Love Works: Seven Timeless Principles for Effective Leaders

If you inherently distrust people and believe they are trying to do as little as possible or just do enough to get by, leading will be difficult. Such distrustful leadership will result in low performance and high turnover.

An inexperienced but capable leader needs time to fully own his or her area of responsibility; in the meantime, I get more involved than I normally would to teach and mentor. As that person gains experience, I slowly allow more freedom and demonstrate more trust.

But to become a great leader, one needs to assume the best about each person.

Agape love is the foundation for the best and noblest relationships that humans are capable of. It is deliberate and unconditional love that is the result of choices and behaviors rather than feelings and emotions.

Avoid overruling decisions that have been made. Clearly, if the downside of the potential error is very expensive or puts the organization at risk, a leader must step in. However, day in and day out, many issues and problems can be solved using less intrusive approaches. Trustful leaders must let people do their jobs, find their own solutions, and

Leading with love isn’t possible if you don’t trust people. And when you do trust people, leading will be more effective than ever.

If we trust others or we want to trust others more, we will listen well, involve our team in decisions that affect them, and trust them to make the decisions they are paid to make.

leading effectively requires leaders to • think of others • remind themselves that any leadership position is a gift • reject the rat race of chasing possessions • choose to be unselfish

Summarizing the discussion and attempting to build and maintain team unity. If a decision is made that goes a different direction than some of the opinions in the room, a good leader explains why so everyone feels heard.