Love: The New Way To Lead

Being a boss could be the hardest thing you ever had to do, whether you are a manager or a stay-at-home mother. To increase your chances of success, lead with love

Are you a fear-based leader or a leader led by love?

The fear-based leader is the one who is motivated by fear. Fear that the Manager he hired will take over his job.  Fear that if he isn’t the smartest one in the room, he will lose his job.  Fear that your competitors are stealing your ideas and your staff.

Donald Trump is one example of a fear-based leader.  His terrifying “You’re fired” on the reality TV show, The Apprentice, isn’t just for show.  His staff run helter-skelter trying to second-guess his reactions and his next move.  He likes to “keep them on their toes”.

Model Naomi Campbell has been to court more than a few times for abusing her personal assistants.  From physical abuse to verbal lashings, her arsenal of weapons against her staff alone is stuff of legend.

Let’s look closer to home.  Leadership doesn’t have to be on a big scale — you don’t have to be the CEO of a multi-national company to be a leader.  Stay-at-home moms are leaders of their household.  Your “underlings” are your children and very often, your domestic helper.

Fear-based leadership is detailed in John Hope Bryant’s fast-selling new book Love Leadership: The New Way To Lead In A Fear-Based World.  He describes the signs of fear-based leadership — do the following sound familiar?

- Using aggressive language, tone and eye contact
- Criticising unfairly
- Blaming, without offering reasonable recourse
- Applying rules inconsistently
- Stealing credit
- Making unreasonable demands
- Issuing threats, insults and accusation
- Denying accomplishments
- Excluding others from opportunities
- Assigning pointless tasks
- Personalising problems
- Breaching confidentiality
- Spreading rumours

If you are a leader that constantly practices these, it’s quite likely you have a high staff turnover rate, or your big bosses might have had a word or two with you.  Many of us grew up learning this style of leadership because it was widely practiced (even parents are guilty of the above sometimes!).

There is a more excellent way to lead, says Bryant.  Sure, using fear to lead will get you results fast, he admits, but these results will not last.  “Fear leads to ‘short-termism’,” he explains.  “One of the most significant examples for the failure of fear-based leadership … is the subprime mortgage crisis that has gripped the capital markets the world over.”  The root of the crisis, says Bryant, is a toxic combination of fear, greed and laziness (which can commonly be found in each other’s company).

Leading by fear will make you do foolish things like sue your partners or employees over small matters, overwork your staff (“they should count themselves lucky to have a job at this time”), cut wages with no plan to restore them, indulge in unfair practices to “get ahead”.

The opposite of fear is love.  “What you don’t love, you fear,” explains Bryant. “Fear is me-focused.”  Conversely, love is other-focused.

Love-based leadership is the opposite of fear-based leadership.  Love leaders do good, think of others, long at the long term, build genuine relationships based on real love for others.

Mother Teresa did not set out to build one of the most successful missionary organizations in history.  Yet today, Missionaries of Charity, which she founded, is still expanding and has over 4,500 sisters in service in over 150 countries.

What Mother Teresa accomplished, she did out of pure love.  “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat,” she said.  She did not just tackle physical poverty but emotional and spiritual poverty.  She lived by her own words:  “Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary.  What we need is to love without getting tired.”

Today her name is synonymous with giving and love.  She might not have started out wanting to be a leader but Mother Teresa became one of the world’s greatest leaders by her love.

Bryant breaks love leadership into five core lessons:

1.  Loss Creates Leaders – if you have suffered under a horrible boss, instead of turning into that person, use your bad experience to become a love leader. Destroy your ex-boss’s bad deeds by your love, and watch your own leadership blossom.

2.  Fear Fails – those who lead by fear will achieve short-lived goals, but ultimately they will fail.  History has proven this time and time again.  Replace fear with love.

3.  Love Makes Money – Investing in love will give you paybacks in ways you never imagined. Think back on how many times you have got a new job or won a new business contract because someone you showed love and care to connected you or put in a good word for you.  Build genuine relationships and set your mind on love — you and the company you run or work for will benefit from love-based thinking.

4.  Vulnerability Is Power – Are you too afraid to admit you are wrong?  The most powerful leaders are the ones who are not afraid to be humble.  It is only when you are willing to admit you don’t know everything that you can begin to find out what you need to know and to grow.

5.  Giving Is Getting – It is a universal law.  The biggest givers are the biggest getters.  Bill Gates has given only millions of dollars to bring aid to third world countries, he is now giving of his own time and talent to solve world problems like malaria and HIV/Aids.  Hoarders somehow never have enough, but givers always have more than enough.  Give of your time to young people who ask you to mentor them.  Give of your money to causes and missions that go where you cannot go to make a difference.  Give of your love to someone who needs to hear an encouraging word or to simply be hugged.

Love leadership is already happening all around the world.  Why not take a look at the way you lead — your department, your team, your household — and see what you can do to make love leadership work.

Buy Love Leadership: The New Way To Lead In A Fear-Based World. (link: http://attributes.com.sg/books/love-leadership-john-hope-bryant.html) Being a boss could be the hardest thing you ever had to do, whether you are a manager or a stay-at-home mother. To increase your chances of success, lead with love.