Renée Smith’s Compelling Case for Loving Leadership
In our fast-paced, results-driven work culture, it’s easy to get caught up in fear-based leadership tactics that breed negativity, stress, and burnout. But as Renée Smith, founder of A Human Workplace, passionately argues, leading with love is not only better for people – it’s better for business too.
In her podcast series on Gut + Science, “To Work With Love,” Renée makes a compelling case for why love should be at the center of how we approach work and leadership. She shares shocking statistics that highlight the high costs of fear and toxic workplaces:
The Staggering Impact of Toxic Workplaces
- 89% of people experience symptoms of burnout
- 85% are disengaged at work
- Half of the workday is spent on busywork that doesn’t feel valuable
- 75% report feeling excluded
- 30% feel unseen and invisible
- 83% suffer from work-related stress that impacts their home life
As Renée points out, “We fundamentally can’t say that we love our people and then harm them by creating an environment that produces those kinds of statistics. That’s just not loving.”
Redefining How We Approach Workplace Thriving
Instead, Renée advocates for fostering workplace experiences that allow people to thrive. But when organizations try to address thriving, they often go about it in the wrong way – focusing solely on wellness programs like yoga, meditation, therapy, and the like. While such practices are beneficial for counteracting stress, they don’t solve the underlying cultural and operational issues.
A 2022 McKinsey study found that factors like improving psychological safety, decreasing toxic behaviors, fostering inclusion, supporting learning, and ensuring manageable workloads had a far greater impact on improving well-being and thriving. As Renée summarizes, “Working in a human workplace with less fear and more love is far more impactful to wellbeing than traditional wellness activities.”
The 6 Pillars of Workplace Thriving
Through extensive research over the past two years, Renée and her team identified six key factors that allow people to truly thrive at work when addressed holistically at the individual, team, and organizational levels:
- Clarity
- Courage
- Wholeness
- Spaciousness
- Simplicity
- Hope
What do these factors look like in practice? Here are some examples:
- Individual clarity means knowing exactly what’s expected in your role.
- Team courage means cultivating psychological safety where everyone feels empowered to speak up, share ideas, and take risks.
- Organizational wholeness is rooted in trust that breaks down siloes and enables cross-team collaboration with the right training and resources.
- Team simplicity eliminates unnecessary process steps, while organizational simplicity means focusing on just two or three key goals rather than 10 or 12 competing priorities.
- Individual spaciousness allows for reasonable workloads and time to think, plan, take breaks, and use allotted vacation days without anxiety.
- When you make consistent progress in improving all these areas, it inspires hope – hope that you can achieve meaningful impact and that your efforts truly make a difference.
A New Vision for the Workplace
Renée envisions a workplace where, systematically over time, the culture and operations are redesigned so team members not only thrive but achieve better results. An environment where, as she shares, “You’re healthier after you’ve been employed there than you were before you started that job.”
In her podcast series, Renée explores each of these six thrive factors in-depth, digging into the practical steps leaders and organizations can take to “get the soil ready” and plant the seeds for thriving through love-based leadership.
If you can’t wait to assess how your team or company measures up on those six factors, you can take the Thrive Assessment for a rating on each area along with recommendations for improving your most critical needs.
Embracing a New Paradigm
In the relentless pursuit of performance and results, it’s time we reframe our mindset from fear to love. As the insights from Renée Smith and her tireless work reveal, loving leadership doesn’t have to come at the cost of achieving goals. In fact, it’s the greatest catalyst for real, sustainable success that allows both people and organizations to flourish.
Human beings aren’t resources to be exploited, burned out, and discarded. We’re dynamic, purposeful individuals who crave meaning, growth, and care in our work experience. Love is the path to unlocking our full potential as leaders and human beings. It’s time we start leading that way.
Listen to the episode: Gut + Science | Episode: It’s Time to Thrive! with Renée Smith
Key Takeaways:
- Cultivate Clarity, Courage, and Hope: It’s important to cultivate six essential factors — clarity, courage, wholeness, spaciousness, simplicity, and hope — at both the individual and organizational levels.
- Thriving Requires Deeper Change: Thriving workplaces involve improving psychological safety, decreasing toxic behaviors, creating inclusion, and supporting learning while managing workloads.
- Thriving as a Business Imperative: By fostering an environment that prioritizes love, trust, and inclusivity, you can drive a positive impact on people, families, and communities while achieving consistent and impactful results.
Things to listen for:
04:37 Team thriving includes wellness programs and support.
08:26 Thriving factors: clarity, courage, wholeness, spaciousness, simplicity, hope.
10:31 Assess team thrive factors, improve, and schedule.
