Putting Love at the Center E21
“When we shrink fear what takes its place is love,” shares Renée Smith, CEO and Founder of the Human Workplace. She sees putting love at the center as her joyful assignment and she has built a thriving organization around it. What does love at work mean? Renée asked this as part of the primary research she conducted and found that love has many facets, including: respect, trust, kindness, compassion, equity, appreciation, justice and courage.
She loves Moshe Engelberg’s definition: “love is the energy that uplifts and connects.” How do we practice love at work? One way is to let love in and trust that what we need will be there. We only need to open our eyes to see and let go of our preconceived notions of what provisions should look like. Enjoy this episode of Rooted & Unwavering and experience the trust and confidence that comes online when we practice love. Reflects Renée: How on earth are we going to get results if we don’t care for each other?
A Human Workplace is a boutique consultancy that guides leaders and teams who guide leaders and teams to make work more loving and human. The collective work of AHW’s affiliated practitioners and change makers is based on the pioneering research of Renee Smith, MSOD. She collected and analyzed the stories of hundreds of people from around the world to learn from their experiences of fear and love at work.
the message and practices shared by our Hosts, Coaches, and Consultants inspire, teach, and equip leaders, teams, and organizations to create workplaces that are high-performing and exceptional places to work. We offer talks, gatherings, workshops, coaching, consulting, and a global community to affirm and uplift human dignity and success at work, wherever that work takes place!
AHW centers the practice of love in the organization, first living into and exploring the benefits and opportunities as well as the challenges of working together in this way. Team members are experts in their fields from a variety of backgrounds and industries who are committed to changing the way organizations and teams work for good. Their unique cultural programs and resources are based on both their research and experiences with teams; you won’t find these anywhere else.
A Human Workplace offers consulting, coaching, learning, and facilitation to inspire, grow and strengthen your human workplace. Work is a central part of life and no one should have to leave their humanity at the door as they enter the workplace. Instead, AHW helps teams move away from being mechanistic, de-personalized and toxic to being human-friendly, uplifting, healthy places. This more human organization is both good for people and good for business. That’s A Human Workplace!
Renée Smith (she/her) is the founder and CEO of A Human Workplace, a boutique consultancy that guides leaders and teams to make work more loving and human. This is based on her primary qualitative research collecting and analyzing stories of hundreds of people to learn from their experiences of love and fear in the workplace.
Prior to launching AHW as the pandemic began, she served in the Governor’s Office as Director of Workplace Transformation for the State of Washington, a position created for her to focus on bringing more loving, respectful, inclusive, compassionate experiences to state government teams. She also led award-winning culture change work as Director of Organization Development for the Department of Enterprise Services.
Smith has spoken to hundreds of audiences in ten countries, is a prolific blogger, is published in several journals, and has appeared on numerous podcasts effectively making the business case for love. Smith earned a Master of Science in Organization Development from Pepperdine University and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from the University of Washington. She researches, writes, teaches, and advises clients from her home in the Pacific Northwest of Washington State.
When she is not traveling, she enjoys sculling on the Puget Sound, drawing with oil pastels, concocting craft cocktails for friends, and hosting “Grandma Camp” in the summer and “Reindeer Games” in the winter for her grandchildren.
Connect with Renée on LinkedIn and follow AHW on Facebook and Instagram.
About Rooted & Unwavering
Peace, Compassion, Wisdom, Purposefulness, Creativity and Strength come online in us when we deeply connect with the true, unwavering greatness that lives within ourselves and others.
In this podcast and radio show, Hylke Faber, seasoned transformational coach and author of the award-winning Taming Your Crocodiles series, engages in deep inquiry with leaders from all walks of life about courageously connecting with our true selves, others and the world at large.
How do we stay connected to our true selves and our greatness, especially when we are challenged? How do we rest in the heart, also when our mind keeps us restless? What becomes possible when we truly stay committed to our own and others’ best selves, also when we don’t feel it? How do we practice staying connected to our true selves, in the midst of our busy lives?
Join us and leave inspired to act on your heart’s greatness and that of the people around you.
About Our Host
For as long as he can remember Hylke Faber has been curious about what this life is about. His ongoing inquiry has become his work: helping people individually and collectively to discover what is possible in life and express that authentically and fearlessly.
Hylke started his work life with Towers Perrin as consultant and then as Partner with Strategic Decisions Group, serving a wide range of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, consumer electronics and life sciences companies. A major shift occurred during this critical phase of his life. He had become the typical, hard-charging, 16-hours-a-day strategy consultant, and was burning out at a rapid clip.
When he discovered meditation, everything changed. He was so taken by his new discoveries that he chose to bring to business what he was learning: that there is a way we can have it all – we can be fulfilled, do work we love, and create extraordinary results with others. He thinks of it as creating a sense of ease in business.
He learned how to coach and facilitate human transformation completing his coaching certification with Newfield Network and by working at Axialent, the culture and leadership company. After a few years, he founded Co-Creation Partners together with other leaders in the field of transformation and personal development. Then he formed Constancee to help people grow by creating the conditions where deep personal, interpersonal and organizational shifts happen routinely.
He leads Growth Leaders Network, the culture and team development consultancy. He has also taught coaching at Columbia Business School Executive Education and has contributed to Harvard Business Review. He is currently teaching a course on Climate Conscious Leadership at Arizona State University. His award-winning book, Taming Your Crocodiles: Unlearn Fear & Become a True Leader, was published by Dover in 2018.
His next book, Taming Your Crocodiles Practices for Leadership Depth, came out in 2020. Besides helping others grow, which he loves, he is a trained opera singer, enjoys hiking and writing, is an avid reader, in particular of biographies, and is always in the process of growing himself. He integrates all of what he learns in his work with executives.
Connect with Hylke on LinkedIn.
About Our Sponsor
Realizing Your Greatness
We are a team of experienced facilitators and coaches dedicated to helping individuals, teams and organizations thrive by helping them recognize their innate greatness and putting it to work.
- Executive Coaching: we work with clients individually to help them connect to their calling and use every challenge as an opportunity to help them grow more into what makes them great.
- Team Performance: we help teams evolve to their next level of excellence, connectedness and impact by working on the root drivers of team performance.
- Culture Development: we help organizations to evolve their culture by creating clarity about where they aspire to go, and by building role models, coaches and systems that catalyze people being energized to work the new way.
- Key Notes: we deliver powerful speeches at conferences and other events that help audiences become energized, more connected to themselves and each other, more open to discovery and ready to commit to the next stage of learning in their career and life journeys.
Growth Leaders Network (GLN) serves Fortune 500 companies, smaller organizations and non-profits globally.
GLN clients report that we catalyze significant business transformational impact and profound shifts in people, team and organizations at the root cause level.
Learn more about the Growth Leaders network here.
