Hey Changemakers!
As we exit summer and transition into fall, I thought it would be a good time to refocus on the importance of core values — identifying, developing, growing, and standing up for the deeper human elements that drive us and motivate much of the change we are willing to fight for. If you haven’t spent time reflecting on your own personal values or your organization’s values (which should be transparent and easy to find), now is a great time to practice that.
In a recent post (very much worth a read) by Siena Beacham, Storytelling & Content Catalyst with OF/BY/FOR ALL, they discuss the importance of organizational values and actions that align with those values.
“Oftentimes values end up being just words that sound great on paper, with no real understanding of what they look like in practice. Values are only meaningful if they are put into action.”
I encourage everyone to take some time and reflect on what matters most to you, and how that aligns with your organization and work. It will be time well spent, trust me. It can be helpful (even healing) to give our attention to some core human emotions, values, and principles that might work to get us unstuck and bring forward a renewed focus on things like joy, gratitude, belonging, kindness, and, above all, love.
Did I just say “love”?
Yes, love. This age-old emotion may be one of our strongest and most human superpowers when we’re feeling stuck or might lack the drive or motivation to push forward the positive changes that the world needs right now. And not just in the ways we might typically think, such as in the context of romantic relationships or our family. If we take the time to think more expansively about love and open ourselves to its rich complexities, it has the power to transform not just our personal life but also our work.
That’s right, I said work. One radical and brave way to expand our thinking about love is to seriously consider its role within our professional practice and the organizations we work for. As we revisit our vision and goals, might we dare to embrace love as a guiding principle and value in our professional work?
Love? At Work?
How can we possibly embrace love as a core value for our work and professional life? Through my own experiences working with nonprofits and in higher education, I think I’ve gotten accustomed to institutional values being things like accountability, dependability, scholarship, innovation, or excellence — the types of words that don’t necessarily get your blood pumping or get you out of bed in the morning.
But love? That feels like such a personal, emotional human value — a concept we don’t talk much about around the senior leadership table or at board meetings. Like most of us, I was trained to think that love was far too “soft” or “touchy feely” to be a serious, professional value driving an organization’s mission and work.
In November of 2016, less than a week after that particularly divisive presidential election, I travelled to New York to facilitate a day-long workshop on social impact and community engagement, hosted at the Laundromat Project. On that sunny morning in November, I gathered with a small group of professionals from across the United States and Europe to visit the Laundromat Project’s Kelly Street Initiative, a 2 bedroom-apartment that they transformed into a thriving creative community hub and artist studio space. As we sat in the ground floor of this space, the staff of the Laundromat Project shared more about the origins of their work and what drives their practice. I distinctly remember one slide projected on the wall that included their organization’s values: creativity, place, community … and love.
There it was, projected on the wall of that apartment in the South Bronx. Love. I remember raising my hand and simply asking how it was that love came to be added to this list of that organization’s values. I just hadn’t seen that before. I recall them talking a bit about how much their team felt the urgency to bring a radical idea like love to the forefront. Something that would elevate their work above just simply arts programming or community engagement.
Love has continued to be a central driving force for the Laundromat Project, and they describe their current value, “Be Propelled by Love,” in this way: “We value love as a radical and essential act of power and protest to create the kind of world we all deserve to live in.”
That moment, and that decision to make ‘love’ an organizational value, has stuck with me ever since that day in the South Bronx. Since then, I’ve been consistently energized by those who courageously embrace love in their professional practice and understand the profound systemic changes needed in most organizations to bring this deeply human value to the center. And I have worked to center this human value in my own personal and professional practice. As Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire once wrote:
“We must dare, in the full sense of the word, to speak of love without fear of being called ridiculous, mawkish, or unscientific.”
A Brave, Daring Embrace of Love
In today’s culture, we generally have a very limited definition of ‘love.’ As Friere suggested, the idea that love is important is often mocked, it’s seen as Hallmark-ish and soft. In most businesses and organizations, when we speak about love, we’re often dismissed as being too sentimental. There is a pressure to focus on intellectual discussions and ideas of the head, ignoring the importance of our heart. We’re often focusing too much on the bottom line and profits that we forget about the more human-centered aspects of our work and its impact on the world.
Where is the courage needed to change this? We need to be those revolutionaries who are willing to stand apart, believe in something bigger than ourselves, and invest in love as a core practice and way of being.
In his collection of sermons published in 1963 entitled “Strength to Love,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about the necessary and transformative power of love, and what it means to have the courage to love. King wrote:
“Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force is the most potent instrument available in mankind’s quest for peace and security.”
Writer and activist Darnell Moore defines love as “that illuminating energy that removes the barriers that otherwise separate us.” This is the love that can lead our businesses and organizations to become more human and centered on equity and care at a time when those are crucial principles to remain relevant and sustainable in a post-pandemic reality.
In remembering her husband James Boggs and his passionate and revolutionary call to love during the Civil Rights Movement, community organizer Grace Lee Boggs wrote:
“Love isn’t just something you feel. It’s something you do everyday when you go out and pick the paper and bottles scattered the night before on the corner, when you stop and talk to a neighbor, when you argue passionately for what you believe in with whoever will listen, when you call a friend to see how they’re doing, … when you never stop believing that we can all be more than what we are. In other words, Love isn’t about what we did yesterday; it’s about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after.”
What If We Embraced Love?
I invite you to take a moment to pause, give yourself some space, and work toward taking actions (even just something small) that lean toward bringing more love into your work, your practice, and your life.
Ask yourself some of these key questions:
What if love, above everything else, was the core value that steered the radical change needed in our organizations and communities today?
What if each of us made a commitment to bring love into action through our personal and professional work, today and tomorrow and the day after?
What if we created an environment or a space in which love could flourish? What would that look like for you? for your organization? for your community?
What would you need to change about yourself and your own practice to make this happen?
So as you find time to take a deep breath and reflect on your personal and organizational values, dare to embrace love and the role this powerful force can have in radically changing your life and your work.
“One of the things that we really have to do that is completely radical is utterly invest ourselves in love and to continue to practice that…. Love that changes, love that confronts, love that holds you, love that allows you to make mistakes but only within love.”
This piece includes previously published excerpts from Chapter 11 of my book Museums as Agents of Change, republished here with permission. These ideas are always worth returning to, and sharing via platforms like this Substack. If you’ve read my book, I hope this was a refresher and reminder of the importance of focusing on deeply human core values like love.