“Leadership — Is Love All You Need?”
Not so quick Einstein let’s hear what the Romans have to say first!
“We have no empire, such as did the Romans, so powerful that subject cities spontaneously sought to emulate their overseers speech, nonetheless in our present times, many divers people of intelligence and refinement, devote much effort and study to learning and speaking our language for no other reason than love.”
Those are the words of Giovan Baista Gelli, taken from ‘Ragionamento sulla lingua’, published in 1551.
But Is Love Always The Answer?
It appears so for the Romans, but as the question was posed in the Monty Python film ‘Life of Brian’, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
Seriously though, what does it mean to lead with love?
The ability to give and receive love is innate. Integral to our nature but subject to the ebb and flow of nature and nurture. It can be strengthened, dissolved, or misdirected by both.
To lead with love requires an act of balance — balancing self-love with self-care — and if you’ve ever tried you’ll know it’s not always so easy.
But to help colleagues and collaborators to:
- focus on themselves,
- feel genuine gratitude,
- have a positive self-regard, &
- not look to others to fulfil and make them feel complete,
a leader must accept and love themself and to do this they must first chose to take care both of their physical body and their inner self.
To be human is to be aware, able to understand our emotions however complex, and retain the capacity for empathy and love.
And it remains true that more than our innate abilities, it is our ableness to govern ourselves and the choices we make which demonstrate who we truly are!
Positive Self Regard For A Positive Future Focus
“Trust comes on foot but leaves on Horseback.” (Dutch proverb org. John Thornbecke)
Prerequisite for both positive self-regard and a positive future focus is inclusion — and it is Inclusion we’re talking about rather than integration, as the model above artfully illustrates.
And central to inclusion are the qualities of acceptance and appreciation. Appreciation for and acceptance of our difference, our back stories, our journey, and the challenges we have faced along the way.
A strategy of active inclusion will permit, enable, and support those we lead, immediate colleagues and those we work and collaborate with in external organisations, to focus on themselves.
An inclusive space will help inculcate a sense of nourishment and trust, creating an environment where open and honest conversations can take place more freely.
And trust is the bedrock upon which:
- Morale is strengthened.
- Wellbeing given succour.
- Competence demonstrated.
- Belief, likeability, and psychological safety forged, &
- Performance turbo charged.
Heart Centred Leadership
“Change how you look at things and the things you look at change.” Max Planck
An inclusive space is also a natural place for Heart Centred Leadership which intuits that culture is the sum of the stories we tell ourselves and the stories that we share which are legion and make legends.
A Heart Centred Leader also recognises that culture is how employees hearts and stomachs feel about Monday morning on a Sunday night!
STOP PRESS — Following a recent LinkedIn survey suggesting 80% of us experience some kind of Sunday night dread, Channel 4 TV have announced a crackdown on weekend emails, so employees don’t get the Sunday Night Scaries!
So yes, it’s real. “Sunday Night Dread” is a thing, and even has its own Instagram account @sundayscaries.
If you have ever felt the existential dread of Sunday night before returning to work after the weekend and want to tackle your lunaediesophobia as it is technically called, here are 3 SIMPLE THINGS YOU CAN DO:
1. Complete a to-do list before you leave on Friday for the following week.
2. Sketch & verbalise your typical Sunday night routine and what is happening for you and how this makes you feel, &
3. Identify positive ways you can break this vicious cycle e.g., practicing a mindful breathing or visualisation exercise to maintain an in the present’ focus, & planning and enjoying a small treat or two.
Also don’t forget, Its culture that establishes the rules after leadership has left the room and it eats strategy for breakfast!
The Harvard Professor Bill George, and author of the seminal books, ‘True North’, ‘Discover Your True North’ and ‘Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the secrets of Creating Lasting Value’, wrote that authentic leaders also lead with their heart.
Whilst they cultivate long term relationships, demonstrate excellence through self-discipline, never lose sight of their core values and principles, and are driven by a strong moral and ethical purpose.
Heart Centred Leadership sets the tone for ‘Natural Engagement’. It recognises the need to create an emotional connection and follow through, to achieve the right balance between autonomy, purpose, and reward.
And this encourages the ‘Personal Vision’ and the ‘Organisational Vision’ to align and create a sweet spot, where people can feel truly supported and empowered to do amazing work.
AN EXERCISE — So, how can you achieve this balance and through this a Bell Hawthorne effect? Perhaps you could try the following exercise:
“Using the ‘Heart Felt Engagement Model’ above identify 3 actions you could take as a Leader to help align the ‘Personal Vision’ and the ‘Organisational Vision’ ( i.e., 3 for each) to create that sweet spot of ‘Natural Engagement’.
Then take this a step further, and visualise what the ‘Natural Engagement’ might look and feel like in practice i.e.:
- How behaviours might differ.
