Join us for this special Valentine’s Day edition of the Seasons Leadership Podcast. We share inspiring stories of love and leadership and leave you with actionable advice to help spread the love.
Show notes:
In this episode we:
· answer the question what does love got to do with leadership?
· define love as a value of leadership.
· share stories about how coming from a place of love can transform lives and team members.
· give actionable advice on how to lead from a position of love.
We wish you lots of love and leadership excellence this Valentine’s Day and every day.
Join Debbie Collard and Susan Ireland, certified coaches and co-founders of Seasons Leadership, in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception on Wednesdays on the Seasons Leadership Podcast. (Selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 15 Positive Leadership Podcasts on the web!)
And now you can join our community of values-based leaders on Seasons Leadership Patreon at Patreon.com/seasonsleadership. At our gold-level, unlock our exclusive Lessons in Leadership Column from our Resident Seasoned Leader David Spong, a lifetime member of the Board of the Malcom Baldrige Foundation and our Leadership Elements Series.
Join us for this special Valentine’s Day edition of the Seasons Leadership Podcast. We share inspiring stories of love and leadership and leave you with actionable advice to help spread the love.
Show notes:
In this episode we:
· answer the question what does love got to do with leadership?
· define love as a value of leadership.
· share stories about how coming from a place of love can transform lives and team members.
· give actionable advice on how to lead from a position of love.
We wish you lots of love and leadership excellence this Valentine’s Day and every day.
Join Debbie Collard and Susan Ireland, certified coaches and co-founders of Seasons Leadership, in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception on Wednesdays on the Seasons Leadership Podcast. (Selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 15 Positive Leadership Podcasts on the web!)
And now you can join our community of values-based leaders on Seasons Leadership Patreon at Patreon.com/seasonsleadership. At our gold-level, unlock our exclusive Lessons in Leadership Column from our Resident Seasoned Leader David Spong, a lifetime member of the Board of the Malcom Baldrige Foundation and our Leadership Elements Series.
Speaker 1:
Hi, welcome to Winter with the Seasons Leadership Podcast, where we celebrate this time to go deep, transform your leadership journey. We will bring you actionable advice to improve your leadership and your life today, Hi.
Speaker 2:
I'm Susan and I'm Debbie, and thank you for joining us At Seasons Leadership. We share a vision to make excellent leadership the world-wide standard. Learn more at SeasonsLeadershipcom.
Speaker 1:
Hello everybody and welcome to the Seasons Leadership Podcast. Today, our topic is love and leadership. This is a fun one.
Speaker 2:
It is fun and happy Valentine's Day for people, yeah super appropriate because Valentine's Day. Yeah, listening on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1:
So I wanted to say, as we start this off, love and leadership are not generally two words you use, hear, use simultaneously, right. So, in fact, back in the day, if you use the word love in the workplace, that was probably a death knell for your career.
Speaker 2:
No kidding, but, debbie, what does love have to do with leadership?
Speaker 1:
Love has everything to do with leadership. In my book, really, if we think so, we're all about leadership, excellence, right, and increasing that across the world. One attribute I would say of a excellent leader is that they treat everybody well and that they bring out the best in the people that they are leading, because they understand them, they know them, they know what they bring to the table and they want to capitalize on that. And if you think about it, if you don't like somebody, how much attention are you going to pay to what they bring to the table? None, because you don't like them, right. But if you can change your mindset and say I love this about Susan. What Susan brings to the table is all these skills that she has and she's really good working with people. So now I've changed my whole mindset because I'm coming from a place of love instead of a place of dislike or apathy.
Speaker 2:
Well, and it's a higher level of thinking and feeling. So if we can love our neighbor right, and we love people because they're people and we respect them and we honor them as people I mean as leaders we don't have to like everybody. I mean we're human, but we do. I mean I feel like excellent leaders do love everybody at that human level and respect everybody and want them to contribute to their fullest extent. And leaders can provide a environment or a culture that fosters everybody to thrive and that takes love. You got to get out of your own way. It's not about winning, it's not about being the best. It's about providing a culture, an atmosphere, a context so everybody can show up their best.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely Everybody can, and I just keep coming. Well, it's a value of ours. In seasons, leadership, love is. And when we were going through our values exercise, we're like, oh, do we feel this? Do we put this card down? Do we not put this card down? I don't know. Yes, we do, because it's part of who we are and how we show up.
