Love in the workplace

There are a lot of potential meanings attributed to the word ‘love’.  Here I wish to attend to the particular meaning of ‘unconditional love’, a term often used to describe the feeling a parent has for their child. Unconditional love is a love that is experienced regardless of the behaviour of the other, and regardless of whether such feelings are returned. It typifies what we expect of healthy relationships between family members. In religious circles it is also used to describe the feelings of the godhead for creation, including human beings, and the feelings between the religious teacher for their student, the priest for the flock, the sangha for the laity and guru for disciples. However, in the context of other peer based relationships, unconditional love can feel very risky and frightening. Should we find ourselves opening to another unconditionally, we are then completely open to the other as they are, with all their flaws, bad behaviour, and potential to hurt us, or even leave us. If we are open to the other unconditionally then whatever they do, we remain lovingly connected and accepting of them regardless. To love unconditionally is to be vulnerable and exposed to much potential suffering surely?
 

Yet as mindfulness practitioners we are choosing to remain aware and non-judgemental, regardless of the living quality of our experience. We accept whatever is happening as it is. So it follows if we are cultivating love in the context of mindful relating then it is unconditional love we wish to offer others and also offer ourselves. Unconditional love is based on the cultivation of the ‘four immeasurables’ or Brahmaviharas , metta- loving kindness, karuna- compassion, mudita- empathetic joy, and uppekha -equanimity. As mindfulness practitioners we aim to cultivate these qualities in our mind stream as antidotes to the negative emotions of hatred, harm, envy and clinging which tend to characterise the problematic areas of conditional loving relationships- when egos get entangled in webs of desire, longing, passion and aversion when things don’t go our way.
We can expereince feelings of love, compassion, joy in each other’s company, and sometimes a blissful peace when working on the common projects we value. Unconditional love between members of a common work group can generate a contextual field of loving awareness between us- non-judgemental, open, joyful and peaceful. But another set of concerns can arise about the appropriateness of deep positive feelings between colleagues. We can became afraid of the loving feelings and afraid of being misunderstood, so we can deny them to defend against such fears. But feelings of unconditional love rooted in the meditations on the brahmaviharas of loving kindness, compassion, joy and peace are an antidote to fear. Our developing intimacy as colleagues can have wholesome foundations. However in a culture which polices the workplace to try to ensure it is free of expressions of positive feelings between opposite sex colleagues, the shadow of a wholesome intimacy can be desire and sexuality, and a fear others would misunderstand intentions leading to a lot of trouble for everyone.

So how can you regulate for a workplace culture that allows for the development of loving kindness, compassionate action towards each other, joy in each other’s happiness and peaceful acceptance of the range of personalities and values we encounter in others? We can only do it by addressing the elephant in the room when shared fears arise… but it takes a lot of courage to do it, because the potential for mutual misunderstandings is huge.

I remember working in a University department once where the two main programme leaders wouldn’t speak to each other. They had similar qualifications and were similar ages. They had once been great friends. They were a man and woman- he had a committed relationship and children, she didn’t. Everyone talked about the stand-off, the mutual disdain between them, and the possible source of the conflict- something to do with love that had gone wrong. They both denied this. The atmosphere was awkward and tense in the whole place when they were in work together, and later when the man left, he told me that he never understood what went wrong, but that something had been very positive between them, that changed overnight into chaos and suffering.

They were not spiritual practitioners, but they were working a department of psychotherapy and counselling studies, so one would have expected them to be able to process and resolve conflict a bit more successfully. But sometimes, the ego is too threatened to open up and take in what is actually there. It prefers to project, judge, solidify experiences and defend itself against anticipated attack, ironically a counter attack- for doing just these things that cause suffering in the first place- judgement, solidifying, most often to shore up the defence of ‘self-protection’. It’s  a vicious cycle of projection rooted in fear, and the mistrust of the capacity of others to accept and understand us when we make ourselves vulnerable. 

A workplace culture that encourages the open expression of positive feelings and enables dialogue free of judgement, is flexible enough to shine the light of loving kindness into the shadows that haunt our hearts, and realise that feelings of all kinds are just part and parcel of the normal texture of living. We relate through feelings, not words, rules, policies and procedures, as much as certain types of managers may wish it could be otherwise. You cannot control the flow of feelings between people with words on paper, whether it’s at work or anywhere else. However, you can harness the creativity generated by the flow of positive feelings to increase productivity and support the thriving of the organisation. By accepting there are things we cannot control, we also free our hearts of fears that can otherwise drain energy away from working lovingly together, and instead get invested into defending ourselves, from breaking dehumanising rules that attempt to police emotional connections at work, for example. 

We can use mindful relating practices to learn to let loving kindness, compassion, joy and peace become the path we tread together, towards creating work places characterised by emotional literacy and creative energy, invested in a shared organisational vision.