I was part of a very interesting conversation about leadership last week facilitated by Sean Richardson. Sean is the high performance coach and sports psychologist at the St Kilda Football club. He proposed that great leadership strikes a balance between support and challenge.

I think it’s a great model. I remember a team I was leading many years ago when I was working as a business consultant with Accenture. It was a software development team, and there were two guys in particular that I remember. Daniel was a gun, and Jeff was considerably less so.

My leadership style (although perhaps "leadership style" is overstating it slightly) was very different for the two of them.

If you've been reading my blog recently, you'll know there's some big changes going on for me and Love Your Business at the moment. I wrote in an email yesterday "I've changed my diet, my exercise, how I spend money, the business, the stuff we've got, how I spend my time, and my involvement on boards of other companies." As I said, some big changes.

A couple of weeks ago at a team meeting I was talking about what I want to do differently with the business, going to Bali etc, and I got some interesting feedback. A couple of the team members said that they didn't feel included in the decisions, and they weren't feeling valued. This wasn't surprising given they weren't really included in the decisions.

My job as a leader, according to the Love Your Business Model, is to inspire and unite the team. I was obviously falling a bit short of the mark.

We do - mainly through the Love Your Business Epicentre Project which aims to end hunger for 10,000-15,000 people in Africa over a five year period. And I've just been introduced to a much better way for us to give (thanks Paul!).

And what's this better way of giving? Its called transactional based giving - and if you give, or plan to, then this is for you.

I read a great article by Jeffrey Stibel, entrepreneur and brain scientist, on the Harvard Business Site called 7 Ways to Be Happier at Work . Entrepreneur and brain scientist ... I think that's what I want to be when I grow up.

If you are like most bosses, you would say number one is good pay and number two is job security. Sounds pretty reasonable. But according to a study at the George Mason University you would be way off the mark. Good pay only comes in at number five, and job security is only slightly ahead of it at number four.

So what are the top three things on the list of what your staff really want?

 
In yesterday’s newspaper, The Age, there was a story of how Virgin Atlantic sacked 13 of its cabin staff after they criticised the airline and some of its passengers on the social networking website, Facebook.

The official reason given was that the staff’s behaviour was "totally inappropriate" and "brought the company into disrepute".

Here is the first line of an article that came across my desk this week: 

LOVE has to be in the air at the workplace these days if managers and business owners don't want to lose their precious employees.

From the Herald Sun of all places. The article reported on the Australian Association of Career Counsellors annual conference. The conference focussed on how to keep staff in an employees market - and love is the key. To read the full article, click here .

Over the last week I have had some profound coaching sessions with my clients and it never ceases to amaze me the power of nurturing. In the old realm of business 'nurture' is rarely spoken of. It may be referred to loosely as a preferred employer, caring for the people in the business and looking after staff. But is that really the same as nurturing? Does nurturing have a place in business at all and how can it help my business to thrive?

I was sent a great email last week (thanks David) with four questions to ask your team twice a month.

I gave them a test run yesterday, and recommend it. Simple and effective. The questions are:

Is standing for love in business just a nice idea, or does it make business sense? Does it add to your bottom line?

I want to make the case for the latter… I believe that standing for love is the best (and perhaps the only) way to truly thrive in business. Which is a good thing given that’s what we ask of all our community members.