[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
Hello my friend and welcome to this episode of A Call to Leadership. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, so your host, and I'm so glad you are here. Well, on this episode of the show, we're gonna talk about an aspect of leadership that rarely shows up in the way we consider being an effective leader. A way that we are galvanized, a way that we protect, a way that we care for our followers and we help them to reach a better future state. It's an area of leadership we're gonna talk about over the next several episodes, an area called. You know, it's rare that we seek to identify leaders as those who love, and it's probably because it's just doesn't make sense in leadership. Are we supposed to be lovers in leadership? Well, I found that it is the X factor of leadership.
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In fact, as a servant leadership, I am called. To care so deeply in a way that love. So we're going to unwrap that, unravel it, sheer aspects of the journey as a leader that identify how we can love and really understand the characteristics of it, because love can mean many, many things. In fact, we get a lot of the ways we understand love the word from the Greek love for an English love is a word that describes many different aspects of it. However, In the Greek, there are different words for different kinds of love. I'll give you an example. Eros. This is the romantic or passionate love. It's often associated with desire and physical attraction. This is when two people are courting. It's when you're thinking of your spouse, who you want to care deeply for because you're attracted to that individual.
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When I was writing poetry, I would write romantic poetry that was eros in nature, that was love in this way. That's one kind of love that we experience, and we experience those in romantic types of relationships. Now, that is not something I would recommend in a business environment. However, in a family environment, with a spouse, with your fiancé, you are experiencing perhaps that kind of love. And that love, of course, wraps around your leadership journey, how you care for one another, what you're willing to do to sacrifice for one another, how you desire to protect one another. That's a different kind of love than what you'd experience in a business environment. However, it's an important kind of love.
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Now, there's also filia, which is a type of love that refers to deep friendships, companionships. It's based on trust, it's based on respect, it's based on loyalty. We get the city. Philadelphia from this word in Greek, which means the city of brotherly love. So, this makes sense because it's about friendships and companionships and brotherhood, sisterhood. That's the idea. We get also philosophia, which is the love of wisdom. Sophia means wisdom and that's where we get the term philosophy. So, I have a degree in philosophy. That means I must love wisdom. And so this is a way that we describe philosophia or the love of wisdom. It's a different kind of love than the eros kind of love. Then we have agape love. Agape is the selfless unconditional love. It's about universal compassionate love. It extends to all people regardless of their actions, regardless of their characteristic. It knows no color. It knows No bounds, it knows no wrongs. It is completely extended in a selfless, unconditional way.
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That's agape love. That's often how we describe the love of God is the agape love, the unconditional love. Unmerited favor, total grace. That's the love that endures all and that's a love that is so representative of our walk when we are Considering not thinking about anything that you've done wrong covering it all in grace. That's a difficult love my friend Is it not that's the love called agape love. There's several other different kinds of love. There's storage which is Describes a familial, natural affection, love between parents and children, or siblings. This is when you care for your family members. When I look at my child, and I care for my child because of my child's needs. When I see that my child is needing to grow and an individual who will contribute to society, I can prepare my child. One of the most important roles, I believe, in responsibilities as a parent is to prepare my child to go out. I have a boy, young man now, to be a man in the world and to live fully. To love fully and so this is my desire, my affection and my love for my child to help him to be the kind of individual who will not only survive but thrive in the world.
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I love my son in that way. I'm not perfect and sometimes I need agape love. Sometimes I need unconditional love because I don't always get it right as a parent. There's a love called ludus love, which is a love that's playful. It's a little flirtatious. It involves enjoying the thrill of the chase, the excitement of new romantic connections. Think about when you were courting, when I was courting with my spouse. I saw her across the room at a nightclub many, many moons ago. I saw, wow, she is so pretty. And I walked across the way to inquire about her. And she was with another gentleman. And I knew the gentleman. We weren't close friends. We were acquaintances. And I said, Your girlfriend is beautiful and I saw a little look in her eye She could tell I was being a little playful little flirtatious and eventually she would become my wife So that is this kind of love that we see as we're making new romantic connections These are all different kinds of love.
