When you are at work, do you feel the love? The word “love” is almost a taboo term at work because most people think about romantic love. When individuals fall in “love” with each other at work, organizations often deal with a variety of risks. These risks include sexual harassment, stalking, favoritism, and retaliation. However, compassionate love or companionate love, refers to loving another without being romantically attracted to that person. Companionate love is showing caring, trust, and compassion to those whom you work with. It’s more of a “friendship” or “platonic” type of love. Organizations that encourage a companionate love culture benefit from a variety of positive outcomes.
What does companionate love consist of?
Companionate love is different from other types of love that we know of. Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love states that companionate love requires high levels of intimacy and commitment in relationships. Unlike passionate love, which is common and short-lived in romantic relationships, companionate love lasts for many years in non-romantic relationships. When things get rough in a relationship, people in companionate love are more likely to overcome their disagreements and stay in the relationship. Whereas, those in passionate love, may have high levels of passion and intimacy. But, they lack the commitment, which make them more vulnerable.
Sternberg’s triangular theory of love state that these are characteristics of companionate love:
- Intimacy – Feelings of being closely connected to another person such as warmth. Healthy bonds are established in the relationship to enable the mutual sharing of personal information.
- Commitment – Committing to a relationship for the long-term.
- Trust – Trusting another person deeply, such as when the other person has your back, or if they are there for you when it matters.
With these characteristics, companionate love can emerge in relationships in the workplace. For instance, relationships can be peer-to-peer, supervisor-to-peer, supervisor-to-client, and worker-to-client. With companionate love, organizations can enjoy the fruits of this type of emotional culture.
Benefits of Companionate Love
Research studies have found evidence of the benefits of companionate love in the workplace. A study by Ozcelik and Barsade found that companionate love helped to reduce loneliness and enhance the work commitment and job performance of 672 employees and 114 supervisors in two organizations. Another study by Barsade and O’Neill examined employees at a long-term care facility and found that companionate love increased employees’ satisfaction and teamwork, and reduced their work absences and job-related burnout. The culture of companionate love even spread to the residents whom they served by improving their mood, satisfaction, and overall quality of life.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a study by Belkin and Kong found that supervisors that expressed their companionate love to their employees, especially when feeling uncertainty, made them feel more grateful. Simon Sinek states that when great leaders sacrifice themselves for the goodwill of their employees during a crisis, this makes employees feel cared for and they are more likely to stay at a company for the long-haul. This can include doing “listening tours” to hear out employees’ genuine concerns. For example, if an employee is experiencing pain, or discomfort at work due to an illness, a manager can suggest taking a few days off, or at least try to express caring and understanding towards that employee.
In another study by Yue and colleagues, supervisors that communicated effectively within their organizations were better able to motivate and nurture a compassionate culture, which helped employees better identify with the company. Other researchers found that companionate love helped “anxious-ridden” organizations that were severely affected by a natural disaster. For instance, many employees lost their vehicles and had to take the bus to go back and forth to work each day, and had to deal with many sudden changes. However, with companionate love, it helped employees reduce their anxiety and burnout and it also helped the CEO reduce company costs. As you can see, companionate love is not only beneficial to employees, but also beneficial to organizations.
Cultivating a Companionate Love Culture
With the evidence of the amount of benefits of companionate love, how can organization leaders cultivate a “companionate love” culture within their organization? For starters, it’s not that hard. However, a role model leader or employee must spark the love at work. Below are six ways to do so.
1. Be Compassionate
Develop compassion by offering support to someone at work who needs help. If someone is facing a hard time, such as a death in the family, or has an ill family member, practice kindness and offer to help with any tasks. And, when this suffering employee sees another suffer in the future, this employee is likely to repeat the compassionate behavior with this person. Small acts of compassion soon enough become contagious and a part of an organization’s culture.
2. Express Appreciation and Gratitude
Individuals often feel underappreciated for their work, thinking they are just “employees” paid to do their job. However, when leaders and peers notice the extra efforts of employees, they can express their appreciation and their gratitude for a job well-done from time to time. This can be expressed through a conversation, meeting, note card, or a small gift. This will make employees “light up” and feel that they are more than just mere employees, but that their company cares for the hard work that they do. As a result, the employees will continue their productivity with a positive attitude.
3. Listen with Empathy
Sometimes employees may feel that their “voice” is not heard in organizations. When leaders and peers take the initiative to truly listen to others by putting themselves on their shoes, they are more likely to communicate genuinely with them as individuals. This can help improve bonds and relationships. For instance, if an employee is complaining about a negative experience at work, the supervisor or colleague can ask questions to understand how they feel and provide any support to prevent the negative experience from happening again in the future.
4. Trust Others
Without trust, one cannot nurture love at work. Trust is the social glue that bind work relationships. Leaders can learn to trust their employees by delegating small to moderate responsibilities. Employees can also learn to trust their teammates when working on projects or mutual goals. Employees will work autonomously and maintain their consistency at work when they feel trusted.
5. Be Inclusive
Organizations that lack companionate love can be socially exclusive to certain workers just because they are different. As a result, these working individuals may feel isolated and disconnected from other employees and the organization. This can negatively impact their performance and how they relate to others in the organization. Leaders and peers who notice someone, or groups of employees being excluded, need to make goodwill efforts to include them in teams and projects. For instance, if there are remote-only employees at work, an organization can still include these remote employees. For instance, they can be included in important meetings using teleconference technologies such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
6. Practice Forgiveness
Mistakes can happen at any organization. How you handle mistakes can have an effect on employee relationships. If an employee forgets to send a report, or makes an honest mistake, managers and employees need to recognize that all humans make mistakes. One can forgive others by expressing, “I understand why you got angry with that client, that client was very disrespectful to you, I probably would have reacted the same way. Let’s talk about how we can handle disrespectful clients in the future.” If one was disrespectful toward another during a conflict in the past, then one can state in a follow-up meeting, “I am so sorry about how I talked to you the other day. I felt very angry and I lost my temper. I should not have talked to you that way. Please forgive my tone.”
Final Thoughts
Overall, cultivating companionate love is beneficial at work. We don’t need to shy away from this type of love. Instead we need to embrace it to build high quality work relationships to make the organization ideal to work for. With quality work relationships, employees will maintain their work motivation and work harder. The overall morale of an organization and employee satisfaction can also improve. Also, the organization is less likely to suffer from negative outcomes such as absenteeism, anxiety, burnout, and turnover.
