Love & Leadership
I first met M. Scott Peck’s definition of Love in Bell Hook’s book, All About Love.
"The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.”
Bell goes on to say, “To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.” A list that reads like a leadership syllabus.
Peck’s definition then echoes Brené Brown’s definition of a leader:
"Anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and has the courage to develop that potential.”
Nurturing spiritual growth, finding potential in people and process, the extending of one’s will and the courage to develop the potential.
I’ve long believed the growth of a leader is a spiritual path. In Scaling Leadership, Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams put it plainly. Based on their data of more than 500,000 leaders, they conclude:
“Inherently, leadership becomes a kind of spiritual boot camp. The very pressure that success, scale, and complexity bring is a force for our own transformation and evolution….the moment we start to improve our effectiveness as a leader, we begin to improve our effectiveness as a human being. Because our humanity is ultimately the foundation of our leadership, these paths are inseparable. This puts us right in the middle of a spiritual path.”
We have examples all around us of unloving, unkind and self-centric leaders. We also know the alternative: leaders formed from the inside out—where relationships and culture integrate with strategy, execution and results.
Pause this morning and ask your self or your team:
Whose growth am I willing to extend myself for right now?
Where is the potential here—people or process—that I can name?
What am I doing to nurture and develop my love and leadership skills?
If more leaders practiced love this concretely, potential wouldn’t just be found—it would be formed.