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There's pragma, which is pragma. You can understand even From the word pragma or pragmatism, pragma is a practical, it's an enduring love that develops over time. So think of the long term relationships, it's about compatibility, it's about shared values, it's about mutual understanding. This is a love that is what we call long suffering. It stands the test of time. There's philotimo, I'm not Greek, philotimo, although it's not commonly listed among the traditional Greek loves. It's often associated with Greek culture and refers to this deep sense of honor, of duty, of moral integrity that guides our behavior towards others. So this is the kind of love that perhaps is about when you're enlisting in the military and you want to have honor and defend your nation. It could be standing up for a cause that's worthy in your community. It could be a cause that is a longstanding challenge in society some heinous act that needs to be Addressed and we need to have civil discourse to abolish it such as slavery or civil rights freedoms freedom of speech freedom to bear arms Whatever the freedoms are that you would have that sense of duty and honor and moral integrity That guides your behavior.
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There's a love called and this is, I'm going to butcher it up. Phil li u sia. It's encompassing a self love. This is a self love, self care. It acknowledges the importance of valuing yourself. Having healthy sense of self worth. Boy, isn't that needed. Not, we have so much dysmorphia right now. It can be physical, it can be emotional, it can be mental. We need to make sure that we care for ourselves. And that we acknowledge the importance of knowing your value, having a healthy sense of your worth. If you don't ask someone who cares about you, ask someone who knows you, ask someone to be honest about your worth. I believe every person on this planet has inherent worth. Everyone. I don't look at your station in life, I don't look at your career, I don't look at your accomplishments. You, by the virtue of your humanity. You have worth. You're important. Don't let anyone ever tell you differently. And if they do, rebuke them. You are important. So you can see that there are so many, and this is in all the categories of love, there are so many different words for love that sometimes we have to leave our U.S.
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Language and begin to understand the depth and the breadth and the beauty of all of these different ways to express love. So love isn't just, you know, smoochy smooch and romanticism. It's one kind of love. And so when we think about each of these areas of love, we begin to realize that love is much more holistic, and it can encompass aspects of our leadership in different parts of our lives. And so what I want to do is focus on some aspect of love that's deeply important. And we're going to go through what we call these characteristics. In fact, when I was growing up, I didn't understand the idea of love and how it can be applied in a life and leadership context. I always thought that love was meant for familial or personal relationship. I didn't know it could extend out of that. And even then, I thought, That if it did, it might be considered weakness or it might be misconstrued or get you in trouble. And so it can be really contentious to think about love in a nonfamilial sense, in a sense of community or a sense of business. However, I believe that it is essential for the human condition.
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I believe that the number one mandate for humanity is love. And it's not from me. In fact, it was Jesus who was once asked, what is the greatest commandment? What is the most important rule? What is the most important principle of life? And he said it like this, it was to love God and love people. He said, all of the law and the prophets are wrapped up in this. And so you think about like, wow, Love is the central motivation, the central aspect, the central criteria for living well. So it, yes, absolutely extends to leadership. In fact, that's the John 3:16, for God so loved the world. I mean, look, it is love. Love is at the center of who we are as human beings. But so to embrace that love, in fact, in our business, I was just talking with my office manager today and we were talking about our business and how we don't say we're in the advisory, the accounting, the tax business. We don't say that. Yes, those are some of the things we do, but our business, our business is love. We're in the love business because people need love, especially when it comes to their money. Boy, that's stressful. And so, this is the idea that the true depth of caring in love is essential, and sometimes we don't understand it, friend.
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Sometimes we don't understand the mechanics of it, we don't understand how to implement it. And so, over these episodes, we're gonna unpack it. And so, this is a little introduction on why it's important, why love should be, I believe, at the center of our habits as leaders. I rarely say what we should do, but in this case, at least in my own life, I'm going to say it works. It works tremendously. Anytime I'm veering off in terms of my own ability to influence, I go back to love. Now you can say, well, what about Machiavelli? What about Machiavelli who said That it is better to be feared than loved. A lot of people quote that Machiavelli, uh, statement in his book, The Prince, from six, seven hundred years ago.
