Business is All About Relationship and Emotion

It's amazing what you can learn when you are helping educate the next generation of leaders.  Yesterday, I found myself giving voice to a couple of beliefs I hold about business that I hadn't realized were so obvious to me but are quite definitely not part of the traditional business undergraduate education.As a part of the Business Ethics class at Southwestern University students were tasked with preparing a presentation addressed to the President and Provost on their choice of ethical issues related to recent university budget cuts. My job was to be the outside 'evaluator' as they made their presentation to the class. I had all the traditional comments on organization, thought process, delivery and team work. But what really stuck with me were some of my closing thoughts.The first was around giving them permission to use emotion as a valid rationale for a choice or opinion. Remember, this was a class on business ethics and the content generally centered on making good choices when making budget cuts. It was interesting to watch them attempt to depersonalize or 'business-ize' a conversation about respect, valuing people, care, consideration and fairness. When I asked them why they took the approach they had, their response basically indicated their belief that business requires an abstinence from emotion or values.This pains me. As a business owner who has worked with many other business owners I know for a fact that all of us have choicefully made decisions that balanced the health of the enterprise with respect, care and consideration for our employees, vendors and customers.  And each of us wanted employees who would make good decisions that demonstrated their skill and giftedness as well as their regard for other people. Care, consideration, and respect are all qualities that are the result of emotions. It is the emotional connection that matters -that makes the difference between good and bad business. We need the emotional aspect in business to create meaning and value - and ultimately, greatness.The second point I found myself sharing: business may be defined as "an economic system in which goods and services are exchanged for one another or money" but in practice business is fundamentally all about relationships. Consider it.  Every business has a relationship with its employees, its vendors, its customers, its community, its industry. And personally, I don't know how you can have any kind of relationship without some kind of emotional connection.  I believe that it is the nature of relationship to imply an emotional connection.And good businesses cultivate really good relationships. I work with the vendors I do not just because they are good at what they do but because there is something more and that something more is the care, respect and often times, friendship that is cultivated. The same is true for me of employees.My point is that for some reason we have believed that businesses exist at the expense of relationships, emotion, values and connection. I can see how that can happen when you end up dealing with mega-companies. But my experience is that there are many more companies where you do experience true connection and great value; and you can see firsthand that business really is about relationship.