As a Love Language, Work
This week has been one of the darkest of the year: sunsets at 4 p.m. in Berlin, where I live, and the number of COVID cases in the United States is increasing tremendously, with one in every 300 Americans now testing positive.
But there is also light.
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I read about Uur ahin and Zlem Türeci, the scientist husband-and-wife dream team behind BioNTech and Pfizer's collaborative COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough, along with many others. Their research has the potential to have a huge impact on our lives, but their personal tale is equally inspiring and a source of hope for many people.
It hit home for me as the author of a book about business romanticism. ahin and Türeci exemplify what I've been writing about for the past few years, as well as what the House of Beautiful Business, the think tank and community I co-founded, strives to promote: work as a deeply personal labour of love, a commitment to a cause greater than yourself, and a dash of romance thrown in for good measure.
For a change, reading the responses on social media was really heartwarming. So many people complimented each other. The two scientists were complimented for their modesty and work ethic by several. Others praised them – German citizens of Turkish descent — as a shining example of a more varied and open society, while others emphasised their age (both over 50) to highlight age discrimination. Almost every comment I came across was gracious, generous, and genuine. They added considerably more light to an already brightly illuminated environment.
Also this week, two items in the New York Times resonated with me: one was a book review by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie of Barack Obama's biography, A Promised Land. The review is beautifully produced, matching the level of its subject and serving as an elegant text on its own, not stealing the show but enhancing the original. The reviewer and the subject received a lot of appreciation ("Even without having read the book, I feel like I already know it, but I'm still interested in reading the real thing"; "History will be kind to Obama"). You don't have to agree with everything said, but I was moved by their charity in this circumstance as well.
In addition, with the publication of his most recent recording, Budapest Concert, which was most likely his last live performance, I read a New York Times profile of pianist Keith Jarrett. He informed reporters that after two strokes, the most he could accomplish with his left hand was possibly hold a cup. There was an outpouring of affection in the reader comments! When you look through them, you realise how many lives Jarrett's music has touched — from The Köln Concert, which has become the soundtrack of many lives (and also of this beautiful segment in Nanni Moretti's film Dear Diary, where it accompanies the director and the viewer to the site where Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered) to the Budapest Concert — and how much his live performances will be missed.
All of these answers made me understand that finding words for other people's work (and words) is a labour of love. It's what critics, fans, and lovers do. They give each other names, adapt each other's language, and even create their own, a hidden code that gives even the most basic things meaning.
Some people feel that love is expressed through acts and becomes tangible when we contact, but I'm not one of them. That, I suppose, qualifies me as a romantic. I believe that love is expressed through words, including useless attempts to express what cannot be expressed and stays unattainable. Because words do not "talk," actions do not speak louder than words. They just sit there potently, and the more precisely they are chosen, the quieter – and more powerful — they become. When we find the appropriate words for each other, love becomes tangible.
This is an important lesson to remember if we want to make business more beautiful. We need to be more tender at all times, not just during growth sprints that are punctuated by mindfulness and meditation exercises, rituals, and retreats. No, with every engagement, we need to wrap business in new terms, reading and writing more into things than they appear on the surface. To lead brilliantly, you must establish a love language, whether it's through email, PowerPoint, Slack, memos, performance reports, or meetings. It is honouring someone else's work and words with your own; not dimming but brightening the light; not criticising but criticising each other with the words of a reviewer, a fan, or a lover.
Tim Leberecht is the co-founder and co-CEO of the House of Beautiful Business, a global platform and community dedicated to making people and businesses more human and beautiful. The House inspires and enables business and nonprofit leaders, founders, technologists, policymakers, scientists, artists, and philosophers to reinvent their organisations and themselves, and to shape new visions for the future of business and society through gatherings, online programmes, publications, and art.