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Design Love In: How to Unleash the Most Powerful Force in Business
From New York Times bestselling author and pioneer of the strengths movement comes a bold new blueprint for leading with the most powerful force in business—love.
Think about the last time you said, "I love that." Maybe it was about a product that exceeded expectations, a service experience that built instant loyalty, or a moment when your work brought out the best in you. That reaction isn't just emotional—it's electric. In the organization, it fuels engagement, strengthens performance, and drives lasting success. Yet most leaders don't even acknowledge it, let alone measure or make use of it.
In Design Love In, leading researcher on human performance and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham reveals how love—the deep connection that makes people feel seen, valued, and inspired—isn't just a soft feeling. It's a measurable driver of performance and growth. He shows how leaders, as experience-makers, can intentionally "design love in" to everything we our interactions with team members, our company policies and practices, the products and services and experiences we create for those we lead and serve. When we do this, we not only unlock deeper commitment, higher engagement, stronger customer loyalty, and lasting business results, we strengthen the human connection between us and create a better world.
Featuring vivid stories of global brands, current research, and personal experiences, Buckingham illustrates that tapping into this force is not simply about being more "warm and fuzzy"—it's a concrete strategy of utilizing loving experiences to drive behaviors to drive outcomes, and the book provides step-by-step advice on how to "design love in" to all your actions as a leader.
Love—it's the most powerful force in business. This book shows how you as a leader can unleash it.
Think about the last time you said, "I love that." Maybe it was about a product that exceeded expectations, a service experience that built instant loyalty, or a moment when your work brought out the best in you. That reaction isn't just emotional—it's electric. In the organization, it fuels engagement, strengthens performance, and drives lasting success. Yet most leaders don't even acknowledge it, let alone measure or make use of it.
In Design Love In, leading researcher on human performance and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham reveals how love—the deep connection that makes people feel seen, valued, and inspired—isn't just a soft feeling. It's a measurable driver of performance and growth. He shows how leaders, as experience-makers, can intentionally "design love in" to everything we our interactions with team members, our company policies and practices, the products and services and experiences we create for those we lead and serve. When we do this, we not only unlock deeper commitment, higher engagement, stronger customer loyalty, and lasting business results, we strengthen the human connection between us and create a better world.
Featuring vivid stories of global brands, current research, and personal experiences, Buckingham illustrates that tapping into this force is not simply about being more "warm and fuzzy"—it's a concrete strategy of utilizing loving experiences to drive behaviors to drive outcomes, and the book provides step-by-step advice on how to "design love in" to all your actions as a leader.
Love—it's the most powerful force in business. This book shows how you as a leader can unleash it.
213 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 7, 2026
About the author
Marcus Buckingham
86 books618 followersIn a world where efficiency and competency rule the workplace, where do personal strengths fit in?
It's a complex question, one that intrigued Cambridge-educated Marcus Buckingham so greatly, he set out to answer it by challenging years of social theory and utilizing his nearly two decades of research experience as a Sr. Researcher at Gallup Organization to break through the preconceptions about achievements and get to the core of what drives success.
The result of his persistence, and arguably the definitive answer to the strengths question can be found in Buckingham's four best-selling books First, Break All the Rules (coauthored with Curt Coffman, Simon & Schuster, 1999); Now, Discover Your Strengths (coauthored with Donald O. Clifton, The Free Press, 2001); The One Thing You Need to Know (The Free Press, 2005) and Go Put Your Strengths To Work (The Free Press, 2007). The author gives important insights to maximizing strengths, understanding the crucial differences between leadership and management, and fulfilling the quest for long-lasting personal success. In his most recent book, Buckingham offers ways to apply your strengths for maximum success at work.
What would happen if men and women spent more than 75% of each day on the job using their strongest skills and engaged in their favorite tasks, basically doing exactly what they wanted to do?
According to Marcus Buckingham (who spent years interviewing thousands of employees at every career stage and who is widely considered one of the world's leading authorities on employee productivity and the practices of leading and managing), companies that focus on cultivating employees' strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success.
If such a theory sounds revolutionary, that's because it is. Marcus Buckingham calls it the “strengths revolution.”
As he addresses more than 250,000 people around the globe each year, Buckingham touts this strengths revolution as the key to finding the most effective route to personal success and the missing link to the efficiency, competency, and success for which many companies constantly strive.
