Lovinging Workplace Principles
The old paradigm of work is failing us. Let’s reimagine it with love.
The systems that once promised efficiency and progress now reveal their limits. Built on control, extraction, and hierarchy, they were never designed for wholeness or well-being.
When cracks appear, they open a space for repair, renewal, and reimagination.
Today’s Workplaces Need Change
Workplaces Often Cause Harm
Work is more than the products we create; it is a deeply human act. It is an expression of our creativity, purpose, and connection to one another. Through work, we shape the world and one another. We acknowledge that our work is also shaped by systems of power, history, and values. Every decision, what we fund, measure, or prioritize, reflects what and whom we believe matters.
For too long, the structures that define work have been built on the industrial revolution and systems of domination. The pervasive industrial mindset perpetuates a view of human beings as expendable, replaceable machines. The systems of domination, such as white supremacy, patriarchy, hyper-capitalism, and other exclusions, distort our relationships and limit who we can be as individuals, teams, and organizations.
A Better Workplace is Possible
A Loving, More Human-Centered Workplace:
Is an invitation to reimagine work itself: not as extraction or survival, but instead as contribution, collaboration, and care. It is a call to remember that the quality of what we produce is inseparable from the quality of how we relate while producing it.
Makes the invisible visible and refuses to hide behind a pretext of neutrality. It calls us to confront the truths we are taught to avoid, to interrupt patterns of harm, and to practice repair when harm occurs.
Is built on trauma-informed practices and guided by compassion, integrity, and shared responsibility, not as ideals but as a way of being. It is grounded in the core principles of trauma-informed care: safety, trust, choice, collaboration, and empowerment.
Honors the many forms of human intelligence (emotional, relational, creative, ancestral, and spiritual), recognizing each as valuable and necessary. It welcomes intuition as a valid form of knowing. Wholehearted living is not separate from professional excellence. It is the very foundation of it.
Loving Workplace Principles Catalyze Individuals AND Organizations to Thrive
These Principles invite us to show up fully with body, mind, heart, and spirit, and to bring our lived experience into the work we do.
The Principles ask us to see work as a space for connection, creativity, and transformation. They challenge us to choose love over fear, curiosity over coercion, and shared responsibility over command and control.
Culture is the container for all that we create together. It determines whether collaboration, trust, and innovation can take hold. The Principles guide us in tending that container with consistency and care. When challenges arise, we pause to listen deeply, hold what is difficult, release what hinders progress, and return to our shared purpose. Honest feedback becomes a practice of alignment and accountability, delivered and received with respect and love.
The Loving Workplace Principles are a collective commitment to choose people over programs. They remind us that how we work is as important as what we produce, and that by leading with humanity, we create cultures where individuals and organizations can thrive.
Loving Workplace Principles
Thanks to the following members of the CLW community for their contributions in developing the Principles: Denise Mino, Mary Cogan, Brian Kerr, Rick Gage, Adam Slade, Lili Boyanova Hugh, Simon Phillips, and Renee Smith.
Do these principles resonate with you? Ready to see them put into practice by teams?
You are invited to engage in other projects to develop training and tools to help teams activate the Principles.
Want to support developing and sharing more content, tools, and training on the Principles with organizations, teams, and leaders around the world? Your donation of any size is welcome!