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.

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.

What does it mean to genuinely be a Love-led leader?
Some of the most common and insidious misconceptions about this thing called Love, include that it is a sentiment, and one solely denoted by warmth and fuzziness. That it always is earmarked by a good feeling. That it’s the ‘easy’ or ‘frivolous’ or ‘soft’ thing - and the inherent deduction, is that it has little to no place in business or organizational conversations as it is too stark a contrast from hard, important physical or intellectual work.

It’s one of several reasons why this notion of Love as a KPI may seem so striking.

‘For someone on top of the world, the view is not exactly clear…’

Leadership is naturally where Love as a KPI starts (and where it ends). We as leaders should measure how loved people are as a consequence of an enterprise’s culture, actions, products, services, experiences, practiced values, operations etc
Do people experience being more valued, uniquely appreciated, validated, propelled into their purpose and potential, and called higher as a result of their interaction with a business?

The tenets required to build meaningful, enduring relationships in our personal lives (with friends, mentors, family members et al.) are the the very same tenets required to build enduring relationships with employees, customers and other stakeholders in business.

Love is the outcome of the perspective, posture and practice that prioritizes the true needs and betterment of another. Tt warrants a pivot that starts with a perspective shift, where we look at each goal or initiative from the lens: 'how can our strategy, goals or initiatives be a conduit to leaving the people impacted by it holistically better': be it developmentally mentally, financially, physically, ethically or otherwise.

Love does not mean the same thing to everyone - how is this premise implemented practically? Not everyone experiences being loved in the same way.

Everyone wants to be appreciated. Everyone wants to be valued. Everyone wants to be acknowledged. Everyone wants to be seen. Everyone wants to be loved.

However, the specific expression of love that would resonate and is potent enough to completely change life’s trajectory for one person at any a given time could be quite different from what would be required for another.

I believe how people are 'left' after interacting with a business is the real bottom line. The balance sheet or a signed employment letter is only part of the story. By how businesses are leaving people, I mean what is the mental, emotional, physiological, psychological state businesses leave the human beings that interact with it?

And where does it then go? How might that state influence

…their interactions with fellow commuters later that day?

...how they engage with their family when they return home?

...their disposition towards the first person they interact with at the next business they go to?

... their view of themselves?

There is often a missed connection between how we see people and the outcomes we want in business. Two things are of significant consequence to nearly all outcomes in life and particularly business - how people see and treat other people, and how people see and treat themselves. How we 'see' another (also colored by how we see ourselves) spills over to how we treat one another.

When organizations are driven by Love for people - regardless of if those people are termed ‘customers’ or ‘employees’ (or 'suppliers'... or 'community members'... or any category we place the humans that comprise the ecosystem of every organization in) - it exponentially drives the financial, operational and strategic success of a business