With Valentine’s Day just a day away, thoughts of love are in the air. Josh and I spent the first twelve years of our marriage not celebrating V-Day at all, and then our daughter started school. Apparently Valentine’s Day is a Very Big Deal to elementary-school girls. In honor of Valentine’s Day and the over 1 billion cards that are being purchased and delivered this week to express various forms of love, I thought I’d write a bit about love and leadership.
We have been known behind the scenes at Leading by DESIGN to talk about loving leaders into leadership. That might make a few of you kind of uncomfortable, but bear with me. Our culture most readily identifies love as romantic, but there are many other kinds of love, including the love great leaders have for those around them, which is something we hope you will tap into as you lead your team.
Instead of defining this kind of love myself, I’m going to quote from 1 Corinthians 13:5-7 (MSG). However you understand the Bible, this verse does a good job of defining the kind of love I’m talking about:
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
How would you feel about following someone with this kind of love for the team? Someone who is patient, doesn’t put themselves first, doesn’t hold grudges, and doesn’t give up? Part of love, too, is having those hard conversations to share a hard truth with someone. I’ve heard Rodger describe leaning into healthy conflict as sharing the truth…in love. Real love for the team means doing some hard stuff because it’s best for them, their growth, the team, and the company. And in the end, it’s best for the leader too.
Let’s turn the focus inward now. How do you do with displaying these characteristics of a loving leader? Where might you need to grow in order to continue to be a person worth following? Does this all ring true to you, or are you still wondering what love has to do with leadership?
Many leader development initiatives won’t talk about love being a driving force for great leaders, not unlike the famous Tina Turner song embedded below, which shows how crazy it is to try to take love out of personal relationships. And since I brought up Tina Turner, how about a little 1984 throwback to get the day off to a great start? (Or at least to reflect on how thankful we all should be that hairstyles have evolved since the mid-80s!)
Happy (early) Valentine’s Day,
Meredith
Image by MelisaTG. Used under CC By 2.0 license.
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