Is love the only value I need?
It has been de rigueur in business circles for a while now to identify the values of the business we work in.
I have always been excited by opportunities to come together with colleagues and discuss big concepts like belonging, risk-taking and creativity, but I have often left feeling confused and short-changed.
What do those words that we have just work-shopped actually mean? How are they connected to the work we do on a daily basis, the decisions we make or the actions we take once we’re back at our desks, or in that next meeting?
Someone once told me that there is no such thing as values. When we say ‘values’, it is more helpful to think about them as needs, that are personal and embodied.
A few weeks ago, I wrote that I am starting my business from a place of love, which I guess is a value.
If this is true, then, in my business, what I need is love.
So, following on from my complaint above, it will be helpful to me, and perhaps most of the people I work with, if I am clear about what I actually mean. Love can be a catch-all, feelgood term, too easily and freely bandied about.
My favourite definition of love comes from All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks.
In a book devoted to the topic of love, bell hooks states that it would be useful, from the beginning, to be clear about what the term ‘love’ means.
She chooses a definition from M. Scott Peck in his book The Road Less Travelled:
Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
By chance, I came across bell hooks’ book in a bookshop a few days before an important call with someone for whom love is central to their work.
I recognise this very clearly as a need of mine - to nurture my own and others’ spiritual growth - one that I am hoping to meet in part through my business.
It sounds crazy, no?
But a further explanation from bell hooks grounds this definition:
To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.
It strikes me that this reads like a list of values: care, respect, honesty, as well as a list of the most basic of human needs.
This is what I am seeking in my work and in my working relationships. It is what I am requiring of myself, and what I am demanding in my attitude to others.
For the moment, this definition of love feels complete, as in ‘this is what I actually mean when I say I am starting my business from a place of love’.
Or, as a famous group from my dad’s hometown sang in 1967, All You Need is Love.