The Love Lab

NEW DATE: 22 November 2024, in central London, details here.

How can we build more loving connections between us – even between strangers? What enables love to flow, including in organisational life?

(‘a proper grown-up exploration of love’: said a recent participant)

So what might it take to bring more love into our work? What might be possible if more love was present between us? How might we gently create the conditions for love? How do we start to build loving connections with people we barely know?

For many people the world of work feels loveless. But if as human beings we are hardwired for love, then it can’t be so. Perhaps it’s more that certain things get in the way of us connecting with that love while we’re at work.

Some people feel that love has no place in the world of work at all. It’s for the private domain, they say. And love is often associated with romance and religion, sex and sentimentality, which doesn’t help.

But we are facing touch times – polarising, fragmented and confusing – and our connection – and a loving connection – to other people will be vital to us.

This session explores ways we can connect with the love that’s already here and suggests these might help us start to cultivate the conditions for more love in our organisations and wider lives. We’ll see how love is just beneath the surface and we can access it more easily than we think.

A bit more detail …

In this one-day workshop, you’ll explore and experiment with what it feels like to build a loving connection. We’ll see what happens when we intentionally try to bring love into the room. What occurs when we actively practice love? What does it mean to try and cultivate a loving connection with someone? And with people we don’t know.

Sometimes we’ll be playful – as with all good experiments – and other times serious. There’ll be small bites of research and input, experiments with how we are together, plenty of time for rich discussion, an talking about application to practice. I’m aiming for joyful, practical, courageous and expansive 🙂

Along the way, we’ll also explore:

• what do we mean by love – and what forms of love are necessary for these tough times we’re in
• what are the blocks and barriers that get in the way of connecting more deeply with each other more of the time
• what sort of conditions can we cultivate to help love flow

At the end of the session, we’ll take a look at what this means for our work in organisations, for leadership practice and for those of us involved in helping organisations adapt and change.

And having experienced them for yourselves, you’ll also leave with a series of activities and experiences that you can adopt or adapt into your own work where creating connection and greater intimacy would be helpful.

Helena x

You can find more information about me and the work in do with love, and my wider organisational practice, via LinkedIn or through my website. And I have a monthly Newsletter exploring all this and more, with the sign up page here.