What do businesses need in 2020 to go from good to great? We believe the answer is simple – less fear, more love.

by Steve Pirie and Sarah Nally

Navigating complexity and an uncertain future is something we all face at this moment. Never has the future been more fuelled by fear and uncertainty yet expanding consciousness helps us see more opportunities and indentify threats than ever before. But just as wefeel the desire to steer towards certainty, we also feel it is important to remember that truly great things can emerge when we resist the temptation to stay locked in to a predetermined path.

We believe that weird, wonderful, out-there stimulus and experiences help us discover. We can connect with not only new ideas and people, but also with elements of ourselves that help us show up and be the person we came to this planet to be.

Choosing love in business

Why love? Many psychologists consider that there are only two basic emotions – fear and love. So if you have to choose between these, which will you choose?

Many business people say “don’t combine business and love”. But we disagree. We advocate that LOVE is the missing ingredient from most businesses these days. It is no secret that we like to do things a little differently. We like to lean into our intuition, and use a combination of innovative tools for decision making and soulful practices to tune into our ‘heart smarts’ to discover what is possible.

We challenge ourselves every day to lean into love. We consciously take a moment to zoom out and gain perspective about what really matters.

F - yeah!

In 2019, Steve gave a keynote speech: The 4 Fs we should really give an F about – Fear, Failure, Forgiveness and Freedom. We have found that by having courageous conversations, and understanding our triggers, we have discovered so much not only about ourselves – but our businesses and our purpose.

Courageous conversations are about having a conversation about something that you are afraid of. Fear can be present in homes, communities, and organisations, generally because of past hurts, past mistakes, cultural wounds and even due to things that we have heard on the grapevine, including gossip and storytelling.

While fear often brings up feelings of dread, anxiety, concern, worry and other unpleasant emotions, fear can be thought of as ‘False Emotions Appearing Real.’ One way to combat fear is to have a conversation about it.

How to move from FEAR to FREEDOM:

Considering the 4 Fs, here are some useful questions to ask yourself:

1. What is your fear? What are you really afraid of?

2. Have you embraced your failures and used mistakes as fuel for learning?

3. Who do you need to forgive (including yourself), and what is it time to forget?

4. What does freedom feel like for you?

Psychological safety

The other tool we use religiously in our business, and with each other, is a simple emoji check-in for psychological safety.

Psychological safety is one of those things that a lot of people are talking about right now. Despite its heavysounding title, it can be established with a simple practice. In its simplest form, psychological safety is love.

A helpful checklist for creating psychological safety:

• Make space

• Spend time together

• Celebrate wins

• Reflect back on time together

• Create opportunities to connect

• Check in often to see how people are tracking

We use a simple check-in tool to start meetings, offsites and forums with a focus on people and how they are tracking first, so that psychological safety can be established.

We take the time to ask team members to rate how they are tracking today mentally, physically, emotionally out of 10 or with an emoji; e.g. 😀 or or for example.

If any team members track at below 5, leaders are asked to check in further to see how they can support the person to get them to okay and above. Simple but effective.

Fear and love

If we can talk about our fears, and ensure people feel loved, we believe that workplaces around the world will experience expansion, connection, and a whole lot of wonder.

What we want is to solve loneliness, to prepare people for the future of work, to create a leadership program to help people evolve, and to open hearts and minds for transformational change.

The need to navigate complexity is something so many of us, particularly in business, face regularly. We have been using all sorts of tools to discover ourselves, so that we can evolve and expand with conscious momentum.

These include breathwork, journalling, learning tarot, reiki, crystals, meditation, exercise and lots of creative therapies to help discover the essence of our mission, and, in turn, use this to fuel our business. There’s no end to how much we can expand our own consciousness, and, through our personal development, transform our own businesses!