The Real Work of Loving Leaders

I flew to Chicago last week, and my hardshell bag came out on the carousel cracked in half from top to bottom. While this was disappointing, the airline team member who assisted me was caring, kind, quick, and helpful. Likewise, the airline's replacement policy was caring too in it's ease, timeliness, simplicity, and generosity. The person and the policy worked together to create a caring, satisfying customer experience out of a bad situation. 

The same should to be true for how our team members experience their interactions with us and the organizational components that shape and impact their work lives. These should work together to both create a loving, human work experience.

As Loving Leaders, we can express our love and care by getting to know them as people, taking time to help them learn and grow, expressing appreciation and respect, creating a sense of trust and belonging, and more.

But it will all be negated if their organizational experiences are dehumanizing due to unsafe working conditions, wasteful processes, inequitable compensation or opportunities for advancement, inability to contribute to planning, narrow policies, punitive measurement systems, favoritism, or joyless culture. 

Our organizational systems and operating practices need to express our love just as much as our day to day interactions with our team members do.

Remember, every organization will have a purpose, processes, policies, planning, budgeting, people systems, recognition, team practices, communication, measurement, reporting, and culture. All these will exist in some form.

The question is: Are yours loving? 

And, are you intentionally embedding your loving values in each of these elements? Because this is also the work of Loving Leadership. Not just conversations. Not just team meetings and learning opportunities. But also the elements of our organization that shape employee experience too. 

Now, granted, that's a lot to tend to, and you probably can’t take it on all at once. So you have to pick someplace to start.

So where to begin?

Ask your team members. Get their input on what feels unloving or creates fear or dehumanization. Listen, write down their feedback, and ask them to identify the top priorities. Start where there’s pain, where harm is being done. Begin there. Involve them in solutions where possible, without putting the burden on them to fix things. Be mindful because that can be a fine line to walk.

Move from component to component over time.

Imagine these organizational elements (purpose, processes, policies, practices, etc.) as a map of your organizational territory that you need to visit over time. That’s key: Over time. It can’t all happen at once. But with consistency, you’ll move from area to area and embed love in each area of the map.

My colleague Darrell Damron and I used to say this work is like “Chutes and Ladders.” After working on one component for a while, you’ll look around and realize you need to go work on another component “over there”, and you’ll slide on over to that area to make sure it is embedded with love too.

Know that this is the work of leadership, and it is never done. There will always be outside influences and changing needs that will have us revisiting these and asking ourselves, “What does love look like in practice here now?” and “What can we do to decrease the fear and truly uplift people in this component now?”

But what if I don’t control things? 

If you are a manager or supervisor, you may feel you don’t have much say over organizational policy, the budgeting process, or performance management for example. No matter what level of leadership, almost no one controls everything. But we can all have more influence and perhaps more options than we realize.

• Question your assumptions and explore where you have latitude to interpret, buffer, shape, or adapt and do all you can within your purview. You may have more opportunities than you think! For example, the official planning process may not include instructions for team engagement. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t engage your team. Question the boundaries you assume are there and look for opportunities to bring respect, trust, care, engagement, listening, participation, etc.

• Be an influencer for changing systems and structures. Ask those responsible for organizational components for what your team needs, Share the impacts of current policies or processes, for example, and offer alternatives.

• Join with your peers who may be experiencing the same negative impacts and collectively advocate for more human-centric operational practices.

• Prototype a process or beta test a practice and bring this to those responsible as a ready-to-go option. Bring data to show the cost and impacts to make the business case for a change.

Still, there may be things you and your team have to live with, so focus on where you can bring love and human care to your organizational components.

This will make a difference. Your team members will experience more resonance between your loving behaviors in moments that matter and the operations, systems, and structures of their workplace.

This care from both is well-rounded Loving Leadership!