Loving Leadership is Obvious!

This blog is part of Renee’s Loving Leaders email series, where she shares insights and strategies for Leading with Love every week. To receive these reflections directly in your inbox, sign up for the series here.

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There it was again.

I’d heard a version of this same statement numerous times this summer.

In workshops. In meetings. In one-on-one conversations. I’ve read it in articles too.

All in reference to principles and practices of being more loving and human.

“These ideas are so obvious. They are something we all know.”

Yes, building relationships with our team members characterized by respect, trust, kindness, compassion, challenge, healthy boundaries, belonging and appreciation is a no brainer.

Most people now know that people work better in these conditions.

And then I’ve heard this too:

“But why don’t we do them?”

Why indeed.

This is an important question. Some of us will work to understand why. To get to the root causes of why we don’t do these things that we know are not only right to do but better for business and organizational outcomes if we do. Better for society. Better for families.

There are a bunch of reasons. Cultural habits. Power structures. Competitive norms that reject collaboration as weak. Fear. Control. Misinformation. Poor leadership models. Lack of access to training in humanistic options.

We need to keep identifying these root causes and address them systematically and systemically.

And, those of us who are leading, who daily face the pressures of deadlines for our deliverables, budgets, decisions by those above us, and challenging team dynamics as well as opportunities, don’t have time to figure out the why.

But we who are leading can reject those norms and decide to lead differently. 

We can personally decide to adopt love as our core value and to center human dignity in our work. 

We can choose to get to know our team members as people, to let them know they belong and matter, to acknowledge and uplift them, to guide them and coach them, to support and train them, to challenge and demonstrate our belief in them, to shield them from the b.s. as best we can, and to show compassion and kindness when life happens to them too.

These actions I'm describing can all be personally chosen and embedded in what we already do as leaders: In our planning, one on one’s, team meetings, and day to day interactions. And the nature of how we approach all these situations is under our control as leaders.

We can decide if these experiences will be loving and human fostering loyalty, engagement, creativity, and satisfaction.

Or if these experiences will be anxiety-ridden, threatening, and dehumanizing prompting fear, mistrust, turnover, mistakes, and disengagement.

We know what’s common. We can see the consequences in the low level of engagement at 32% reported by Gallup and in the remedies listed in the article which look remarkably like the stories of feeling loved at work that people describe to me in my research on love and fear. 

And, we can choose differently.

And that, my friends, is hopeful and exciting. It’s why I get up every day and focus on Loving Leaders and on helping leaders do exactly this: Choosing to love.

Because you are reading this, I bet that you are choosing love too. That you believe things can and should be different, and you are deciding each day, quietly but powerfully, to be different.

That’s beautiful. And important. And I’m with you. Keep going! Keep loving!

For Loving Leaders who are doing what's obvious but not yet common.

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