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And it's often misunderstood, misinterpreted. Should you be feared or loved? Is one better than the other? Well, here's the thing. Machiavelli was writing about city states and leadership in, I believe it was the 14th century. I had to check my math, my numbers, my memory for that. Actually, it was the 16th century. I had it wrong. So, 16th century, 1500s, when he wrote this book. And in the book, The Prince, Machiavelli is discussing this concept of fear and love. And he's saying, okay, in a political world, at least in this time, It's desirable for a ruler to be not only loved, but feared too by its subjects. He made the argument that if you have to choose between the two, it's better to be feared than loved.
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What he was saying was, his argument was that fear is more effective in maintaining control, maintaining obedience. And because he believed, at least what he experienced, is that fear can deter rebellion or dissension because people are less likely to challenge a ruler who instills fear in them. And this is true in some senses. Of course, this then can help to maintain stability and order. I mean, of course, the Romans did this when, uh, in the first century. However, it only lasted for so long. Because when a group of people have been oppressed, Through fear for some duration of time, eventually they will rebel, they will revolt, because when you have nothing to lose but life and your life has zero dignity and zero opportunity for hope, for purpose, for stability, then your only objective is to Cast off the yoke of your oppressors, and hope that stability and victory from persecution to be liberated will be won by your next generation.
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And so, fear only goes so far. In this way, Machiavelli, he does make acknowledgments that being loved by the people, it can have benefits as well. You know, love fosters Support, it fosters loyalty and people are generally more willing to follow a leader whom they admire, whom they respect, who loves them. So, he makes some cautions, you know, you can say that love alone can make a ruler vulnerable to manipulation or a loss of control. Because people's affections change. Maybe they change on circumstances. And so he makes the argument to balance fear and love when it comes to ideal rulership. And so, we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about how love and order and obedience Through some kind of fear because I believe I don't think that there are necessarily mutually exclusive I don't believe that love and fear are Separate in the sense. I believe that sometimes we use the mechanisms of fear And not for a heinous purpose, but because it's just an emotion.
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You know, fear is an emotion. Satisfaction is an emotion. Uh, we have so many emotions, and I'll go through some of them through the series. And so, sometimes, we fear loss. Of love, we fear loss of affection because it's important to us and we wanna maintain it. So we'll go through those aspects of it. I think what it's important to recognize is that love is a tool that we can embrace in our daily walk, in our daily decisions for life. And so we're gonna unpack all of those. In fact, my son would ask me years ago, it was about four years old, and I was taking him to preschool and he said, dad. I don't understand love. What is help me to understand you tell kids you love them all the time, right? I love you and say I love you too, but the concept is a bit foreign to them And I went to my wife and I asked her hey our son's asking us about love.
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What do you think? What could I do for a study with him to walk through love and she said she had a great idea She said why don't you take him through? The love verses, what we call the love verses in the ancient scriptures, and those are in 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 8, the book of Corinthians, and they're called the love verses because they're often told at weddings. You often hear these if you're at a wedding, you might hear these characteristics of love, and so they're quite beautiful. And what they do is they illustrate different aspects of love. It's not exhaustive, but it's a great way to look at love as actions, as ways to behave and values. And so it's quite remarkable when we begin to unpack it in that way. And they go like this. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. It does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes.
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And always perseveres. This kind of love never fails. Now, it's such a beautiful set of phrases. I'm going to rephrase it for leadership. Now, if we replace the word love or charity with leadership, listen to how this plays out. Leadership is patient. Leadership is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. In other words, it's not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Leadership does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. This kind of leadership, my friend, does not fail. We're going to go through each of these aspects of leadership from a love perspective together. So join me on the next few episodes as we unpack This journey, I'll invite some friends on the show to join me and help me to unpack them and we're gonna have a good time in racing a deeper sense of leadership that binds us to others and helps others join us in a worthy cause Well, my friend, we did it.
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I'm so honored you were able to join me on this episode of A Call to Leadership now This might not be for everyone because you really have to be in a certain place in Order to take the kind of steps to level up your leadership And I want you to be taking steps and for those of you who feel like you're ready for something like this There's a place you can go you can go to our website greatsummit.com I'll make sure that's in the show notes. But here's the cool thing that we have we've got a Masterclass. We have all different kinds of events. We even have our leadership club where you can meet other people just like you to go deeper in your leadership journey. You and I all get to spend some time together and really focus on aiming for greatness. I can't wait to see you there. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, and this is A Call to Leadership.
