth.
There’s a strange mythology that we’ve somehow accepted about ourselves as humans that has pervaded societies and cultures around the world. We’ve come to believe that who we are in our private life at home doesn’t show up in our work life, and vice versa. While many believe that you can and should create a “worksona”—a persona for work—that’s separate from your personality at home, eventually, the “true” you will appear. Luke 6:45 states that “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks”, and I would add ‘the body acts’.
Many a family, including my own growing up, has wounds from a parent coming home after a frustrating day at work and taking it out on the kids. It’s highly unlikely that a person who treats their employees poorly is going to treat their friends well. How we show up anywhere…is how we’ll show up everywhere.
“For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks”
Luke 6:45
No people, no business.
The truth of the matter is: living by the belief that work is “just business, it’s not personal”, is bad for your career, and bad for your business. Business is about people. People make the goods and provide the services. People buy the goods and services. Your employees, co-workers, bosses and customers are people with their own hopes and dreams. Without people, there would be no business. And where there are people, it’s always personal.
At the end of the day, every single human being on the planet is the hero of their own story, and that story is a personal one.
Contrary to popular belief and the opinion of many a marketing expert, people don’t have relationships with businesses; they have relationships with people, and they certainly don’t love businesses, they love people.
So, what’s love got
to do with work?
Turns out, pretty much everything.
Now, I’m not talking about the romantic love we all see in the movies, I’m talking about the love described in the Bible – from the ‘philia’ kind of friendship and care love to the highest form ‘agape,’ the self-sacrificial love that God has for us. Human connection is the starting point for the building of relationships, and one of the key ingredients for relationships is care.
“People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
We can all tell when someone doesn’t like someone or something, like how obvious it is when a person hates their job. Everyone can tell; it’s not something you can fake well, or for very long. The “true” you will come out.
The opposite is also true. People can always tell when someone loves something. When you love what you do, for example, you spend time on it, you care to learn all about it, you pour energy into it, and the result is that it shows in everything you do. That applies to people and things.
Most people think that the opposite of love is hate, but in practice it turns out that that’s actually not the case. The opposite of love is apathy. Apathy is indifference; it’s not caring whether someone comes to work or doesn’t, or whether the work submitted is good or not.
Where love multiplies energy and brings life, apathy drains it.
In a business setting, cultures devoid of love are places where toxicity, back-stabbing, and anxiety flourish, and where people are treated like numbered, interchangeable workers punching the clock. Leading with love, however, means loving your neighbour as yourself, (Mark 12:31) with your neighbour being your employees, your customers, your suppliers and any other stakeholders.
In fact, there may be a correlation between how a leader cares for their employees and how their employees in turn care for their work and the customers.
Whatever we love and show care for thrives, and whatever we don’t dies.
Research has shown that people who love what they do are not only much more likely to stay at their company and tell others that it’s a great place, but their enthusiasm is also shown to customers.
Love is good for business, so make it your business to love.
How do we make it our business to love?
By making business personal again. Be all in for your people and your customers. In my case, it wasn’t until I raised my head up, walked away from the grindstone, stopped focusing only on the work, and got involved with people that I really started to succeed.
In the end, it really does come down to treating others as you want to be treated: with love.
#TGIM
