The Center: Transforming a Workspace into Community
* Co-Authored by Lili Boyanova Hugh and Renée Smith
** This blog contains an exciting announcement about what is next to further our mission of creating and maintaining loving and human workplaces and communities. Make sure to read to the end so you don’t miss this thrilling unveiling!
Our Inherent Desire for Community
It is our human nature to want to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
As social animals, we evolved in groups, relying on each other for survival. Being part of a group provided safety and protection. Culturally, from a young age, we are educated about social structures and learn the value of being part of a group.
So, it is our inherent drive to seek belonging. It gives meaning and purpose to our lives to make a positive impact on each other’s well-being.
Modern Individualism - At Odds with Vibrant Community
Our interdependence and connection are part of life. No entity exists in complete isolation. Understanding this principle is so essential in creating and maintaining balance, health, and sustainability in systems.
But even though our mutual dependence is fundamental, in the Western world, individualism, self-reliance, and personal success have been highly valued for generations. This results in a competitive mindset primarily focused on individual growth. Achievement, status, and wealth have devalued mutual care and collaboration.
The Change We Make: Emphasizing and Empowering Loving Communities
The turn from Fear to Love is, at its core, a turn toward structures that promote and activate mutual care, collective responsibility, and collaboration. Putting love at the center of our work requires us to build a community. A community that offers a place to catalyze the shift.
The journey to love-based workplace structures can be an overwhelming task. By creating a dedicated and intentional community space to First Be It, we move away from isolation and separation into togetherness.
When we co-create a space for people to arrive united by a shared purpose, and feel safe, seen, and supported, we replace fear and competition with love and collaboration. We return to that innate mutual caring and interconnectivity.
The Power of Intentional Community
When we build a community, we aren't just forming a group of people. We are creating a microcosm of society that mirrors the structures and norms in which we want to live. A community puts our vision in practice. It creates a new collective narrative. It strengthens the belief that an alternative possibility exists.
The establishment of such a community isn't a far-off dream. In fact, it is with a deep sense of purpose and anticipation that we introduce you to the formation of the Center for a Loving Workplace.
Our Exciting Announcement
The Center for a Loving Workplace is a new non-profit organization (US application in progress) formed to create create a community that is the living embodiment of these ideas, and to create research and thought leadership grounded in the shared lived experiences of members.
What is the Center for a Loving Workplace?
The Center is where social innovators and change-makers come together to experience, explore, experiment, and express the immense potential of love in our workspaces.
The Center is a dynamic laboratory, a confluence of diverse minds and hearts pushing the boundaries of what we know and understand about the role of love at work.
Our members are possibilitarians. They are leaders and change-makers who dare to put theory into practice, challenging the status quo and transforming their own work environments into vibrant communities of love: compassion, collaboration, and collective success.
What Will The Center Do?
The Center seeks to turn words into actions, concepts into realities, and ideas into tangible changes. Here, love isn't just a concept we discuss, but a force we actively harness to shape how people around the world work, interact, and succeed together.
Our mission is to amplify the importance and practice of putting love at the center of work so that workplaces everywhere embrace love as a core value and embodied practice.
How Will The Center Do It?
We do this in two parts.
First, the Center provides a dedicated, loving community where leaders and change-makers from all backgrounds and fields are supported and nurtured on this courageous journey. Members learn from this visceral experience what it means to put love at the center of worklife.
Next, from this space of relationship, we co-create practical content on loving workplaces to share with the world – thought leadership, research, storytelling in different forms, resources, and more. This content will make the case for why leaders and teams everywhere should foster more loving workplaces and how to do this each day.
This body of work will include practical strategies to infuse love into daily leadership, team habits, and organizational cultures. It will show how to create work environments that foster belonging, honor diversity, and promote both individual and collective growth. Center members do this to not just change our own workplaces but to influence the fabric of society by embodying an alternative narrative of love, care, and interconnectivity.
You’re Invited To Celebrate With Us!
We will have many more details to share in the weeks ahead! To begin, we invite you to celebrate with us the forming of this new Center for a Loving Workplace! Here are three ways to join us in this celebration and to begin to engage:
Follow the Center on its brand-new social media channels: Instagram and LinkedIn.
Join the Public Square inside our dedicated Virtual Village Network where we will share very special updates from our journey together.
Attend our Launch Cafe (Tue Sept 12 @ 7a PT | ET | 3pm BST) or Pub (Wed Sept 13 @ 12pm PT | ET | 8pm BST ) in September.
With joy and loving anticipation,
Lili Boyanova Hugh, Executive Director, and Renée Smith, Board Member
Cofounders of the Center for a Loving Workplace
