A love affair celebrated world wide, is called Valentine’s Day. This day which is dedicated to lovers, is right around the corner! In fact, you have exactly 6 days to rush out and get your loved one a gift they may, want, need, or even expect! These gifts will reflect all your thoughts and feelings (or at least some significant ones, hopefully?)! All this effort is displayed just for one day in the year! All over the world, Valentine’s Day has become a major event for the various retailers. For today we rather leave the debate about the commercial interests to another day!
Since Valentine’s Day is all about love, let’s look at how we can connect the two – Love and Business
Love is a two-way thing. It’s all about connecting with your someone special. Just like the couples in love connect with each other, collaboration is a key connecting point and very much needed in our businesses. The need to connect across business units has become key regardless of the organisation involved. In the same way that we need to understand the other person if we want to have them enjoy Valentine’s Day with us, so is there a need in business to strive to understand your colleagues. The prevalence of the silo operation (where teams or even individual colleagues work in a state of disconnect and do not share information with each other) can be seen in many corporations!
One has to also wonder why it is so hard to break down the silo mentality. When one digs deeper, one will often discover that the fear of sharing, fear of being exposed, fear of a lack of knowledge, fear of letting go of control or simply a lack of communication channels, is abound! Yet, looking at a couple who collaborates successfully on matters of the heart, they will tell you that forming an enduring reciprocal relationship is all about communication, especially listening and sharing. Once we get over the hurdle of feeling that we need to prove ourselves and start opening up and becoming receptive, success awaits in whatever context.
We find that most couples struggle to perfect the art of collaboration but we can all learn from those who have made strides in this regard. They have developed skills how to interact with one another and we at Facets of Growth try to emulate this in a business context where we have noticed that those “couples” are also few and far between in the business world.
Who would have thought that love and business have so much in common?!