Leading with Love
Leading with love isn’t just a slogan or some soft, feel-good idea, it’s an attitude. Like any attitude, it shows up in the choices we make when the heat is on and everyone’s watching. It is hard to know a person’s true feelings until trouble arises.
Love guides the heart of leadership. Wisdom and counsel guide the decisions. When you lead with both, you make choices that serve people well, protect the mission, and stand the test of time.
Love in leadership means you genuinely care about people. It means seeing them as more than a job title, a résumé, or a number on a spreadsheet. Here is where folks get it wrong: they think love and tough decision-making cannot coexist. That’s flat wrong. Real love in leadership often requires making the harder call.
We’ve all seen it happen: someone gets promoted because they are liked, trusted, or a good buddy. The heart was in the right place, but the fit wasn’t. Over time, it’s clear the move didn’t serve the person, or the team. Love that dodges honesty is not love at all; it’s just comfortable. In the end, that job promotion was a detriment to all involved.
True love is considerate, yes, but it’s also truthful. A leader with love in their heart looks at the whole picture: the individual, the team, the mission, and the long-term impact. Sometimes that means saying no. Sometimes it means slowing down. Sometimes it means making the unpopular call.
Other times, a leader has to change someone’s role, or even remove them, not out of anger or ego, but out of genuine care. Those are tough decisions. They weigh heavy on the heart. In time though, people usually see the bigger picture: the decision was made with their best interest in mind, not just the leader’s convenience. That’s love with courage.
Leading with love isn’t soft, it’s high performance. It puts empathy, compassion, and authenticity ahead of fear-based control. It builds trust, loyalty, and a team that feels safe to be honest, take risks, and give their best. Leaders who lead this way listen, communicate clearly, and set expectations, because clarity itself is a form of care.
Look at companies like Southwest Airlines. For decades, they treated employees like family while still demanding excellence. It works. When people know you care, they dig deeper, think smarter, and stick around longer.
So, can leaders make tough calls and still lead with love? You bet. The best leaders do both. Leading with love doesn’t mean avoiding hard choices, it means making the right ones, with a full heart and a steady hand.
Thought for the week, “Let all that you do be done in love.” — 1 Corinthians 16:14
Dr. Jack Welch serves as President of Fort Scott Community College. With a career spanning professional sports, public education, and rural community development, he brings a servant-leader mindset and a passion for building trust-driven cultures that empower people to thrive in the classroom, on the field, and in life. He is also the author of Foundations of Coaching: The Total Coaching Manual.