Empathy is one of the #FiveIndicatorsofLove - its foundation is in truly understanding that people have a completely different paradigm than you do. There are moments - particularly when you're actively leading people - be it  your colleagues, customers, investors, team, audience or others from Point A to Point B - where it's especially important to take on what some call the "beginner's mind" - the ability to step outside your expertise and see your message through the eyes of someone encountering it for the first time.

“How can we improve CX when we have business targets to meet? How can we focus on people outcomes when we have business outcomes to focus on?” This is what I (and other practitioners) have heard for many years in the customer experience field.

Here’s my response… Love is not the antithesis to business targets; it's the accelerant of them.

If Love was a KPI, how would that metric be derived? Love as a KPI anchors on the premise that when organizations (and inherently, the people within them) are driven by Love for people - regardless of if those people are categorized as ‘customers’ or ‘employees’ (or 'suppliers'... or 'community members'...) - it exponentially drives the financial, operational and strategic success of the organization. Why? Because those very people are at the helm of the operational, strategic and financial success organizations want.

Love is a higher law.

‘Love as a KPI' posits that businesses should be driven primarily by love for people. If love for people is the foremost thing, everything else will yield to it.

Great leaders care first about people. Ideally, prevailing standards, systems and rules support this priority, but even when they fall short, true leadership stays anchored to its deepest intention.

Many of the more significant milestones we strive for in large part depend on the minds, will, and efforts of others. We do not control outcomes because we do not control people.

But there is one domain where we can exercise absolute control: ourselves.

While we can’t control others, we can influence them—and our ability to influence effectively is paradoxically rooted in our own self-mastery

Why do we lean into the instinctive short term decisions that are counter to the long-term outcomes we truly want?

If we want to be remembered as someone who made a positive impact on people - what does our natural/instinctive perspective, posture and practice towards people TODAY indicate this memory will be?

We can not procastinate the outcomes we want and expect to make up for it all at once. The legacy we want will not magically happen.