Love as a Value at Work

“We have one value in our team – LOVE. Love is all we need!” That was the comment Martine Sholl left on my LinkedIn post on Valentine’s Day 2025.

I enthusiastically responded with a clapping emoji, but it got me thinking: What does it really mean to have love as a workplace value? Even as a champion for love at work, I found the idea bold, maybe even unconventional. So, I reached out to Martine to learn how love is truly lived and operationalised at Neu21, the consultancy where she works.

Love…for the Dees and the AFL

When we met online, Martine had just returned from Melbourne Football Club’s Women of Melbourne breakfast. It didn’t take long for the word love to come up – first in Martine’s passionate support for the Demons, then in a discussion about how head coach Simon Goodwin is turning to love to inspire his team after a tough 2024 season.

Goodwin recently spoke about love, saying:

“We speak of love for the first time in our footy club, and it’s a big part. When you’re in adversity, love is one of the things that pulls you through.”

“Let’s learn to love and care for each other at a deeper level – that will take us a long way. It’s an unspoken word we need to use more because that’s what really creates connection and belonging.”

He also reflected on how the club had failed to support players Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver during difficult times:

“If they didn’t feel the love they needed, then they should have. That hurts me the most as a coach.”

Goodwin credited a pre-season retreat to Bright as a turning point in rekindling the team’s bond and sense of love for each other.

I mentioned to Martine that Craig McRae had spoken about care and connection guiding Collingwood to the 2023 AFL Premiership, and Damien Hardwick transformed his leadership style through vulnerability and emotional connection, which helped Richmond become a dynasty.

But are we a family at work?

Martine and I agreed that these examples highlight how love can be a force for good in the workplace. But we also discussed one of the biggest challenges people have with love at work:

Does love mean we are a family? And if so, how can a workplace make redundancies or hold people accountable?

In sports, many coaches refer to their teams as a family. But is that the right analogy for a workplace?
Martine was quick to challenge this—and I agreed. Work is not a family. Family and love are not the same thing.

You can love your people and still make tough decisions. You can love your team and still hold them accountable. In fact, love requires honesty and courageous conversations about performance, career growth, and the future.

So, what does love at work look like?

If we’re not a family, but we want to make space for love at work, what does that look, feel, and sound like?

Martine walked me through Neu21’s process for defining values, something they also help clients do.

Through reflection, discussion, and alignment, one value kept emerging: LOVE.

Instead of diluting their values, they made a bold decision to keep just one: LOVE.

And here’s the kicker – even their clients experience it. Martine recalled a recent moment when a client used the word love to describe how the client felt working with the Neu21 team. That’s saying a lot, considering how most people feel about working with consultants!

Love in Action

Martine shared how Neu21 practices love in real, tangible ways:

• Explicitly owning love as a value for their workplace and their relationships with their clients.
• They have a dedicated Slack channel where they spot, celebrate, and share stories of love in action – when they want to call it out for each other and when they’ve received feedback from clients.
• Ad hoc meetings have just one topic – how are we? Individuals talk about how they are. The meeting isn’t about work, deadlines or anything else. Giving each other space to share how they are is a true display of love.
• Random acts of kindness – all team members can use company money to show a random act of kindness to a colleague or client (no approvals required). Think acts like sending a fruit box to a team member and their family who have been unwell, or flowers for a client they know is having a tough time personally, or even an UberEATS tub of ice cream on a hot day because you know they love ice cream!
• Truly focused on wellbeing – wellbeing isn’t a perk that is given out to the team, it’s focused on the whole human and that there isn’t such a thing as work life balance, it’s all life! There’s zero judgement when life happens and gets in the way of work – they all back each other.

Values aren’t just words on a poster. If love is a value, it must be felt and experienced in the workplace. And at Neu21, it is.