🧭 The 5-Minute Mentor | Leaders Are Experience-Makers

 🔥 5 Minutes of Leadership Fuel

✉️ This post is part of The 5-Minute Mentor — my weekly leadership newsletter. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, click here to subscribe.

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Welcome to The 5-Minute Mentor — your weekly dose of leadership inspiration, curated resources, and practical action. All in under 5 minutes.

Activating Your Genius in 5,4,3,2,1… 🤩

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🫶 A Dose of Inspiration

“Love is born savoring, it lives in intelligence, but it dies from neglect.”

— Pablo Neruda

Love isn’t just a feeling. It’s something we tend, or forget to tend.

As leaders, we can get so focused on outcomes, efficiency, and results that we stop valuing the people in front of us. We stop noticing. We stop designing experiences that say I see you.

And slowly, quietly… love dies from forgetting.

This week’s edition is an invitation to remember.

📥 Download the quote graphic to use in your next staff email or meeting.

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🤓 A Dose of Learning

​Here’s a question most leaders never ask out loud:

Do the people I lead feel loved?

Not warm and fuzzy. Not coddled. Loved… as in seen, valued, and inspired to bring their best.

In his new book Design Love In, researcher and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham makes a bold, data-backed claim: love is the most powerful force in business. And most leaders won’t even say the word.

I’ve been a huge fan of Marcus’ work for years (Love + Work is leadership gold, and I also recommend First, Break All the Rules and Nine Lies About Work.) And fun fact, Marcus was the co-creator of Gallup’s StrengthsFinder (now CliftonStrengths) Assessment. A research-backed strengths assessment? Yes, please. 🙌

He defines love simply: an experience that helps someone feel more fully themselves over time. That’s not soft. That’s flourishing. And it’s our job as leaders to design for it.

Buckingham’s central insight is this: experiences drive behaviors, which drive outcomes. Not directives. Not mandates. Experiences. Every email you send, every meeting you run, every onboarding moment… all experiences. And you are, whether you realize it or not, an experience-maker.

Culture is just the series of experiences you are creating for your team.

And Marcus is very clear… your team’s experience of love is binary. Either they say, “I love that,” or you’ve failed to really change their behavior.

So how do you design love in? He offers a framework of five feelings leaders must address to effect true change. And here’s the part that stuck with me: they’re sequential.

The Five Feelings of Love:

1. Control — “What’s this world you’ve invited me into, and how does it work?” People need clarity before they can relax.
2. Harmony — “Do you know what I’m feeling?” Acknowledge the emotional reality of your team.
3. Significance — “Do you know my story?” People need to feel individually known. And Melody would say, we, as leaders, need to know and nurture our people’s genius.
4. Warmth of Others — “Who’s with me? How can they help?” Belonging and connection matter.
5. Growth — “How will this experience make me more capable?” This is the destination… but you can’t start here.

Well-intending leaders can jump straight to growth and warmth. Buckingham’s research says that’s backwards. You have to earn the latter feelings by building the earlier ones first.

This reminded me of the work we did with our own team exploring the threads of genius that make each person unique… because you can’t get to meaningful contribution and commitment without first knowing someone’s story. If you’re curious about that activity, you can read about it here: Threads of Genius: A Reflection and Celebration of You At Your Best.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here: The Learning Leader Show, Episode #684: Marcus Buckingham — Design Love In

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🌀 A Dose of Reflection

Buckingham offers what he calls the simplest thing a leader can do: a 15-minute weekly check-in, one-on-one, with your direct reports.

Just three questions:

• How did you feel about last week?
• What are you working on this week?
• How can I help?

Do that 52 times a year with each person, and you’ll naturally build harmony, growth, and over time… love.

This week, try it with one person. Notice what shifts.

And if you want to go deeper, ask yourself: Am I designing experiences for my team, or just optimizing processes? What’s one touchpoint this week I could make more human and full of love?

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You got this. Let’s lead with belief.

In your corner,
​Melody​
​Founder, Culture of Belief

PS: 100% on board with this rebranding… 💨💫

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