The only people who can hurt you deeply are the ones you allow to get deep inside your soul. This is what makes love so dangerous. – Erwin McManus
In order to be an effective leader, do you need to love those you’re leading? Is love a competency that a leader needs to display proficiency in?
When it comes to the task or the domain of your work, love will go a long way. After all, when you love what you’re doing, time flies. Can’t you remember doing something for hours upon end, only to realize that it’s past midnight? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this flow. This is what it means to work in your area of greatest talent or strength.
But what about the people you’re working with? Do you need to love them in order to be an effective leader?
The straightforward answer is no. There are a lot of people that I’ve worked with that I definitely did not love. Now obviously, I’m not talking about the romantic sense of love. I’m talking about the sort of brotherly love that causes you to care for, think about, and want to hang out with others outside of work hours.
For some, this sounds like crossing boundaries. “Shouldn’t work be work and personal life be personal life?” While there are many that still hold to this view, there are an increasing number of leaders–millennials especially–that want to see that line done away with.
Just think about it. If you had the choice, wouldn’t you want to love what you’re doing and love who you’re doing it with?
Expertise in skill and knowledge are important to do your work well, but passion just brings it to another level. When this happens, time flies and your team produces its best work. This is because everyone’s heart is in it. It’s not just a job to get a paycheck, or a task to be checked off.
Here’s the catch though, and Erwin McManus puts it well, “The only people who can hurt you deeply are the ones you allow to get deep inside your soul. This is what makes love so dangerous.”
When you love those you work with, get ready to be hurt.
This is because the people closest to you have the greatest power to hurt you. So when you allow your heart to get into your work, and you allow yourself to start caring for and loving those you’re leading and working with, you need to prepare yourself for the possibility of hurt.
It’s worth it though. The risk is worth it.
I’ve come out on both sides and survived to tell the tale. On the one hand, I’ve been a part of a team who genuinely loved each other and wanted to live life and do work together. We were always together. Even when we weren’t working, we’d want to hang out with one another. On the other hand, I’ve been a part of a team that clocked in and clocked out–that was it. We didn’t talk outside of work hours. Work and personal life were completely separate.
And although the years I spent with that one team–who I loved and allowed to get into “my soul”–ended in heartbreak, I’d do it again. I’d do it again because the flip side is far too redundant and “professional.”
So back to our original question, in order to be an effective leader, do you need to love those you’re leading? Is love a competency that a leader needs to display proficiency in?
To make a lasting impact, and one that you’re proud to say that you were a part of, the answer is a resounding yes.