Love in the workplace: What's Consciousness Got to Do With It? Featuring David Sloan Wilson

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Zekes** (0:17)
Welcome back to the show, everyone. We're here to explore principles that shape the way we lead, and work, and build businesses with purpose. I'm Stephen Zekes, joined by my co-host, Mike Lusky, and our special guest. And today's conversation is one that kind of challenges conventional thinking about leadership and the workplace. Love in the workplace, what does that really mean? And how does it connect to the way we evolve as conscious beings? And at the core of that discussion is the idea that businesses and leadership structures that aren't just economic engines, but they're living systems. And I know I've mentioned this a few times on the show, and I'm gonna love diving into this topic today. But these systems kind of reflect something deeper about our nature, about purpose, about our ability to collaborate, to thrive and create meaningful impact. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Lusky** (1:14)
I'm excited to do that, Stephen. It's a great topic. I know that our followers and our listeners are keenly interested in this discussion. So with us today, our guest is David Sloan Wilson. He's a scientist, a biologist, and a distinguished thought leader who spent decades studying human cooperation, cultural evolution, and dynamics of groups. And now David is also the co-founder of Pro Social World. It's an organization dedicated to applying science to real world challenges. On top of that, he's also the author of several books.
That bridge the worlds of science, business, and social transformation. Really intended to help leaders rethink how organizations function, more as ecosystems of collaborations of purpose. We're super excited to have you today with us. David, welcome to the show.

**David Sloan Wilson** (2:11)
Thanks. I've only been newly introduced to your show and it's awesome. I've loved the podcast that I've heard, and I was introduced to you by Chris Jarvis, who recently did an episode with you. So here's a shout out to Chris. I'll be mentioning him in our own conversation.

**Mike Lusky** (2:27)
That'd be great. For our listeners that haven't really seen that episode, you can go back and see what David's talking about. But yeah, that was a very good discussion. So David, maybe before we just sort of dive in, let's start off with just maybe like a bigger question. When we talk about love in the workplace, what does that actually mean?

**David Sloan Wilson** (2:51)
So I want to introduce the word prosocial right up front, which is anything oriented towards the welfare of others or your group as a whole. And so we can see love is a very strong form of prosociality, in which you become so attached to something that you evaluate as much or even more than yourself, that you'll do anything for what you love. And so the question, love in the workplace, is whether that kind of intense prosocial emotion and action can actually take place in a workplace, where we could love our workplace, love our fellow workers, love what the business does. That's what love in the workplace means.

**Stephen Zekes** (3:33)
Yeah, excellent. I think, you know, so often, like leadership is framed in terms of strategy and power or efficiency, but if we step back and we look at business kind of as a living system, what changes in how we approach leadership?

**David Sloan Wilson** (3:55)
Well, if we think of what an organism is, it's a unit that is almost entirely cooperative. All of the organs in an organism work on behalf of the whole.
And the more cooperative a business gets, then the more it invites comparison with being a single organism. And sometimes that imagery is used, especially in religious groups. But so an organism and a workplace of an organism is basically a workplace is a highly, highly cooperative units in which all of the parts are coordinated with each other. And of course, we want all businesses to be cooperative. And I think this kind of gets to the root. When we talk about such things as competition and, and cooperation, and especially the goal that competition plays in a business, then we have to ask these questions at a fundamental level. And that's where my biological training comes in handy.

**Stephen Zekes** (4:54)
Yeah. And organisms, they have to be healthy, right? Or if one part of them is a little bit off, then it can affect the whole.

**David Sloan Wilson** (5:02)
And cancer, cancer basically is our cells that are, you could call them selfish or cheating cells, where they proliferate at the expense of the economy of the whole body.