Interview with Creative Practitioner Michele Bousquet : Centering Love at Work

Michele is the Chief People Officer at Strava, a global community of more than 95 million athletes at the center of connected fitness. She lives in Marin County with her husband and family. She is the mother of four children and author of the Cora Lionheart Blog.

Here is our interview:

Shari:

Michele, I’m so excited to talk to you. You have an approach to leadership, people, and relationships of all kinds, that I think our reader will find is uncommon, especially in business, and one that is really creative.

I hoped you could tell us a bit about your approach as a leader, and your philosophy. Which is uncharacteristically about bringing “love” as a principle value to work. Love is central to the way you lead.

What an unusual word to mix with business. In practical terms when you hold love as a core value in the workplace, what do you mean?

Michele:

When I think about this concept of “love” in the workplace, I actually go back to my daughter Cora, who you Shari knew so well, and who passed away when she was about 8 months old. Cora was this little light spreader. Everyone who met her felt seen, and moved and grounded and loved. It was after Cora died when I was deeply grieving her loss that an important thing happened. A mentor of mine said, “instead of giving all your energy mourning the fact that Cora is gone, why don’t you spend the rest of your life trying to be as much like her as you possibly can?”

This was a turning point for me in both my life and my career.

Following that, I decided that I would take my professional positions of influence, whether within companies, with my own teams, or engaged in the larger professional community, and strive to be a force for “light” and the kind of love that Cora taught me. I have come to believe that approach can have deep meaning, beyond what I thought might be possible in the work world.

Shari:

What do you mean by embodying love in the workplace?

Michele:

For me, love in the workplace is not about being kind or being nice. It’s about acknowledging that when you are spending 75% of your waking life alongside other people, often working through stressful experiences and with high pressure, there is a closeness that is created. You are sharing space together. And by saying, this time is worth something and it holds meaning, we can acknowledge both the people and the experience with appreciation and love.

It’s meaningful to think that a variety of experiences in each of our lives brought us each to this unique time and place together; this exact moment in time — days or weeks or years that we overlapped — working on these projects or on this company mission. If you think about it, it’s kind of, wow! What are the odds? And isn’t that remarkable?

Looking at things like that with some level of awe and gratitude keeps me grounded and less concerned with whatever trouble or obstacle I might encounter at a point in time.

I live in my personal life that way, and at work, I used to call it other things, but now I call that sense of awe and gratitude: love. And I’m really glad I got to this point, where I’ve felt confident enough in myself and my career to call it that.

Shari:

I have to say I find the concept so refreshing and hopeful. Especially as an educator, who really believes in SEL ( social emotional learning.) SEL is kind of corollary to what you are talking about.

Not to mention we spend an enormous amount of time trying to develop the love factor for our kids. Yet at the same time, there is an odd disconnect in the workplace. The concept of love would be taboo at work.

Much of what we teach kids through the SEL curriculum is how to name feelings. Yet, what tremendously useful word love is to name and describe the quality caring for one’s work. It reminds me of the love we put into preparing a meal for those we care about, or into the making of a craft or art project.

What a lovely concept to carry over into work.

Have you ever experienced that disconnect at work? Or have you always shown up at work this way?

Michele:

To be honest, I spent most of my early to mid career feeling like a fish out of water. Wondering why everyone acted so professional at work and seemingly different than they would act at home or with their close family and friends. I would even struggle when it came time to sign a coworker’s birthday card! Should I say, “from?” “love?” “warmly?” How could I show them I cared without being weird!?

Because even though I felt uncomfortable with some of the professional working norms, I always sort of fell in love with people I worked with. I have worked alongside some incredible people. And because I have been working for more than 20 years now, I’ve been through some incredibly transformative and remarkable things with these people. I’ve seen what they were made of. Throughout my career I’ve built a very long list of people I admire and have felt deeply close to. Wasn’t that a form of love?

I remember the first time I heard someone in a professional setting use that word “love.” It was a conversation I was in with a CEO and a CFO who had worked together for years. They told me when they traveled together for business they would yell, “I love you!” as they each parted ways at the airport. That shocked me. I knew how they felt, but I had never been brave enough to name that feeling. And yet here were two senior executives shouting how much they cared about each other through an airport terminal. They were so inspiring to me.

From that moment, I committed to opening my heart and becoming available to that kind of relationship with people that I shared work with.

Shari:

So Michele, what you’ve just described parallels what we’re finding out in the research on trust and social emotional learning.

Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and Harvard Business School professor, has been studying why some leaders have this ability to create teams that are really trusting of one another.

