Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone Release “Leading with Love and Laughter”
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- July 14, 2021
Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone make for an interesting pair, literarily speaking. Their new book is, Leading with Love and Laughter: Letting Go and Getting Real at Work. If its title isn’t indicative of the approach they take in elaborating on their specified brand of concepts and leadership approach, I don’t know what is. Being somewhat of a traditionalist in how I view industry, I was initially a bit skeptical picking up a book with such a distinctly emotive tonality. It didn’t seem entirely fitting, nor proper given my penchant for probably outdated, semi-old-fashioned views of how to articulate the fast pace that is the (professional) rat race. The corporate jungle to me has always been representative of cold, gleaming steel, tall buildings, getting ahead without (legitimately) stomping on too many exposed throats, and all-in-all maintaining a clear barrier between my intrinsic humanity pertinent to my personal life with the coolness that comes with keeping my job.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://sutchmalone.com/
But these two managed to win me over. The book doesn’t actively seek to convert you – the hypothetical reader – regardless of your preexisting ideology. It definitely speaks to a very distinctive audience, which is helpful – both for (you) as time isn’t spent on argumentations designed to win you over, and it simultaneously shines a light on what young people entering the workplace today may expect. There also is something to the argument, particularly in an exponentially expanding world of massive, technological possibility, for employees of all stripes maintaining continuity. It’s easy to become lost or overwhelmed by how elaborate things have become, and more and more in an odd sense this ironically has helped bring people in some ways together. The man in the biggest room no longer enjoys, on a purely necessitated sense, a certain and exclusionary group of individuals on his so-called ‘level’. The playing field has been evened out to such a degree that everyone – from the janitorial sectors to the highest levels of decision-making within an enterprise – mandates knowledge. Knowledge that unites top and bottom in helping to solidify the entirety of what the enterprise seeks to achieve, reach the pinnacle of, and preferably soar from.
In less able hands, the book would easily come across as faux-intellectual, maudlin drivel. I mean, I’m a self-confessed traditionalist. It is very hard to convince me these days that much of anything is heading in an even more positive direction than it already was when it comes to the base technicality of things. But Sutch and Malone did it – they’ve helped put a genuinely human face on something that one would initially consider an anathema-laden approach to effective corporate leadership. They’ve helped make a series of decidedly right-brain, intangible concepts tangibly articulated. There’s no messing around or overstating of the obvious, but also no fear on the authors’ parts of simply letting the more altruistic set of flags fly. Again, it’s a testament to how they write that such well-meaning, ultra-visceral modern psychological tactics seem applicable in a straight-faced, wide-ranging medium.
Job well done, if you ask me. I’d be curious to see more of their work, and would like to continue following their new exploits. Whatever imperfections you could argue still permeate small aspects of the read are easily redeemed by actual, genuine insights and a strong sense of inherent positivity. It’s a nice thing to see and read in a nonfiction sub-genre often dominated by decidedly cold and flinty presentational qualities. All in all, a solid achievement and guide to the new meaning of the word ‘workplace.’
Nicole Killian
