Love Works by Joel Manby (ARC)

Have you ever wondered how effective leading with love is? Sometimes, it seems like it doesn't matter. But it does. I remember how my favourite teachers all taught/led with love, and no one ever likes the power-obsessed ones.

Now, before I start the book review proper, I'm going to define love. From 1 Corinthians 13:4-5

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." (NIV version)

If you feel like this is a very inaccessible definition, then here's the version from The Message:

"Love never gives up. Love cares for others more than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, doesn't have a swelled head, doesn't force itself on others, isn't always "me first", doesn't fly off the handle, doesn't keep score of the sins of others."

Now, Love works aims to show you how to lead with love (this is practical advice, not airy-fairy theory) through 7 different aspects of love: patience, kind, trusting, unselfish, truthful, forgiving and dedicated. Here, the case study (aka role model) is HFE or Herschel Family Entertainment, which sounds like a great company to work at.

What I liked about reading is book is how each chapter (or topic) is broken up into sub-chapters. This means that all the sub-chapters are relatively short and I didn't suffer from information overload. The constant examples also showed me how to apply the theory and made the book easy to understand.

This book is something that I wished I read while I was still in IB. It would have been fun to discuss the book and see how the theories we learnt were or were not related to the principal of "love works". And now, with my cohort has a significant number of people starting companies (e.g. a group of my friends just incorporated their charity - who says we Singaporean kids have no drive?) this book could really come in handy. I'm having a lot of fun helping the friends who are starting a charity, right now, I'd want them to read this quote:

"Typically organisations start small with an entrepreneur and/or inspirational founder; they have a caring family-type culture with a workforce completely committed to a cause. However, when these same organisations find themselves in a transition, the found culture rarely remains intact. For the culture to survive, it must be define and adhered to or the organisation could lost its way. Once an organisation loses its soul, financial performance usually starts to decline and the best people leave."

It may not be relevant now, but I think that these are wise words we should keep in mind.

Disclaimer: I got this book free from NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.