Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work

by Amelia Dunlop

Wall Street Journal bestsellerHave you ever struggled to feel worthy at work? Do you know or lead people who do?

When Amelia Dunlop first heard the phrase "elevating the human experience" in a leadership team meeting with her boss, she thought, "He is crazy if he thinks we will ever say those words out loud to each other much less to a potential client."

We've been conditioned to separate our personal and professional selves, but work is fundamental to our human experience. Love and worth have a place in work because our humanity and authentic identities make our work better. The acknowledgement of our intrinsic worth as human beings and the nurturing of our own or another's growth through love ultimately contribute to higher performance and organizational growth. Now as the Chief Experience Officer at Deloitte Digital, a leading Experience Consultancy, Amelia Dunlop knows we must embrace elevating the human experience for the advancement and success of ourselves and our organizations.

This book integrates the findings of a quantitative study to better understand feelings of love and worth in the workplace and introduces three paths that allow individuals to create the professional experience they desire for themselves, their teams, and their clients.

The first path explores the path of the self, an inward path where we learn to love ourselves when we show up for work, and examines the obstacles that hinder us. The second path centers around learning to love and recognize the worth of another in our lives, adding to the worth we feel and providing a source of meaning to our lives. The third path considers the community of work and learning to love and recognize the worth of those we meet every day at work, especially for those who may be systematically marginalized, unseen, or unrepresented. Drawing on her own personal journey to find love and worth at work in her twenty-year career as a management consultant, Amelia also weaves together insights from philosophers, theologians, and sociologists with the stories of people from diverse backgrounds gathered during her research.

Elevating the Human Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work is for anyone who has felt the struggle to feel worthy at work, as well as for those who have no idea what it may feel like to struggle every day just to feel loved and worthy, but love people and lead people who do. It’s a practical approach to elevating the human experience that will lead to important conversations about values and purpose, and ultimately, meaningful change.

Genres: Business, Management

215 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 26, 2021

About the author

Amelia Dunlop is the Chief Experience Officer for Deloitte Digital and leads the Customer Strategy & Applied Design practice for Deloitte in the US. She is a Principal at Deloitte LLP and was previously a Partner at the Monitor Group.

Amelia is passionate about elevating the human experience and exploring how organizations can connect with the humans whom they call customers and employees. She loves solving messy problems that require both new insights about what it means to be human and new innovative solutions.

Amelia speaks and publishes frequently on the topic of the human experience, strategy, and innovation. She received Consulting Magazines Top Women in Technology award for Excellence Innovation in 2020. She holds a degree in Sociology from Harvard University, a Masters in Theology from Boston College, and an MBA from Cambridge University. Originally from London, England, Amelia lives in Somerville, Ma with her husband and three children.

Reviews

[David Hutchens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I see an exciting and overdue conversation emerging in the organizational world around the humanity of workers and leaders. What is role of love in an organizational context? It’s a huge question — one that I’ve been thinking about too — and Amelia Dunlop has made a wonderful contribution to the dialogue. The author brings a lot of vulnerability to this conversation, and she is a credible messenger. Her conversations around “mirrored worth” and the “types of allies” (and when to step into each of those roles) gave me new ideas to chew on. The fact that she is in a senior position and advocating for this conversation at Deloitte makes me excited for the future of Deloitte. I hope more leaders will embrace this conversation.

[Melody Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Excellent topic, but not from someone who has a heart, soul or is human. Would be great to learn from someone who actually has experience here. Not everyone is privileged enough to advance the corporate ladder by being a white woman, whose company was acquired by a giant. Nor is everyone at the top vindictive and insecure like this one is. Wish she actually helped other woman without getting them to fork over money and pat her ego.

[Virginia Vassalotti · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the content of the book makes sense, I feel that the author and the data behind it are not authentic. The author claims to lift up the voices of the marginalized, underrepresented, but when looking at the survey results the majority of individuals were white, middle class, straight, cisgender.

[Mujahid Aziz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoy the very quietness to the book like in a hospital vibe. Great quotes a feminist more approach to open love in a unconditional format. A little be more vocabulary terminology for more enjoy but also again more root greek meaning words to explain conceptualization of worthiness of love.