To kick-start the strengths revolution, Buckingham and Gallup developed the StrengthsFinder exam (StrengthsFinder.com), which identifies signature themes that help employees quantify their personal strengths in the workplace and at home. Since the StrengthsFinder debuted in 2001, more than 1 million people have discovered their strengths with this useful and important tool.
In his role as author, independent consultant and speaker, Marcus Buckingham has been the subject of in-depth profiles in The New York Times, Fortune, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal and is routinely lauded by such corporations as Toyota, Coca-Cola, Master Foods, Wells Fargo, Yahoo and Disney as an invaluable resource in informing, challenging, mentoring and inspiring people to find their strengths and obtain and sustain long-lasting personal success.
A wonderful resource for leaders, managers, and educators, Buckingham challenges conventional wisdom and shows the link between engaged employees and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and the rate of turnover. Buckingham graduated from Cambridge University in 1987 with a master's degree in Social and Political Science.
It's a complex question, one that intrigued Cambridge-educated Marcus Buckingham so greatly, he set out to answer it by challenging years of social theory and utilizing his nearly two decades of research experience as a Sr. Researcher at Gallup Organization to break through the preconceptions about achievements and get to the core of what drives success.
The result of his persistence, and arguably the definitive answer to the strengths question can be found in Buckingham's four best-selling books First, Break All the Rules (coauthored with Curt Coffman, Simon & Schuster, 1999); Now, Discover Your Strengths (coauthored with Donald O. Clifton, The Free Press, 2001); The One Thing You Need to Know (The Free Press, 2005) and Go Put Your Strengths To Work (The Free Press, 2007). The author gives important insights to maximizing strengths, understanding the crucial differences between leadership and management, and fulfilling the quest for long-lasting personal success. In his most recent book, Buckingham offers ways to apply your strengths for maximum success at work.
What would happen if men and women spent more than 75% of each day on the job using their strongest skills and engaged in their favorite tasks, basically doing exactly what they wanted to do?
According to Marcus Buckingham (who spent years interviewing thousands of employees at every career stage and who is widely considered one of the world's leading authorities on employee productivity and the practices of leading and managing), companies that focus on cultivating employees' strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success.
If such a theory sounds revolutionary, that's because it is. Marcus Buckingham calls it the “strengths revolution.”
As he addresses more than 250,000 people around the globe each year, Buckingham touts this strengths revolution as the key to finding the most effective route to personal success and the missing link to the efficiency, competency, and success for which many companies constantly strive.
To kick-start the strengths revolution, Buckingham and Gallup developed the StrengthsFinder exam (StrengthsFinder.com), which identifies signature themes that help employees quantify their personal strengths in the workplace and at home. Since the StrengthsFinder debuted in 2001, more than 1 million people have discovered their strengths with this useful and important tool.
In his role as author, independent consultant and speaker, Marcus Buckingham has been the subject of in-depth profiles in The New York Times, Fortune, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal and is routinely lauded by such corporations as Toyota, Coca-Cola, Master Foods, Wells Fargo, Yahoo and Disney as an invaluable resource in informing, challenging, mentoring and inspiring people to find their strengths and obtain and sustain long-lasting personal success.
A wonderful resource for leaders, managers, and educators, Buckingham challenges conventional wisdom and shows the link between engaged employees and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and the rate of turnover. Buckingham graduated from Cambridge University in 1987 with a master's degree in Social and Political Science.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 22, 2026
He does it again!
LOVE this one! Why Love matters in our businesses and how to instill it with our coworkers and customers. Thank you Marcus!!
LOVE this one! Why Love matters in our businesses and how to instill it with our coworkers and customers. Thank you Marcus!!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
The author of best-sellers such as First, Break All the Rules and StrengthsFinder, is back with what might be his most arresting work thus far. Marcus Buckingham exhorts companies to adopt a paradigm shift in both their operations and outlook by ‘designing’ in the element of love. Design In Love pays undivided attention and wholehearted tribute to the one emotion that is all encompassing and not just universal. And in the process, reveals many facets which even though simmering right underneath our noses, have been unfortunately dismissed and disregarded as mirages.
Currently, the hallmark of many organisations, irrespective of the sector or segment of their operations, adopt an impersonal outlook towards not just customers, but also their own employees. As Buckingham demonstrates, customers and employees are faced with innumerable ‘hand-offs’ (physically and virtually being passed along department by department and personnel to personnel), shapeshifting (Delta airlines altering their frequent flyer programme from miles flown to amounts spent on credit cards), large spans of control leading to high attritions and outsourcing at the cost of empathy. Each of these experiences, bordering on indifference on the part of the manufacturer/service provider, according to Buckingham, is “unloving” to the recipient of the service or the product.
