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I’m in Paris about to fly to Belgrade, and I have love on my mind. Mind you, this is a business trip.
Jack Ma, the fearless founder of the Chinese internet empire Alibaba, spoke about the leaders of the future at this year’s Davos Economic Forum. I believe if a person wants to be successful, Ma said, they should have a high EQ. If you don’t want to lose quickly, you should have a high IQ. But if you want to be respected, you should have a high LQ. That is the Q of Love.
And then he added: Lots of men have high IQ, they have much, much smaller EQ, and a very, very tiny LQ.
Yes, L stands for Love.
I googled LQ the moment I heard Ma speak about it. I found nothing. Ma invented the term. Love it. The man knows.
At the Agile Humans Conference in Belgrade we will be talking about the notion of LQ. Here’s a little preview of the conversation.
We’re talking about the ability to feel love for others. Not think it, feel it. The ability to express this love and to receive love in return. The ability to create spaces where the love for a cause and the love for one another is tangibly experienced. An environment that implicitly and explicitly acknowledges love as the ultimate animating force.
Sound a little woo-woo to you? Here’s how a neuroscientist explains it.
Yuri Hassan is a professor at Princeton University. He conducts research about how two brains get into synch. He calls this process neural coupling. In his research, the key area of the brain that shows coupling is the insula, an area linked with conscious feeling states. In other words, neural coupling is much more likely to occur when you and I feel a shared emotion. Not a shared thought – a shared emotion. When my joy meets your joy, joy magnifies. When my love of others meets your love of others, a micro-moment of love is born. Micro-moments of love are not just a lucky accident – they’re intentionally created. And future business leaders know how to create them.
I just sold an international training and coaching firm that I owned for 14 years. Here’s something I always said to my INFLUENS team: We’re really good at what we do. There are other companies who do similar work to what we do, and they’re also really good at what they do. And then I would elaborate. Our clients hire us for a specific service, but what they really get is the gift of love. That’s why they bring us back.
Love wasn’t mentioned anywhere on our business website. It was our subtext. The secret sauce.
I learned about subtext in my first career. Many years ago, I was a professional acting coach in New York and trained actors at some of the big acting schools in the city. Any actor can learn the words of a script. Part of an actor’s homework is to fill in the reality of what goes on behind the words. Actors call this the subtext. The greater actors sometimes have more talent. They always have greater subtext.
Love is a sublime subtext. The clients at my firm loved us. Not just liked us, loved us.
There are two specific behaviors that I looked for in my team. These are behaviors that I try to embody myself.
We’re fun.
And we drill down.
We’re fun means we know how to be light and playful with another person. We take our work seriously but we do not take ourselves too seriously. We approach important things with a light touch. In a world where many people I know experience too much stress, too much pressure, and are victims of perfectionism, our willingness to have fun is a bold and generous gift. I consider my ability to be playful with another person a profound act of love.
We drill down – that means I have the courage to explore everything I do as deeply as possible. I don’t stay on the surface. I am willing to ask the difficult questions. I care enough to dig deep. This caring allows us to have the richest possible conversations. This caring also means I know when to let go. This caring is an act of love.
Be fun. Drill down. Combine the two, and you have mega-love in action.
I was talking with my friend Charlotte the other day. Charlotte lives in Geneva/Switzerland. I was really upset with a client of mine, she says to me. He didn’t show up for an appointment we had. And it’s the second time he’s done that. I told him how upset I was about his behavior. And then I said to him ‘It’s a good thing that I love you.’
I love this story. I love that Charlotte used the word “love.”
There’s a power in saying it.
These days I host virtual Mastermind Groups for successful business executives. In a Mastermind 7 leaders meet to challenge and uplift each other and bring out the very best in every person. We share tactics and resources and wisdom. We energize each other. We dare each other to play a bolder game. But at the very deepest level, a Mastermind is an extraordinary act of love.
Jack Ma is right. We need EQ, we need IQ, and we need a lot more LQ.
You may have taken some psychological assessments. They may have told you that you’re not that kind of a person. You may come from a country or where professional behavior is crisp and cool. Know what? Think of yourself as a global citizen. Dump the story of who you think you are.
Work is Love Made Visible. That’s a quote from the great Turkish poet Rumi.
Our world needs a little more love. It starts with how you and I engage with each other. Every single moment. Let’s choose a powerful subtext. Let’s create micro-moments of love, every single day.
Let’s do this already.