- What relationships would now look like, &
- Which new processes would need to be introduced to support this.”
Looking Through The Window Of Love
The actions of a Heart Centred Leader are tempered with compassionate wisdom, moral purpose, and a prevailing intention to make a positive difference in the lives of those they lead.
They display behaviours such as:
- Authenticity.
- Humility.
- Transparency, &
- Vulnerability.
They are anchored, brave, and kind, and by dint of their discipline have applied themselves to developing:
- Self-Awareness.
- Self-Knowledge, &
- Self-Mastery.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, “The more I know, the less I understand.”
So, what else should we know and hopefully better understand about the authentic self and being an authentic and heart centred leader?
Authentic leadership has its roots in Greek thinking and the Delphic injunction to first know yourself.
Being authentic has been described as, “Knowing then acting on what is true and real inside of you.”
However, in their book ‘Why Should Anyone be led By You: What It Takes To be An Authentic Leader’, Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones rightly point out that to attract followers a leader must be many things to many people yet remain true to themselves.
Does this suggest there is an implicit tension in authentic and heart centred leadership i.e., how to lead authentically and from the heart, yet not lose one’s moral compass?
Ralph Waldo Emmerson wrote that “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest achievement.”
I would describe an authentic leader as being, “Someone who walks ahead, whose words draw people forward into areas they don’t yet know, requiring them to be people they can’t yet be.”
Whilst Bill George believed that a heart centred leader must also be able to lead not only with their heart but also with their head and be both pragmatic and a have a steely resolve.
This finds common ground with the work of Jim Collins, who in his book ‘Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make The leap And Others Don’t’, wrote of the leaders he’d observed who were seemingly ordinary people producing extraordinary results.
They had a deep personal humility coupled with an intense professional will and a fierce resolve.
They confronted the brutal facts whilst maintaining an unwavering faith that things could and would get better.
These leaders thought in terms of “First who, then what”, and they knew what they didn’t want.
And because of their modesty and leadership which they practiced without fanfare or any desire to be placed on a pedestal, they typically looked out of the window to credit others for success and looked in the mirror to apportion responsibility when things didn’t go to plan.
Love Potion №9
Jim Collins observations on leadership have also been echoed by Nelson Mandela who said, “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.”
People of intelligence and refinement no less, who in the words of the quote at the top of this piece, “devote much effort and study” for no other reason than you are an authentic heart centred leader.
And as such some questions you might ask yourself include:
- What assumptions am I making and why?
- Am I aware of any biases I have and how do I counter these?
- What am I missing and why?
- What should I pay more attention to and why? &
- Is love all you need?
Here’s an idea though — There are ‘5 Quotients’ of leadership, which are based on original research involving 20,000+ organisations spanning 32 countries, and these are:
- IQ — Intellectual.
- PQ — Political.
- EQ — Emotional.
- RQ — Resilient, &
- MQ — Moral.
But what if there were a 6th leadership quotient i.e., LQ — aka the Love Quotient, that could push a leader to grow beyond their Intellectual & Emotional leadership quotients?
Jack Ma, one of the founders of Alibaba, the Chinese multinational technology company which employs over 250,000 people and has a current market capitalisation of 1.7 Trillion Hong Kong Dollars, is quoted as saying, “I believe if a person wants to be successful, they should have a high EQ; if they don’t want to lose quickly they should have a high IQ, and if they want to be respected, they should have a high LQ — the IQ of love.”
As David S Gilbert Smith wrote in his book ‘Winning Hearts & Minds’, all leadership starts with oneself and with:
- Being self-aware.
- Being able to receive and reciprocate trust, &
- Learning to accept and love oneself.
Because if someone doesn’t love themself can you ever truly trust them? Or should you heed the warning of an African proverb and beware, “The naked person who offers you a shirt.”
So, perhaps it’s time to accept and feel the love because it is the answer?
And finally, remember nothing is really new and very little remains to be discovered as these lines from TS Eliot’s ‘East Coker’ remind us –
“And what there is to conquer/ By strength and submission has already been discovered/ Once or twice or several times, by those whom one cannot hope/ to emulate.”
But don’t give up, not yet!
About The Author
Having written over a million published words towards endings and beginnings and finding a beauty that will cost us nothing, Paul Adam Mudd is about making the complicated less complex, the tough stuff not so tough and putting the unreachable within reach of everyone.
He is also a Trusted Adviser, Leadership Rockstar (Apparently), Savvy Thinker, International Keynote Speaker, Best Selling Author, Global Well Being, Well Doing and Mindfulness Influencer, Co-Founder and Director of the Mudd Partnership who’s raison d’etre is to develop senior leaders to be simply brilliant, and Co-Creator of the new tMP Hexagon Leadership & Coaching programme #ThinkHexagon © 2021
