Catherine, Princess of Wales, spoke at the Future Workforce Summit in London this week. Photo / Getty Images
The Princess of Wales has urged business leaders to prioritise “time and tenderness” alongside profit and success.
In her first public speech in almost two years, the Princess spoke of the importance of love, which she described as “the invisible thread” that is woven throughout childhood and “becomes the foundation, the very fabric of resilience and belonging”.
Opening the Future Workforce summit, organised to encourage big businesses to invest in early childhood, the Princess said: “A loving home ultimately teaches us how to love and how to care, but every environment has the potential to shape our hearts.
“Every one of you interacts with your own environment: a home, a family, a business, a workforce, a community. These are the ecosystems that you yourselves help to weave. Imagine a world where each of these environments was built on valuing time and tenderness just as much as productivity and success.
“As business leaders, you will face the daily challenge of finding the balance between profitability and having a positive impact. But the two are not, and should not be incompatible.”
The event marked the first time she had given a speech in public since she was diagnosed with cancer in early 2024 after abdominal surgery.
The Princess stepped back from public duties for several months as she had chemotherapy treatment. In January, she revealed she was in remission as she made a gradual return to public duties.
Her decision to address the gathering of around 80 of Britain’s most influential business leaders at the summit was said to underline the importance she places on her work on early childhood.
The Princess told those gathered at the Salesforce Tower in central London that her passion for the early years stemmed from the fact that the love felt in those first years of life “fundamentally shapes who we become and how we thrive as adults”.
“Love is the first and most essential bond,” she said.
“But it is also the invisible thread, woven with time, attention and tenderness, through consistent, nurturing relationships, which creates the grounded and meaningful environments around a child.
“It is this texture, the weave of love, which forms a child’s emotional world and becomes the foundation, the very fabric of resilience and belonging.
“The home should be the space where love, safety and rhythm enable a child to thrive.”
The Princess added: “Every child deserves respect and safety, and everyone who cares deserves recognition and appreciation.
“Every act of care creates community because we are all essentially weavers of the same fabric.
“I believe in restoring the dignity to the quiet, often invisible work of caring, of loving well, as we look to build a happier, healthier society.”
Sir Gareth Southgate, the former England football manager, also addressed delegates at the event.
Southgate said he was “very fortunate” to have grown up in an environment built on trust and love, where he could fail and get things wrong.
But he discovered when working with footballers who did not have such a secure family background that it was “much harder” to build trust with them.
“With my players, I wanted to create an environment where they could fail,” he said.
“We would reflect and review why, but they felt supported.
“They could understand that we were working with them to make them the best they could be, and that’s what I had as a young player.”
He said he had done personality profiles for members of his team, which helped him recognise why they behaved in certain ways.
Southgate admitted that when he was younger, he was often “catastrophising” – using as an example the time he missed a penalty in the 1996 UEFA Euros semifinal against Germany.
“I missed a very famous penalty 30 years ago that night, and I was always thinking, ‘how do I ever recover from this? This is a public humiliation, right?’
“I failed to execute a skill under pressure in front of half of the world, so I didn’t know where I was heading with that.”
He said he worked through it “step by step” and recognised that he had to face people.
“Talking to people that had been through similar situations, I was fortunate that I had some teammates that had been in that situation, so they could talk me through what they lived through, how it affected them, what might come further down the line,” he said.
Southgate is a supporter of the Royal Foundation’s Heads Together campaign and has previously spoken of the need to generate open and honest conversation about mental health and wellbeing.
The summit was organised by the foundation’s Business Taskforce for Early Childhood, which was founded by the Princess in March 2023. It aims to encourage business leaders to champion the social and emotional development of employees.
The taskforce is a key part of the Princess’s mission to transform attitudes towards early childhood.
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