to have a greater desire to get things done. . . . I don’t know any other fire, any other thing in life that is more exhilarating and is more positive than love is.
Then, to emphasize their point, Kouzes and Posner end their book by stating: “Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart.”
I could not agree more, which is why “love the work” is the first practice of mindful leadership.
TRY THIS: I helped develop this exercise within the Search Inside Yourself training as a way to help participants explore their values, what matters to them most, and what they love the most.
In a journal or on a sheet of paper, write down the names of three people whom you most admire. They can be alive or no longer living, from your personal connections or from history. They can be fictional movie characters or even cartoon heroes. Who comes to mind? Let yourself be surprised.
Then write a sentence or two as to why you chose these three people. What have they done and what do they represent to you? Think of situations that exemplify what led you to choose them. (I suggest doing this first before reading further.)
Usually the people we choose, those we most admire, represent what is most important to us. Does that fit for you? From your descriptions of these three people, write down what you consider your top three to five values. As you reflect on what you value, other ideas may arise that aren’t captured by the people you chose. You can add those as well.
Once you have your list of values, experiment with writing whatever comes to mind based on one or more of these prompts:
• What is most important to me is. . .
• My values are . . .
• The ways my values show up in my work and life right now are . . .
• The ways my work and life and values are not in alignment are . . .
• Actions I might take to narrow the gap between my values and activities include . . .
WHAT IS LOVE?
Love is certainly a “calling” of leadership, but it’s also helpful to define love as a way to reflect on what this practice is really asking us to do.
While there are many kinds and definitions of love, I’d like to focus on four qualities or practices that make up love. In Buddhism, these teachings are known as the four immeasurables, since it is said that, as you practice them, each of these elements and the four together will continue to grow beyond what can be measured. These four qualities are:
• loving kindness,
• compassion,
• joy, and
• equanimity.
LOVING KINDNESS: This is the practice of caring about others. I remember many years ago when I was CEO of Brush Dance, I was interviewed for a magazine article on the topic of integrating business and Zen. The reporter asked me, “What does it look like to practice Zen in the workplace?” My response was that the core practice is kindness — to care about and be kind to the people I work with, to our customers, to vendors, and even to be kind to myself. The reporter was clearly not satisfied, and he said, “No, really, what does it mean to practice Zen in the workplace?” I repeated my answer, saying that kindness is more difficult than it seems, especially when things go wrong, when there are conflicts, when cash flow is challenging. Kindness goes a long way at work.
COMPASSION: Compassion has three parts: feeling another’s pain, understanding others, and desiring to help others. Compassion, and leading with compassion, is a core part of mindful leadership. Compassion is a core thread that runs throughout these seven mindfulness practices.
JOY: This refers to a deep sense of happiness that is not dependent on conditions. It is the joy of appreciating being alive. This isn’t the Small Mind joy of doing well at work and getting a bonus; this is the Big Mind joy that appreciates and celebrates everything, good and bad. This particular practice of joy is also sometimes translated as sympathetic joy, or the practice of feeling joy by acknowledging, feeling, and celebrating the happiness of others.
EQUANIMITY: This is the practice of letting go of self-concern, of cultivating acceptance and composure. Equanimity doesn’t mean suppressing or tamping down feelings. It is the practice of finding composure right in the midst of stress, confusion, change, challenges, and urgency.
In one of the early teachings of the Buddha, he names a variety of benefits that come from cultivating these practices of love. These benefits include
• sleeping well,
• lightness in the heart upon waking,
• being well liked by others,
• being able to concentrate easily,
• that your face will be brighter and clearer, and
• at the time of death, the mind will be clear.
These are pretty great benefits! I would add that, if you practice “love the work” in these ways on a regular basis, you are more likely to be happier and the people around you will be happier. Your work will be more effective and more successful. And you will influence the culture around you to be more engaging, creative, and lighthearted.
WHAT IS “THE WORK”?
While “love the work” means bringing the intentions and perspective of love to everything we do, this practice also refers to a very specific kind of work: cultivating mindfulness. This means seeing with greater clarity what really is and letting go of whatever more limited worldview we have constructed. It means cultivating greater self-awareness in order to, paradoxically enough, become less self-centered. It means actively questioning what is with an open-ended curiosity.
To love the work is to open ourselves and notice, the best we can, the ways in which we create limited mindsets and narrow mental models. To use the terms raised earlier, it both embraces and transcends Small Mind, or our default mode network, by accessing the perspective of Big Mind. When we reduce or let go of self-referential fears and worries, we realize that wonder and connection are our true default modes of being. Loving the work recognizes that there are many realities, many ways of being, and that we should not be overly attached to our version of reality.
The work of mindfulness is to step outside ourselves in order to see ourselves and notice what we aren’t aware of. We try to identify our unspoken fears, blind spots, biases, and assumptions. This means cutting through the places where we are caught, limited, attached, beholden to outmoded beliefs, and stuck in patterns or stories. By loving the work, we build trust in ourselves, we become more trustworthy, we cultivate inner strength, and we improve relationships and results.
This work requires courage. Not the physical courage required to save someone’s life or fend off an attacker, but the courage to be real, open, and vulnerable. The courage to feel uncomfortable and exposed, like the Google engineer who wept openly and shared the pain that had brought her to the workshop. It’s the courage to speak and take action in the midst of these feelings. The payoff is well worth it.
MEDITATION: LEARNING TO STARE, PRY,
