Alright, dusting off my keyboard today to see if these fingers can still do this. Let’s start with a topic that doesn’t usually show up in company environments or leadership decks:

Love.

And no, I’m not talking about the “self-care” brand of love that somehow ends with buying more candles. I actually mean the real, inconvenient, sometimes-messy version...the kind that requires showing up, noticing, participating.

Lessons From My Wedding
A few weeks ago, I married the love of my life, Katie. It was a small, backyard party with music, lawn games, and an unusual number of bubbles. (We literally hired Bubble Lady Linda to spend time with all of the children who came. I’m convinced she is the happiest person alive.)

Kids ran around popping bubbles the size of basketballs. Friends wrote us notes before Katie and I danced down the aisle together. My friend James led a sing-along after dinner. And at one point, we surprised my 70-year-old Egyptian mother with a belly dancer performance that quickly turned into Mamma Saad jumping into the middle of the circle and stealing the show.

It was perfect.

As I reflect on that day, thinking back to everyone laughing, moving, and participating, I can’t help but draw a connection between love and great experiences.

Both require participation.
Both ask you to get off the sidelines.
Both make you feel something.
Both teach you something about yourself and others.

I know all of that may sound great, but what does it have to do with our work?

Loving Growth
I’ve been spending this past year working with CEOs and teams across industries, many of them in moments of transition. And when you strip away all the noise — strategy decks, mergers, reorgs — the real work can only begin when every person reconnects to why they care about any of this in the first place.

Because when people care, they engage. When they engage, they grow. And when they grow, everything else, from performance to innovation and even profit, follows.

There’s a mountain of research backing that up:

• Gallup says employees who feel cared for are twice as likely to stay.
• Harvard studies show emotional connection boosts productivity by over 30%.
• McKinsey calls it “the belonging advantage.”

Deep down, I think we all know this is true. You’ve felt it…when that boss left you a word of encouragement after a tough meeting, or a teammate stayed late to help you with a project, or you worked a little longer on crafting a proposal where you felt ownership.

Love isn’t soft. It’s fuel. And it might be the most radical advantage left in business.

We Don’t Teach Love
Experience Institute doesn’t teach anything about “love” — at least not directly. You won’t find a love framework or exercise in any of the workshops or offsites we lead. But it’s there — in how we spend time with our partners, how we treat the learners, or even hints of it in our workshops like Stories That Move, Human-Centered Innovation, and Cultivating Resilience.

Even in all of the uncertainty of the current moment across the world, experiences that mix learning and doing can remind people that work can still be full of meaning, not just activity.

So, if you need a reminder of what love looks like in practice, look for the moments where you feel engaged, connected, cared for. And, even better, design those moments for others.

It may unlock the thing you’re looking for.