Love & Leadership

The best leaders – and I include some of the toughest when I say “best leaders” – lead with love.  So if you want to be the best leader you can be, you may want to consider how well you let your innate love flow when you are leading because love is a hidden key to effective leadership.

Do you feel love is a strange word to use when we’re talking about leadership?  It’s not if you think about it.  Consider exceptional leaders like Abraham Lincoln, General Eisenhower and Mahatma Gandhi.

Examples of Exceptional Leaders

• Lincoln was the President of the United States who ended slavery in the USA.
• Eisenhower was Allied Forces Supreme Commander in Europe during World War II.  He was a leader of leaders and had to pull opinionated men like Generals Montgomery and Patton together to form a team.
• Gandhi forced the British to give India independence by leading a campaign of non-violent non-cooperation.

None of them would have achieved what they did and in the way they did it without high, equal regard for others.  And “regard” is another, but less emotionally charged, word for love.

Effective Leadership & Love

Don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not talking about a soft, gentle, sympathetic, unchallenging love.  Nor do I mean a possessive, controlling, demanding-something-in-return kind of love, for the effective leader’s love is unconditional.  The finest leaders expect nothing in return – although like anyone else, they welcome a positive response.

I’m talking instead about a love that cares about people’s welfare, but cares equally about their growth and, of course, the mission.

This is the love that urges others to rise above their current conditions to produce their finest performance.  It’s the love of awakening people to their highest potential and helping them express it.  This love challenges the status quo, people’s sense of comfortability and their unwillingness to change in pursuit of a purpose that’s important to all.

Vince Lombardi

There is a famous saying in professional sport.  It is, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” and the man who first said it was Vince Lombardi.

Lombardi was an American football coach in the 1950s and 60s.  Extraordinarily successful as a coach, he was an outstanding motivator with an obsession for winning and a disciplinarian who pushed his players to their limits.  Yet he also said this:

“…I don’t necessarily have to like my associates, but as a man, I must love them.  Love is loyalty.  Love is teamwork.  Love respects the dignity of the individual.  Heartpower is the strength of your corporation.” 

This hard, demanding man loved his players and knew it was a key to effective leadership.  And his players responded with championship-winning performances wherever he went.

Tough Love

To be clear, the idea of leadership as love is no reason to dodge hard-edged decisions for the good of the group.  Nor does it exclude an unshakeable resolve to make things happen, insist on high performance standards and take tough action with people who don’t perform well and show no sign of improving.

But leadership love will influence how you deal with below-par performers.  For example, you may still fire someone, but you’ll fire them the way you would like to be fired.

Love & Self-Mastery

How do you let more of your innate love flow as you lead?  By practising self-mastery, which is something I explain in detail in The Three Levels of Leadership, my new book on leadership, released in May 2011.