In order to transform unloving experiences into flourishing and memorable ones, Buckingham suggests incorporating five feelings of love: control, harmony, significance, warmth of others, and growth.
The act of control removes the disorienting fog of confusion, by providing appropriate clarifications and ensuring that the customer or employee is always on top and in control. Anticipating the emotional state and freeing a person from emotional incoherence lends harmony to every experience. As Buckingham illustrates, the nurses who administer injections and drips with the least amount of pain are those who prior to commencing their procedure, gently but candidly inform their patients that there is going to be a bit of pain.
The five feelings of love need to be ‘administered’ in a sequential manner and not in a random way. A leader can design in love in her workplace by being both a mover and a maker. A mover leads with authenticity, beliefs and customs. While a mover designs in love as an innate quality, a maker spreads it outwards thereby impacting and influencing everyone around him.
Buckingham also intersperses this philosophy with a clutch of real-world experiences. Disney’s ethos of providing genuine customer experiences for people thronging their theme parks, Patagonia’s resolute and undying promise to make the world a better place and practicing what they preach, all make for some absorbing reading.
Taking a contrarian approach, Buckingham cocks a snook at the process of feedback. Terming it archaic he makes a clarion call for discarding the same. Instead, a leader would do well to ‘Walk the Stage’. As demonstrated by Joey, an employee at the departmental store Kroger, a leader would do well to put himself into the shoes of his customer and try experiencing the pleasures and pains which a customer would, by walking around the store. This is the best feedback mechanism one can incorporate.
Design Love In contains more such examples that are thought provoking. Marcus Buckingham aspires to induce companies to buck the conventional trend and shift to integrating the most powerful life force as an integral part of business.
Design Love In is published by Harvard Business Review Press and will be available on sale beginning April 7, 2026.
Thank you, Net Galley for the Advance Reviewer Copy!
Currently, the hallmark of many organisations, irrespective of the sector or segment of their operations, adopt an impersonal outlook towards not just customers, but also their own employees. As Buckingham demonstrates, customers and employees are faced with innumerable ‘hand-offs’ (physically and virtually being passed along department by department and personnel to personnel), shapeshifting (Delta airlines altering their frequent flyer programme from miles flown to amounts spent on credit cards), large spans of control leading to high attritions and outsourcing at the cost of empathy. Each of these experiences, bordering on indifference on the part of the manufacturer/service provider, according to Buckingham, is “unloving” to the recipient of the service or the product.
In order to transform unloving experiences into flourishing and memorable ones, Buckingham suggests incorporating five feelings of love: control, harmony, significance, warmth of others, and growth.
The act of control removes the disorienting fog of confusion, by providing appropriate clarifications and ensuring that the customer or employee is always on top and in control. Anticipating the emotional state and freeing a person from emotional incoherence lends harmony to every experience. As Buckingham illustrates, the nurses who administer injections and drips with the least amount of pain are those who prior to commencing their procedure, gently but candidly inform their patients that there is going to be a bit of pain.
The five feelings of love need to be ‘administered’ in a sequential manner and not in a random way. A leader can design in love in her workplace by being both a mover and a maker. A mover leads with authenticity, beliefs and customs. While a mover designs in love as an innate quality, a maker spreads it outwards thereby impacting and influencing everyone around him.
Buckingham also intersperses this philosophy with a clutch of real-world experiences. Disney’s ethos of providing genuine customer experiences for people thronging their theme parks, Patagonia’s resolute and undying promise to make the world a better place and practicing what they preach, all make for some absorbing reading.
Taking a contrarian approach, Buckingham cocks a snook at the process of feedback. Terming it archaic he makes a clarion call for discarding the same. Instead, a leader would do well to ‘Walk the Stage’. As demonstrated by Joey, an employee at the departmental store Kroger, a leader would do well to put himself into the shoes of his customer and try experiencing the pleasures and pains which a customer would, by walking around the store. This is the best feedback mechanism one can incorporate.
Design Love In contains more such examples that are thought provoking. Marcus Buckingham aspires to induce companies to buck the conventional trend and shift to integrating the most powerful life force as an integral part of business.
Design Love In is published by Harvard Business Review Press and will be available on sale beginning April 7, 2026.
Thank you, Net Galley for the Advance Reviewer Copy!
April 19, 2026
A great book that will make you rethink how you approach employees and customers.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews