Love Works Here
Leadership doesn’t have to be soft—but it does have to be rooted in love.
I hope that doesn’t make you too uncomfortable. With Valentine’s Day coming up, I’ve been thinking about the relationship between leadership and love, and how allergic some people are to that idea. There are plenty of folks who want nothing to do with a conversation about love at work. Love gets dismissed as sentimental, unprofessional, or a sign that standards are about to slip.
I think that misunderstanding keeps a lot of leaders at a distance from the very thing that makes leadership effective, sustainable, and worth the effort.
When I talk about love in leadership, I’m not talking about vibes. I’m talking about commitment.
You don’t have to love every task on your calendar. You don’t have to feel energized by every meeting or inspired by every email. But you do have to love something about the work you’re leading. Your people. The purpose. The impact. The way your work shows up in the world.
Leadership without love doesn’t stay neutral for long. It starts to drift. And when it drifts, it almost always drifts toward control.
The good news is that you don’t have to be as obvious about love as I am. I tell my students how much I adore them on a regular basis, and I realize that’s not everyone’s style. Love doesn’t have to be declared. It shows up in practice.
It shows up when you prepare for a meeting instead of winging it. It shows up when you set a boundary—and hold it. It shows up when you follow through on what you said you’d do.
Those moments communicate love far more clearly than any speech ever could.
Love is what turns intention into structure. It’s why expectations get written down instead of repeated endlessly. It’s why feedback is specific instead of vague. It’s what keeps systems from becoming punitive and standards from feeling arbitrary.
When leaders lead from love, people feel steadiness even when expectations are high. They know where they stand. They understand what matters. They trust that decisions aren’t being made casually or selfishly.
When love is missing, people feel that immediately too.
The room tightens. Communication gets cautious. Decisions start getting made about people instead of with them. Control steps in to fill the space where love used to be.
This isn’t about being liked. It’s about being trustworthy.
Love is what keeps leadership human when the pressure is on. It’s what stops urgency from turning into entitlement. It’s what reminds leaders that power is something you’re responsible for, not something you own.
And here’s the part many leaders try to avoid naming: if you can’t find love here anymore, it’s worth asking why.
That question doesn’t mean everything is broken. It doesn’t mean you need to quit tomorrow or burn things down. But it does mean something deserves your attention.
Sometimes love gets buried under exhaustion. Sometimes it gets crowded out by metrics that never told the full story. Sometimes a role drifts so far from its original purpose that it no longer resembles what you agreed to lead.
Ignoring that never ends well.
When there’s no love for the work, the people, or the outcome, leadership starts leaning on leverage instead of relationship. Compliance replaces commitment. Authority stands in for influence. Everyone can feel the shift—even if no one names it out loud.
Where love is present, clarity comes more easily. Accountability feels fair instead of harsh. Feedback lands because it’s grounded in shared investment. Systems work because they were built with real people in mind.
Where love is absent, even the most polished processes feel brittle.
Leading with love doesn’t mean lowering the bar. It means remembering why the bar exists in the first place. It keeps expectations meaningful instead of performative. It keeps leadership from turning into a series of transactions.
If you’re leading right now and feeling disconnected, start there. Not with a new framework or a strategy deck, but with a simpler question: What do I still love about this work? If the answer feels thin or hard to reach, treat that as information—not a personal failure.
What part of your leadership comes from love—and where has it slipped into something else?
I share thoughts like this every Monday and gather them into one monthly email—subscribe if you’d rather read them over coffee than chase them online.
Thanks for choosing to lead with love.
