Let’s talk about LOVE and leadership.

Photo credit: Ben Mater on Unsplash

The word LOVE keeps coming up in my workshops, trainings and sessions. People use the word with exuberance, commitment and also with hesitation, uncertainty and discomfort.

It seems to me that we’ve been socialized to think that talking about love in a work setting or situation is inappropriate or taboo. We have been taught that love is a thing to be kept hidden, in private, just between you and me. Our norms tell us that love doesn’t exist at work, in our neighbourhoods or communities, or for strangers in the public arena. There is this sense that if we talk about love at work or with people who aren’t members of our family that we are weak and soft, maybe even silly.

It is time we challenged that idea.

We live in a time of outrage, where polarization and divide are pulling people further and further apart. We live in a time of reactivity, where people see threats all around them and fear runs rampant through our communities, organizations and our own pysches.

We’ve got two opposite and contradictory examples of leadership approaches playing out in the global public arena: leaders who act out blame, shame and fear mongering; and leaders who talk about compassion, empathy and a sense of the collective. There remains a sense that leaders must be “strong” and that talk of love, compassion, kindness is “weak”.

In an interview for On Being, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors talks about how love has been suffused in their activism. “It’s both rage and love at the center of our work,” she says “When we show up on the freeway, when we chain ourselves to each other, that’s an act of love. That act of resistance is an act of love, that we will put our bodies on the line for our community and really for this country. In changing black lives, we change all lives.”

In a recent blog I said that the antidote to fear, polarization and the divide between us is human kindness. I want to go further than that. I want to start bringing that word LOVE into our work spaces, our communities, our conversations with strangers and new connections. If outrage has been normalized, perhaps we can normalize love as another choice.

There appears to be a link between leadership and love. I stumbled across this video by Dr. Joe Ricciardi, a Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves who believes that best thing he can do as a leader is to truly love his soldiers. In a military organization with traditional models of directive leadership this is a revolutionary concept. In a world struggling with a growing divide it is a much-needed and inspiring approach.

Why does it make us uncomfortable to talk about LOVE in a work setting? In a recent brave, honest conversations workshop with a group of amazing people doing work on the ground in community talking about tough issues like the opiod epidemic, discrimination based on gender and sexual identity, poverty and reconciliation the word love came up. It was offered hesitantly and with discomfort at first. We were talking about what really needs to be present in order to have a brave, honest conversation, and how you need to lead these challenging discussions. When you think about those most difficult of conversations and the leadership it requires to step into them, why wouldn’t you choose love and compassion over neutrality, “professionalism” (whatever that means), or facts? If we can talk together about our sources and perspectives on hate, fear, grief and anxiety why can’t we talk about love?

Photo credit: Stephani Roy McCallum, participant thoughts about what it takes to have a brave, honest conversation. See the last bullet: “Lean into love.”

believe that if you give people a choice between fear and the status quo they will lean into fear because we are hard wired from an evolutionary perspective to watch out for danger and protect ourselves and what matters most to us. Fear closes us down, isolates us, makes us protective. In the last few years we have seen politicians generating fear, using it to catalyze action for their causes, and to divide and separate people. Historically, fear of the other has resulted in discrimination, wars and genocides.

I believe that if you give people a choice between love and fear they will choose love. Love is a more powerful force than fear. It generates hope, possibility, creativity, innovation and problem solving. It connects us to each other and generates positive feelings. It opens us up. Love has inspired religions, social movements and major social changes. While fear gives people something to be against, love gives people something to be for.

This isn’t a new idea, but it is an idea we need to remember and lean into in the times we live in. Albert Einstein said, “If instead of E = mc2, we accept that the energy to heal the world can be obtained through love multiplied by the speed of light squared, we arrive at the conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is, because it has no limits.”

After surviving a Nazi concentration camp, Victor Frankl said, “Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which one can aspire.”

Martin Luther King, President Obama, John F. Kennedy and Ghandi spoke of the power of love and hope. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand speaks of empathy and compassion in this BBC interview, stating that “It takes strength to be an empathetic leader” recognizing the moral courage and strength it takes to meet blame, shame and outrage with kindness and compassion. Leaders who inspire us with hope, love and empathy create powerful momentum in the world and counter the harsh forces of negativity. They also turn our traditional models of strong leadership upside down.

How do we openly choose to talk about and show up with love?

• You get to choose how you show up and how you lead: We can be intentional rather than reactive when faced with challenges. So often when we act with anger, blame, or disconnect we are reacting without conscious thought. We can choose to step into a leadership mindset of love, an open heart and compassion instead. I know from experience that when I show up with love, the conversation is completely different than when I show up with frustration, anger or even neutrality.

• Start an uncomfortable conversation — about LOVE and LEADERSHIP: In my work I have a pretty high comfort level for conversations about anger, fear, anxiety and pain. I notice that because these things are in the public arena others are increasing their comfort to talk about these intense emotions. However, the idea of leading with love, compassion and empathy still creates an uncomfortable ripple. The way to shift this discomfort is to step into it and open up the conversation with others. We can create new expectations for leadership and for ourselves as leaders if we make this part of the pattern of our conversations. We can advocate for love, compassion and empathy as core leadership skills.

• Act like you love people you don’t know, especially those who are showing up with anger and fear: We are programmed to gravitate to people who are like us, who think and act like we do. We are biased towards our perceptions of relatedness with others, and to fear or be cautious of those who are different than us. That bias is subconscious and runs deep. One of the few ways to de-program it is to actively and intentionally seek out conversations, interactions and relationships with those who you perceive see the world as totally differently than you do. Reach out to a stranger, get curious about a colleague, step into conversation with a neighbour and do it from a place of love and a belief that others are doing the very best that they can and you can learn from their perspectives and experiences.

• Practice mindfulness and lean into love: Love is what we were born with and fear is what we have learned. Practicing mindfulness and the tools that connect you to your deepest self and your wide open heart allow you to make choices and to lead from love rather than from fear. That requires letting go of certainty and the need to be right. It requires a commitment to listen to understand and a heart full of curiousity. These things are so much easier to write and say than they are to do, which is why they take a regular practice of mindfulness and conscious intention.

I want to leave you with this beautiful quote that keeps running through my head:

“Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.”

~David Augsburger

It is an act of strong leadership to show up with love, to choose love over fear, and to leave those you interact with feeling loved. Choose to lead with love in your next brave, honest conversation and see what happens.