Measures of productivity are usually defined by what someone else wants you to produce. Some of that is okay, because you may have signed a contract saying that you would produce X number of widgets for someone else. However, what also must be considered is your own personal model of productivity, and how that fits into the equation of productivity as defined by the organization.
Productivity is about producing something. If that which you are creating is for you, then we are taught to discount it as something that you do in your extra time; it is not deemed worthy to the productivity of the organization. At best, it’s a nice hobby. But, this is indeed very very backward and therefore deeply inefficient.
Self-love is actually the opposite of ego, and despite what those who weaponize self-love try to say, there is, in fact, no backdoor from true self-love into ego.
If I am running a company and I want to hire leaders to produce X widgets, I can go to the market and look for leaders that already know how to produce X because that is what their heart desires, or I can, not realizing that there are leaders who are naturally skilled at producing X, look for leaders who I can motivate and train to produce X. The first option requires a budget that continues to empower the talents of the leaders that I am paying to produce the widgets so that they can continue to become the leaders that they are naturally designed to be. It is worth noting that such a budget won’t need to be as big as most think because the community of authentically aligned leaders that I just hired will naturally bring their wisdom to one another, and thereby assist me in finding other such aligned leaders and, fundamentally, reduce the overhead costs in the longer-term. The latter approach requires that I pull from a generalized pool of leaders, each of whom is no doubt designed to lead at doing something, but may not have a joy-informed or wisdom-driven connection to the widgets that I am looking to have produced. For that alignment not being there, I will need a budget that fosters that alignment and then sustains it while weeding out any toxic energy that I may have accidentally let into the organization (e.g., leaders who simply applied for the job because they are operating out of fear and competition) in addition to the training budget to get everyone up to par. It is also important to note that, in this model I also have a fixed model of widget production and am highly unlikely to benefit from the diversified wisdoms of the leaders I’ve hired as I’m constantly reorienting them to my singular vision of widget production. As such, I will need to motivate, sustain, weed out and possibly heal tensions that were broken while toxic energies possibly spread through the organization on top of still needing to empower the talents of the few leaders that I happened to hire who are naturally talented at producing X and simply need to be empowered before I lose them.
How do we choose the first option? At the core of joy is self-love and it requires that leaders be accountable to the will and desire of their own heart’s growth and development. This is the critical, yet often overlooked, foundational element of productivity, because self-love allows just about anyone to bring their whole self to the work with a level of authenticity that drives clarity in how best to do what they do AND that automatically increases productivity! It allows you to produce in the ways that only you can do, that you know how to do, detaching you from the expectations, limitations, and one-size-fits-all mentality of the corporate mindset.
Leaders high in self-love lead from JOY:
1) An awareness of themselves, 2) A radiance (authentic expression of their heart) that speaks to the hearts of others, and 3) A track record of performance based on their heart in action.
All of this is derived from self-love – the idea of “this is who I am, I love it, so I want to bring it to the world.” So, it then naturally follows that the greater the self-love, the more likely the uniqueness of the individual will shine through in what they produce. So not only will you meet the number of widgets that you desire but the work will be completed at a higher level of quality. Most exciting is that the work output will only get better with time and it will be must easier to sustain the increasing quality of the output over time.
Finally, to answer your question about the lack of self-love, the lack of self-love has actually been highly touted in the corporate world. A person who does not love themselves is far more willing to be a “good little soldier” and simply do whatever they are told. They’ll work all night, they’ll fetch coffee. So, oddly, this is exactly what was desired for a long time by leaders who only knew how to manage and not how to empower and lead. In today’s business world, a lack of self-love ensures that the best any person can do is what has already been done and/or what they are told. Without self-love, ingenuity, creativity, and innovation all perish.