CN Valentine's Day, art by Tricia Walker

Most of our Valentine’s Day thoughts during this snowbound week are about our loved ones. But love happens at work, too, and we don’t mean romantic love (for the most part). People perform better at work if they feel loved there: There’s at least one published academic study that supports this theory (plus, the study is titled after a Tina Turner song that we adore).

With so much love in the air, we’ve been talking about what we love about working with our clients:

“I love taking crazy risks with my friends and knowing that it really isn’t a risk, because we always pull it off. I have a client who no longer asks ‘Do you think your team could…’ We have done a cooking competition and a dance competition for her and her 250 colleagues, and both have been wildly successful. Now the request starts with ‘Let’s figure out how to…’ and usually ends with ‘you are the only people I know who could pull this off.’ I love being those people.”

The real treat here many days is helping organizations come together, think better, and move forward in unexpected ways, often by encouraging them to bring more of themselves to their work: “I love getting to help people tell their stories better. With the right purpose and frame of mind, you can almost always make someone’s business story more personal, and someone’s personal story more impactful, and it’s really rewarding to be useful to people in this way. “

And that moment when it all comes together? “I love seeing the look on a client’s face when we wow them with our work and make them look really good in front of their people.”

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.

(illustration by Tricia Walker)

 

 

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