Lead with Love
The key to leadership success
If you’re confident, composed and at peace, you become the caring and care-giving leader. To lead with love benefits both the leader and the mentee.
Leadership can be high stress with even higher stakes. A world of responsibility resting on your shoulders. Long hours are mandatory, breaks aren’t guaranteed, and days can turn into sleepless nights. But you stick with it day after day because the rewards outweigh the effort.
If you’re confident, composed and at peace, you become the caring and care-giving leader. You are calm under pressure, leading by example, making the tough decisions when you know they could be mad at you, managing a dozen things at once and making it look easy, giving people a safe space to be themselves and above all else, never losing your compassion for others or yourself. You lead with love. In the long run, this leadership style will always thrive.
Leading with love means knowing and caring about what inspires and empowers people. It's about caring enough to know what is important to them and helping them succeed. This is the key to leadership success. To lead with love benefits both the leader and the mentee.
Last year I stepped into my most challenging leadership role yet. And let me tell you, two little toddlers sure can test and bring out the very best of you, or the very worst.
Welcome back to my blog. It’s been a while, let’s catch up.
Parenthood is often described as the most difficult job a person can undertake. As someone who comes from a decade and a half in extreme high pressure and intense work environments, I am here to tell you, nothing and no one could truly prepare me for this— it is the ultimate test. I believe becoming a parent is one of the most significant transformations of self-growth a person will ever endure. And part of our experience as humans (regardless of whether we’re parents or not) is evolving and re-establishing ourselves through all the various phases of our lives.
Part of our experience as humans, regardless of whether we’re parents or not is evolving and re-establishing ourselves through all the various phases of our lives.
Doing the work of raising small children has a way of pushing you to your absolute edges. You can experience the most intensely joyful and fulfilling moments of love, purpose, and meaning. But you can also be so tested, so pushed, that you feel like you’re at a breaking point. It is this cycle of breaking and re-establishing that parenting can propel us into.
When I am leading people at work, I am recognized as calm, cool, collected, fair, astute. Because of these traits, it is obvious in a team meeting or office setting when I reach a certain level of frustration. Because it is rare and unexpected, people are on high alert when I choose to assert myself, or, put my foot down. Turns out I do something similar in my role as a mother. I can usually communicate my level of irritation from mild to bigconsequencesarecoming by the raise of an eyebrow, and I can make almost anything happen in the count of 3. Come to think of it, I bet I could roll out that last one at work too.
Just like in leadership, there is no manual that tells you how to do the job. Because it’s one of those roles were there’s not necessarily a right or wrong way. How was I supposed to know they would put their finger in the…poop on the…or that I had to clearly specify not to touch/swallow/move/stick/color the…You just don’t know until you know. You must lay the groundwork. You’ve got be ready to fumble, feel uncomfortable, work through insecurities, overcome imposter syndrome, find reliable and trustworthy mentors, and build a whole new community that will help you feel seen.
Photography by, Amanda Weldon (@belowtheblonde)
It is the most vulnerable experience, yet I still strongly believe that vulnerability is the most compelling way to build trust. This will be harder for people who have traditionally associated leadership with power, specifically to power over. Anyone with a toddler can debunk that belief system quickly as you realize they have all the power.
As you begin to pave this path for yourself and others, you will be amazed by the amount of patience, compassion, and unconditional love we have available within ourselves. The reality is, leading a business and being a parent are surprisingly similar. Leading and managing adults at work is obviously not an identical system to parenting children, but both roles require many of the same skills and character. From being an active listener, to practicing patience to becoming more flexible.
A parent is a child's most spirited cheerleader, most effective advocate, and most persistent supporter. In the same way, great leaders champion their companies and employees. You need to have the ability to adapt to the various personality types and learning styles, you can’t have an ego, and you need to have thick skin because you can’t take anything personally. From my perspective, the main connection between good leadership and parenthood is this, we lead with love.