Leading with Love and Laughter Book Summary - Leading with Love and Laughter Book explained in key points

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Leading with Love and Laughter summary

Name: Leading with Love and Laughter
Rating: 4.3 (158 reviews)
Author: Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone

Zina Sutch Patrick Malone

Letting Go and Getting Real at Work

4.3 (158 ratings)

19 mins

Brief summary

Leading with Love and Laughter by Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone is a guide to effective leadership through positive emotions. With humor and kindness, leaders can inspire and motivate their team, improving productivity and job satisfaction.

Topics

Leadership Work Culture

Table of Contents

Leading with Love and Laughter
Summary of 6 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Become a better leader through love and laughter.

All over the world, the word love is ubiquitous. Chances are you use it in relationships; you love your partners, siblings, parents, and friends – and they love you too. But you probably also love pizza, reading, and many other things that don’t love you back.

On the other hand, you probably don’t often talk about love in relation to the workplace. After all, who loves their coworkers, their bosses, or their staff? You might love your work, but that’s just the same concept as loving pizza.

In these blinks, you’ll discover the real meaning of love and how, by imbuing your leadership with both it and laughter, you can become a better leader.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

the most important type of love to apply as a leader;
the three essential elements to show love in leadership; and
the many ways laughter in the workplace can be beneficial.

Great leadership requires love.

Love is present in some parts of our lives but it’s completely absent in others – especially leadership.

Even though the words love and leadership aren’t often found together, in a 2012 Forbes article, leadership author Mike Myatt posits that great leadership rarely exists without love, and that usually where leadership fails, love is lacking, misplaced, or misguided.

Love is complex and requires comfort with the unknown. Unfortunately, many leaders prefer the comfort of the habitual patterns of leading and opt for established processes and predictability. It’s easy, but it’s not love. And teams notice that. In fact, there’s a strong correlation between workplace emotions and the wellness and engagement of employees; where there’s a lack of love, organizations underperform.

The key message here is: Great leadership requires love.

Of course, you know what love is, right? It’s a common enough concept, after all. But if you’re going to apply love in your leadership, perhaps it’s worth thinking about what it actually is. The ancient Greeks took a philosophical view, classifying love into seven different types of love including eros – physical, sexual love; storge – the unconditional love you feel for your children, parents, and siblings; and philia – the love that exists between friends.

But the type of love that you especially need in leadership is philautia – love of yourself.

Philautia is probably the love that matters most not only to your leadership, but also to your life in general. If you don’t love yourself first, you can’t really love someone else. You need to be able to forgive, nurture, and be kind to yourself. In order to lead – and to love – your team, you need to recognize your own worth, respect yourself, and show yourself compassion. Loving yourself means accepting who you are, and not being afraid of failing or taking risks; you’re open to growth and self-development.

So why should you worry about love in your workplace? Research by Dr. Fiona Beddoes-Jones, founder and CEO of Cognitive Fitness Consultancy, showed that 65 percent of participants thought love was lacking in their workplace. And it’s worth noting that a massive 95 percent said they’d work harder for an organization that really cared. Eighty-three percent thought that managers should be given training in how to love their staff.

Beddoes-Jones defines that love as consisting of compassion, caring, and kindness. Your team members probably deserve that from you, don’t they? After all, we all need love – in every aspect of our lives.

Leaders who love create winning teams and change lives.

Loving leaders come in all shapes and sizes: from organizations known and unknown; small, medium, and large; some may be facing financial hardships, dwindling resources, and talent shortages – others not. One thing’s for sure, they’re everywhere.

They display philautia – the self-love that allows them to accept who they are and be open to risk-taking in their personal and professional relationships. And they also demonstrate philia – the friendship love between equals where each party grows through mutual respect, admiration, and trust. They create environments that engender compassion and caring precisely because they are compassionate and caring. Their love comes from their hearts.

Leading with love requires self-awareness, vulnerability, and kindness.

Research supports the impact love has in the workplace. For example, Wharton professors Sigal Barsade and Olivia A. O’Neill showed that staff who recognized love and care in their work environments had greater job satisfaction, took fewer sick days, and worked better in teams.

Other studies have shown that love creates stronger bonds between team members, and that workplaces with love have tighter teams, a more forgiving culture, better performance, and more trust. One long-term study even showed that those with peer support – which is a form of love – live longer.

Laughter creates a work environment that is relaxed, creative, and more productive.

There are many benefits to laughter. For starters, it can be a workout! Research at Vanderbilt University showed that ten to 15 minutes of laughter used up as much as 50 calories – about the same as in a piece of chocolate.

It also helps prevent you from getting sick: psychoneuroimmunologists have found that laughter not only improves immune function and vascular health, but also relieves pain and improves your mental health.

There are many opportunities throughout the day to use heartfelt humor in the workplace.

It’s March 2020 and staff from the nonprofit People For the American Way are slowly logging into the weekly Zoom call and turning on their videos. Then, Political Director Lizet Ocampo joins. Uncontained laughter from everyone follows, as the call participants see not Ocampo’s face, but a potato with her eyes and lips. She tries desperately to remove the filter, but to no avail – all anyone can see is her potato eyes darting from side to side as she scrambles to solve the problem. In the end, she gives up and endures the giggles, continuing the meeting as a potato.

The key message here is: There are many opportunities throughout the day to use heartfelt humor in the workplace.

Appropriate humor in the workplace provides many benefits.

Laughter can bring numerous benefits to your organization. A 2012 study in the Journal of Managerial Psychology showed that workplace humor created enhanced performance and satisfaction, greater workgroup cohesion, improved health, and less burnout and stress. And in a 2017 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article, the authors argued that successful use of appropriate humor at work signals both confidence and competence. This translates to the joke-teller being perceived as having higher organizational status.

And if you’re still not convinced why a good dose of humor in your workplace would be beneficial, consider this: University of Bristol researchers discovered that watching a comedy show actually produced an improvement in productivity of up to 10 percent.

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What is Leading with Love and Laughter about?

Leading with Love and Laughter (2021) explores how a love-and-laughter approach to leadership can lead to better team performance, improved morale, trust, creativity, and improved health. It provides the information needed for leaders to show love and to navigate the potential problems of humor in the workplace.

Leading with Love and Laughter Review

Leading with Love and Laughter (2021) offers valuable insights on how to be an effective leader by combining the power of love and humor. Here's why this book is worth reading:

Packed with practical strategies and real-life examples, it provides guidance on building strong relationships and fostering a positive work environment.
By emphasizing the importance of emotional intelligence and creating a culture of trust and inclusivity, this book helps leaders bring out the best in their teams.
With its humorous anecdotes and lighthearted tone, the book keeps readers engaged and entertained while delivering valuable leadership lessons.

Who should read Leading with Love and Laughter?

Leaders who want to show their team some love
Laughter-lovers who want to bring humor to the workplace
Managers looking for new ideas to get the most out of their team

About the Author

Zina Sutch is a faculty member in the Key Executive Leadership Programs in the School of Public Affairs at American University where she teaches leadership, team-building, and succession planning courses. Previously, she taught in public and private schools, served as director of a school for students with emotional and behavioral disorders, and was deputy associate director of the Office of Personnel Management.

Patrick Malone is an executive in residence at American University and is also the director of the Key Executive Leadership Program. He worked in the health-care industry after graduating and later joined the Navy as a hospital administrator before retiring after 23 years of naval service.

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