Valentine's Day Ideas at Work

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day.

You know, the day of dinners and diamonds. Roses and romance. Chocolate and well, more chocolate!

While there is nothing wrong with those views and customs for Valentine's Day, I want to propose a different view for you today - while you may still have time to do something about it.

Think about the Valentine's Days of your kidhood - those days before hormones. Remember that everyone gave everyone else a Valentine's card (even the people we didn't like)? Remember that while we may have had one person we secretly liked, the day was about everyone?

Fast forward to today. You work in an organization. You may lead others in one way or the other. With that as a context let me tell you three truths about adult Valentine's Days:

1. Some people have a Valentine and this is a great day for them.
2. Some people don't have a Valentine and because of that this is a rotten day for them.
3. All of us loved Valentine's Day as a kid.

So as a leader or part of an organization, how can you put those three facts to work for everyone's benefit?

It starts by re-defining Valentine's Day as being about love and caring, and not about romance. With that new definition, here are five things you can do tomorrow to celebrate Valentine's Day in your workplace.

1. Send your version of Valentine's cards - which could be some left-over Garfield ones from the store, or could be a simple note or red index card with a note of thanks and caring on them.
2. Invite the group to lunch. Let everyone go to lunch together, just for the fun and fellowship of it. You could pay the tab, but you sure don't have to. Just get people together - and use Valentine's Day as the "excuse."
3. Put a heart on everyone's door or cubicle wall and invite everyone to go by and write a note of appreciation to each other on the door. People can sign them or not, and if they don't want to be "caught" encourage them to write their notes on post-it's so they can post them and not spend so long writing in public!
4. Give everyone a bag of candy hearts or carrot sticks if they are more health conscious. Just like in school, it isn't about the size of the gift, it is about the sentiment. The small little bags will guarantee to elicit a smile and raise morale on Valentine's Day.
5. Do a white elephant gift exchange. You can tell everyone about it today - tell people not to buy something but to bring something from home, or even better, something from the workplace that they don't want - and exchange those "gifts" in a short afternoon meeting - there will be laughter and mirth and you will perhaps start a new Valentine's Day office tradition.

One more thing...

About half of you reading this are men and you may feel these ideas won't work for you. My advice? Get over yourself. The reasons for doing this if you are feeling this way are even bigger. Taking this perceived risk of being "mushy" or sentimental may have an even greater impact for both you and those who you share your actions with.

These are by no means the only things you could do - they are just some suggestions to get you started. If you try something else, I'd love to hear about it - so please email me or leave a comment to this post.

Happy Valentine's Day!