Speaker 1:
And I remember a time when I was leading a group and I was relatively new leader for this group not a new leader, but a new leader at this organization and one of the people on the staff came to me and this person was very upset with somebody else in the staff and just saying why don't you just fire them? Why don't you just get rid of them? They had no value here, they're horrible, they're all these things that were going wrong. And I could tell this person had a really bad experience with this other individual and so I tried to get to the bottom of it. But even before that I told this person.
Speaker 1:
I said I believe that everybody brings something to the organization, something good. Everybody does. And that's the belief I'm going to start with. I'm going to give everybody the benefit of the doubt Now if they later prove that they're not a good fit for the organization or the culture, as you said in the mindset, then it may be time to part ways. But that's not where I start I start from. Everybody has some value that they bring to the team. This person was having none of it. No, they do not. They are a worthless human being. They do not belong on the earth, kind of feeling.
Speaker 2:
That's a rough one, Debbie.
Speaker 1:
And. But I will say that has a happy ending. I like stories with a happy ending. Even Disney stories start out something negative Fambies parent dies and Mufasa dies and Lion King. There's always bad things in life, but I like the happy ending. And the moral of this story was this person who came to me. I later heard them. They went on to another group, not through anything bad happening, they just got an opportunity, went to a different group and they were one of the people that was working for them then came to me and said I really like this list of things this person put out as a leader. And they said everybody brings value to the team. And I was like, yay, it worked. But that doesn't mean it was easy. I just said it and they accepted it. It wasn't that easy, but for me, having had to learn that the hard way also, I'm even more convicted about giving people benefit of the doubt, and that comes from a place of love. So that links love and leadership right there.
Speaker 2:
Right, and I don't think love and leadership doesn't mean soft or weak or you're a pushover. I think when I feel the strongest, love is I want to be honest and truthful to the people that I love, because I love them. I want them to know the truth and so I find that I can give better feedback to people, that I have this overall feeling of love for them. And it's respect, because I want them to know what I know. And when you give feedback, even tough feedback, from that place, it's a lot easier to hear and accept.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, and you can feel good as a leader that you have approached it from the right angle, right, that you're not being vindictive or being mean or trying to hurt somebody. You are trying to help them by sharing this information with them. I mean what that brings to mind for me. You know we're in winter, we got through Christmas season, but there's so many versions out there of Charles Dickens Christmas Carol, right, and so one thing that always comes up for me, and that is when the nephew, fred, comes into Scrooge's office he's like Happy Christmas, uncle.
Speaker 1:
And Scrooge is like what have you got to be happy about? Your poor and you know give you. And so that whole conversation. Fred is coming from a place of love. This is his family, this is someone he loves, even though he was a very unlovable guy, right, he was hard to love, he was hard to love, but Fred loved him and he's like this is my uncle and I'm going to keep coming and telling you Merry Christmas and bringing a wreath. And to me that's what it maybe feels like as a leader when you're. It's not that you're optimistic all the time about everything, but it's that you're coming from your heart, right when you are interacting with other people. And to me that just makes all the difference in the difference between an okay leader and an excellent leader. I totally.
Speaker 2:
I know, I know we're running to the end on this, but there are leaders that I have really admired in my past and really I think that the difference is when I talk to them or they gave me direction or anything, I felt like I was really important to them, you know, regardless of the spread in levels you know they could have been way higher than me but I thought that, wow, I'm important and I've got it, I've got a place in this organization and what I do is needed and valuable. And I tell you when I feel like that and when I'm feeling love right, I mean, we didn't say it that way, but that's what I'm feeling you know I would move mountains for them, right?
Speaker 1:
So, because you knew they cared right about you as a person, exactly Well. So what's one piece of advice, actionable advice, we can give our listeners to do with love and leadership? Wow.
Speaker 2:
How do you, do you have any?
Speaker 1:
I do. I do have one, oh good, good. So if you find yourself listening to this as a leader and you want to work towards excellence, it's going to be important that you're coming able to come from that position of love. So think about how you show up every day in the workplace and where you're coming from. When you do that, and if you're coming from a place for your heart rather than your head all the time, you're on the right track.
Speaker 1:
If you find yourself coming out of your head all the time. Do something that will make you focus more on your heart.
Speaker 2:
Oh, that's fantastic. So yeah, and I would say, spread the love wherever you go. Spread some love.
Speaker 1:
No better ending than that. So to everybody from Seasons Leadership Podcasts, Debbie and Susan, Happy Valentine's Day.
Speaker 2:
Happy Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1:
Thank you, listeners, for joining us today. We hope that you were inspired by this conversation.
Speaker 2:
And we invite you to join our community on Patreon See the link below. There you will find more resources to help you on your leadership journey.
Speaker 1:
Make sure to join us next time for more conversation about leadership excellence.