I want to deal with the elephant I brought into the room … this idea of love …. as a leadership principle.

Can love really be a leadership principle? Clearly love isn’t something that’s discussed, practiced or proclaimed in our leadership circles, whether we consider MBA schools, the Wall Street Journal or the halls of the Fortune 500. Go ahead. Tell me the last time love was a point of meaningful conversation in your organization? Or tell me, when was the last time you heard someone proclaim the value of love to your organization’s success? (If you have heard this at your organization, you’re one of the few … embrace it!)?

Few organizations and leaders have yet adopted the tenants of loving leadership (as we’ll define soon). And, if I had to guess, if I were to mention love as a leadership principle to most executives, they’d quickly dismiss the idea as a waste of time. Given the way we define and use the word love these days, I’m not sure I’d blame them. So … let’s take a closer look at this word … love.

Over time, our concept of love has become incredibly broad and nuanced. Love has evolved from a word that tended to depict a bond with another person, to an emotional expression about someone near and dear to us … and the concept seemed to proliferate from there. The most obvious may be how love has been romanticized … and then over time, sexualized.  Love from this romantic context clearly has no meaningful connection to love as a leadership principle. 

If we weren’t confused enough about the term ‘love’ already, consider its use as its evolved to now include our emotional feeling towards things we strongly like. We love our food, clothes, cars, houses, songs, movies, colors … Really? … as if one could actually ‘love’ an inanimate object. Yet, each of these ideas is now a valid use of the word love based on our cultural contexts.

Clearly, love’s a fractured concept.  For most organizations, it’s been relegated to the marketing and advertising departments as simply an emotional force to be exploited.  Based on our social and personal definitions of love, it has little meaningful value for most leaders and organizations.

This topic of love as a leadership principle is so problematic that most leadership authors and speakers dare not speak of love. As a community, business leaders and authors have actually gone to great lengths to avoid the use of the word ‘love’, instead referring to concepts such as loyalty, trust, benevolence and even endearment to convey the ideals of love. We’ve even coined a number of business terms and concepts that are relevant, but I’d consider them to be “love-light” ideas, such as customer satisfaction and employee engagement. (I’ll say more on that another day.)

In a great article on behavioral economics , Gallup declared the significance of emotional connections to driving exceptional performance. They touched on many aspects of love, yet fell short of proclaiming the veracity of love itself. And the book Firms of Endearment (another highly recommended read) openly addresses dynamics of love in organizations without identifying love as the true underlying principle and source of powerful ‘endearing’ organizations’ results.

In order to have a meaningful conversation about love as a leadership principle, we need to establish a definition that we can align on and build upon. After extensive research, discussion and contemplation, the type of love that impacts leadership (and results) is a love that “values others”. This type of love places a high value on others by thinking, speaking and acting in a manner that demonstrates the inherent value of others. Going forward, rather than using the word love to convey this idea of valuing others, I want to use a new term for Loving Leadership … which I simply refer to as L2®.

Herein is the incredible power of love, as L2.  By creating value for others, we actually create value for our organizations, communities, employees, customers … and even ourselves.  This probably deserves its own blog, but for now, just pause and think about it for a moment. When a company creates a product and experience that has great value for you, and they demonstrate to you that you are valuable to them … you in turn will likely value that company (trust, appreciate, be loyal to, frequently purchase, share likes, recommend, etc…).  In this sense, L2 – valuing others, is an incredibly unifying principle, bringing alignment to everything we do … marketing, employee remproduct development, customer service, employee relations … and ultimately how we lead.

I’m convinced life is best experienced and best lived when we demonstrate the value of others … by creating value for others.

I invite you to join in. Let’s start something !  (Please share this post)

L2® is a registered trademark (LearnLead – L2) of the John Maxell Company and is used with permission.