Leading with Love and Laughter: Letting Go and Getting Real at Work

by Zina Sutch, Patrick Malone

Leadership has for too long been treated as a function and not as a relationship. Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone argue that successful leadership must be based on love (altruism and empathy) and laughter (positive emotions and joy).Science tells us that humans are deeply wired for empathy and compassion and that our emotional selves help us make better decisions and motivate others. However, the tactics we use to train leaders bear little reflection of these advancements; we're still creating competent but emotionally distant leaders who “manage human assets” and lead by setting goals, deadlines, and deliverables.Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone hope to flip a light switch and illuminate, above all else, that leadership begins with heart and soul. Too many training programs reduce leadership to an equation, matrix, or acronym. But leadership is a relationship. It's one human helping another. The most successful leaders show they genuinely care about their employees and are, well, fun. It's just like any relationship. In seven succinct chapters, the authors show that people lead best when they tap into their genetically driven human nature to love and nurture, connect and trust. Leading with love and laughter offers powerful tighter teams, stronger performance, improved morale, greater trust, more creativity, and even better health. While Sutch and Malone cite the science and offer examples, tips, and practices, their larger purpose is to reintroduce the warmth of human interaction and emotion as the foundation of what leadership is all about.

Genres: Leadership

160 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 25, 2021

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone are impressive in how they just go for it proverbially with their brand of corporate philosophy in Leading with Love and Laughter. The subtitle of the book reads Letting Go and Getting Real at Work, and like the title it fits the book’s straightforward and purposefully simplistic delivery. Sutch and Malone aren’t interested in trying to push what one could call their anti-traditionalist, radical-to-corporate conservatives philosophy in neutered or watered-down prose to fit the widest possible audience. They’re preaching to a very specific choir, specifically a millennial-centric set of generations, and as a result the book is refreshingly unguarded and concise in terms of language choice and in terms of conceptual presentation. In the spirit of similar, post-modernists’ positions on leadership - be it within a professional or personal capacity, perhaps both - it all boils down to almost overly holistic and altruistic ideals and tenets that, if literally applied, will redefine the very nature of the term ‘workplace’. “That feeling we get when we love, or when we’re loved, is like no other,” Sutch and Malone write in one of the book’s key ruminating passages. “Some may describe it as a warm, cozy feeling. Others claim it feels like nausea. It’s actually both. And when love is absent in our lives, we experience feelings as well: emptiness, loneliness, even illness. Love has a way about it, physiologically and psychologically.” They go on to elaborate that holistic ideals like their definition and description of ‘Love’ aren’t antithetical to the colder, more pragmatic concepts of ‘success’, ‘industry’, being ‘prolific’, and being ‘proactive’. They may, however, do harm to the age-old ideas of business being the snake pit, and said idea of the snake pit being for the strictly certifiable ‘cutthroats’. Sutch and Malone go on to elaborate that coming at a bare minimum from a place of empathy, particularly if one holds a position of power, is mandatory for running a smooth enterprise in today’s times. This is essentially a more detailed articulation of the ‘top down’ argument, debunking the company’s exclusion of its unifying vision and revelations to a certain echelon, or level. Rather, it’s all about keeping everyone - from the lowest position to the highest and most desirable - equally invested and informed about goals, commitments, and prospects making up the entirety of the business enterprise.

In the spirit of this, Sutch and Malone summarize: “Imagine being in a workplace where you hear words like these spoken by your colleagues: ‘We all gelled right away’ and ‘It was just real chill, like a family atmosphere, just genuine love.’ When asked what made the environment so great, the response was, ‘We’d have these long conversations about . . . anything.’ Or, ‘It was pretty cool to see how we would all get super-focused and locked in. It was really fun with this group. We got so close and had each other’s backs. Everybody was genuinely happy for each other and having so much fun.’” The fact again that words like ‘love’, ‘happiness’, and ‘laughter’ line each and every argument within this specific leadership advice guide reinforce Sutch and Malone mean business - but in the most appropriately maudlin of ways. This is the future, they argue. It’s time for the old dinosaurs and the burgeoning professionals to learn new ways…

[Con Vicissitudes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this to motivate myself in the workspace. It proved both inspiring and encouraging.

[Dorothy Koch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Puts a different spin and challenge to leadership. But although a short book, it could have been shorter and more to the point.

[The 99th Edition · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leading with love and Laughter, interesting concept, but i imaging it requires a certain level of "luxury" in the work place to be applied?!