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Program Evaluation and Love
In one of our favorite Creating the Future podcast episodes, Shiree Teng talked about infusing social change work with love. And because one of her consulting specialties is evaluation, the question of “measuring love” has been integral to her work. (Her podcast is linked in the resource section below, as is her brown paper on the subject.)

A simple way to infuse love into your program evaluation could be to simply ask, “In what ways did this program demonstrate love? And love from whom, to whom?”

Employees and Love
Imagine if the purpose of Human Resources was to bring out the best in everyone who worked at the organization! Because wanting the best for another person is a big part of what love feels like.

We’ve seen great examples of love in action when it comes to employees. One of our favorites is an organization where the employees create an Instruction Manual for Working with Me. That could include things like, “I’m at my best after lunch, and not great for early morning meetings.” Or, “I tend to be a slow thinker. If I’m being quiet, I’m listening. It may be a few hours before I have thoughts to share.” What a concrete way of showing love to everyone in that workplace!

We also shared in last week’s newsletter an organization whose employee review process asked, “To what extent did the employee help others to be more effective in their own work?” Their assumption was that everyone would be helping each other. And isn’t that what love is all about?

The next time your board and leadership are reworking your employee manual, have them consider another side of love: mutuality. If we are expecting the employee to show love to the organization, what would it look like in your organization, if that love were mutual? What might it look like in action if the organization loved the employee?

Pay-what-you-can as Love
When it comes to money, our organizations can become scarcity-driven and transactional – the opposite of love in so many ways. And that is especially visible when an organization has programs that people pay to attend, perhaps a theater performance or a workshop.

At Creating the Future, our educational programs are all pay-what-you-can. In our experience, the people who often need those programs the most might be the people who can afford it the least. For us, this is a big part of what love is all about.

We are therefore clear to include love in our instructions, to help folks determine what to pay:

No more than you can afford,
and no less than you feel it is worth.

Those few words tell our community members that we honor and care about you, and that we are also asking you to honor and care about us. We’ve replaced transactional language with the give-and-take at the heart of love.

Working in Community as Love
When we work with our communities from a place of true love, we include them in our decisions, our discussions, our plans. We walk the talk of “nothing about us without us,” which is absolutely a statement of love and respect. (In truth, “love” without respect isn’t love. We’re not sure what it is, but we know what it is not.)

Coming from a place of love, we acknowledge that we’re all in this together. We are walking alongside each other, each of us bringing our wisdom and our gifts to the work. That is very different than “I am here to serve you” or “I am the expert, and I will decide what you need.” If we were talking about a friendship or marriage, can you just feel how gross those phrases feel? Those words may describe a relationship of some sort, but whatever that is, it isn’t love.

That is why Radical Inclusion kicks off the questions of Catalytic Thinking. When the very first question we ask is, “Who will be affected by what we are considering? And what would it take for those individuals to participate in those decisions, to lead the direction we take?” – we are taking steps to work with our community members from a place of love.

This Valentine’s Day – and in this year overall – those of us seeking a more loving world have the opportunity to show what that can look like, right now in the present. And there is no better place to start than the questions of Catalytic Thinking, all of which are absolutely rooted in love.