What she’s found is exactly what you are describing, that when we go to work, we’re sort of programmed and conditioned to show up with our strength.

You know, like, I’m really good at XYZ skill, and you should listen to me because of this sort of professional strength of XYZ.

But what she found is that the other part of ourselves, our warmth, our authenticity, and our ability to connect with others in a very genuine way — this aspect of warmth is actually what separates excellent leaders from the basic kind of leader.

What Amy Cuddy encourages, rather than leading with our competence, is to show up as the leader more authentically.

I love Cuddy’s study because it demonstrates that work is also a space of learning from each other much in the same way emotions are co-regulated. We don’t emphasize we are learning from each other enough at work.

Would you agree?

Michele:

Absolutely. So many of us are trying to hide this imposter mentality or fear that we’re going to be found out for not knowing. I love the idea of just shifting it on its head and leading with: every day I’m doing at least one thing that I’ve never done before. And sometimes I have no idea at all what I’m doing! Yet my goal every day is to get a little bit better than I was the day before.

Whenever I accept that “not knowing” and lead that way, I release a layer of stress inside me.

I encourage my team to do that too. So I really connect with the work that you mentioned, and it feels so much better to come to work to learn instead of to prove something.

Shari:

I love that. I love coming to work to learn vs prove myself.

I think what you’re really underscoring is that the core of compassion is not kindness. The core of compassion is courage.

To me what you have described is the creative process — -which begins by the concept of not knowing, being followed by a trust in opening yourself up to possibility, and a willingness to keep going.

In addition, that being loving and compassionate demonstrates a willingness to see a person more wholly.

I’ve heard you talk about the concept of being your authentic self at work, or “bringing your full self to work.” In a way, that is potentially the most creative concept of all. Can you tell us a little bit about that concept and how you are bringing that value to life?

Michele:

Yes, bringing your full just self means that whoever you are — all the parts of you can’t be separated. That there is no “work self” and “home self” — just one integrated self that impacts how we show up everywhere in the world. For me, that I’m a mom, that I’ve lost a child, that I have a variety of lived experiences and a host of hopes and fears and insecurities — all these things exist for me whether or not I try to wear a different persona. And the more I can acknowledge these different parts of me and show up as an integrated person everywhere, the more effective I can be as a leader.

At Strava, one of the best parts of our culture is that we work to make space for each person to be their authentic self. Over the past year we have been striving to becoming an antiracist company, and the concept of authenticity and “whole self” is paramount in this effort. We have a long way to go, but we are committed to dismantling racism in our workplace and to use our platform and our resources to further racial equity.

Shari:

It’s inspiring to learn how Strava is making strides toward becoming an antiracist company. It’s another area where this theme of keep going, keep going, keep going, is also really important.

Okay Meesh (a nickname I and many of your close friends and family use with you,) thank you for sharing some of your views on leadership, authenticity, and persistence. It’s powerful to see how you’ve taken Cora’s life and loss and used it as a force for good in the world.

Thank you for being a creative mom and a creative leader.

Because this month is Cora’s birthday month, and because she had such a big impact on you and me and so many others, I want to close by sharing one of my favorite excerpts from the blog you wrote about her.

I’m grateful for the Cora/ Bousquet clan, & for you, friend.

You are inspirational and help me hunker down with love — to keep going, keep going, keep going!

Thank you for your time and heart and bringing yourself wholly, creatively, to making the world a better place.

Excerpt from Coralionheart.blogspot.com:

I believe that in order to live through tragedy, or even through the irritating or ridiculous parts of life, you have to practice radical acceptance. You have to look your life square in the face and say, “can I live with this?” Can I accept this, exactly as it is, with absolutely no footnotes and no conditions? Cora, during her life, and during her death, showed us how to do that brilliantly.

I’ve never wavered from that place of acceptance.

I have accepted that Cora’s life was the life, the perfect life, she was meant to lead. I have to believe that. It’s like putting everything I know about anything — all the colorful small bits — into my hands like a pile of confetti, taking a deep breath, and blowing them into the wind. I am willing to let it all go, and to accept life, not as I believe it should be, but as it exactly is. That’s been, for me, an act of true freedom.

If I do this, if I accept that life goes on, then I believe that the very deep box within my heart, while never going away, will become covered with many new things. These things may be joyous moments or complicated moments or happy/sad moments or grateful moments. These moments will respect the sacredness of that box beneath, while using it as the foundation for new happiness and new beauty. For unpredictable, magnificent life.

And there are so many beautiful things that have already laid down roots.