What's Love Got To Do With Leadership?

leader standing in the fog

When I began my journey of understanding what lies at the heart of effective leadership, I wasn't expecting the answer to be quite what it turned out to be. What I discovered may be seem a bit 'woo woo' for the places leadership tends to live, like the corner office, the corporate boardroom or the negotiation table. I get it. I was (and still am) surprised by where I landed, yet the more I sit in it and test it against new experiences and learnings, the more certain I am of its truth. So, here goes:

Great leadership distills down to a core choice available to us in any moment: To operate from fear or love. 

Here’s the thing – it’s normal to operate from fear. We’re hard-wired as humans to react quickly and unconsciously to threats from our environment. We hear a rustle in the bushes, our amygdala fires up, floods us with adrenaline, and we’ve run a mile before we even know what we’re running from. 

In our modern world the rustle in the bushes can look like an eye roll, not making our quarterly numbers or encountering someone with a different viewpoint than us. Those stress hormones become activated and prime us to take quick action. We don’t have time to decide what we want to do or which choice will have the best long term outcome. Instead, one option flashes before us: fight, flight or freeze, and we invoke that option without a second thought. 

I like to imagine the stress hormones as rising like a fog, up and around the periphery of our awareness and closing in until there's only a small opening in front of us. We see a singular choice through this pinhole, though there are a myriad of options in the panoramic. 

The big work in our lives is learning to recognize when fear shows up and, instead of automatically reacting from fear, consciously choosing to respond from a place of love. 

And when we become leaders? Well, to be blunt, we have to get good at this work, ASAP. 

What’s love got to do with leadership? I mean, c’mon, there’s a business to run and decisions to make, right? And sometimes that means tough choices and hard conversations. Operating from love sounds soft, nothing would ever get done! 

This approach isn’t asking you to gather in a circle with your employees and stakeholders and sing Kumbaya. It’s also not implying you should let everyone do what they want to do because you want to be “nice” and not hurt anyone’s feelings. What it is asking of you is to anchor everything you do from a place of love, instead of fear. Anchored from love, the fog dissipates and you are able to see the full menu of options available to you and then take action from that place of clarity and choice.  

So, what does operating from love actually look like?

An example I like to point to comes from a series that is a masterclass in leading from love, Ted Lasso. One scene, in particular, stands out as a way to think about leading from love when others are challenging you.

In this scene, one of the team’s star players, Sam, stomps off the field during practice declaring “bullshit” after Ted (his coach) corrects him on a play. Ted follows Sam into the locker room and learns Sam is angry with him because of a Twitter post that has him believing Ted invited ex-teammate Jamie – who had treated Sam and other teammates badly – back onto the team. He's upset that Ted would make a decision like this without consulting with the team.

After Ted explains he didn’t think there was anything to consult with the team about because he told Jamie that rejoining wasn’t going to happen, Sam immediately feels remorse for his firestorm exit from the field. Ted reassures him that he wants Sam to voice his opinion – that he is a leader on the team too and his perspective matters. As their conversation wraps up, Ted lets him know that he’s still going to have to ask him to run laps and Sam eagerly responds: “I was hoping you’d say that.” 

What's notable about this scene is that the love Ted is operating from is palpable. You can see it in his facial expressions and hear it in his voice. And, more importantly, his approach isn't soft. Ted still issues a consequence for the behavior. He doesn't compromise on the high standards he holds his team to.

When it comes to incorporating this into your work as a leader, awareness is the key. 

Anthony de Mello, Jesuit priest, psychotherapist and author offers: ”Be aware of your being before you swing into action.”  

To tap into awareness, pause and notice: Are you being love? Or, are you being fear? If you are being fear, forgive yourself first (you are human and this fear response is normal). Then, choose to clear the fog – through mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, a walk in nature or whatever works for you to bring you back to love.

Now, with this clear view, examine the range of possibilities in front of you and swing into action from there.