What’s The Evidence That Loving Leadership Works?

This blog is part of Renee’s Loving Leaders email series, where she shares insights and strategies for Leading with Love every week. To receive these reflections directly in your inbox, sign up for the series here.

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Stand for Loving Leadership and you'll inevitably be pressed to prove that it works. We should welcome this and be ready with valid information showing both the business and human impacts of Love. 

You see, some people will make assumptions about Love being too soft and not delivering results. And they may question why you would want to lead in an ineffective way. They've been conditioned to think this way, even though research and results prove otherwise. 

I'm not sure why we humans are inclined to repeat things without any basis in fact. Maybe it's comforting. Maybe it's convenient. Maybe it's easier than changing our mindset. 

So, part of our stand for Love, for what is good and true, is to cheerfully be ready to make the case.

This reminds me of a recent string of comments I was reading on a social post. Someone stated that crime was on the rise in our city. I wondered, “But is it?” I checked the data and, good news! Crime is trending down significantly in my city. So I did my part and shared that data in the comments. My small stand for reality. 

An important part of your work as a Loving Leader is to be ready to demonstrate the business and human impact of the Loving environment you are creating.

Demonstrating Business Impacts

It's great to know that your Loving Leadership practices are better for business. But are you clear on your key measures that show this? Are you tracking and celebrating your team's performance, customer satisfaction, employee engagement and retention data? Are you learning from these data and improving whenever you can? 

With Love at the center of your work, your team is more able to take on any challenges and improve than teams who have fear at their core. But you need to track what's meaningful so you can talk about it openly and actively support efforts to keep improving. Then you can be ready to share the story of how Love is making a positive difference in business outcomes that matter. 

Demonstrating Human Impacts

We also know that Loving Leadership makes a huge difference in people's lives. Team members reflect the ways they learn and grow, or feel accepted, or trusted. They tell us how happy they are to contribute. They tell us how they aren't anxious any longer and go home feeling positive instead of angry or worried. They have energy to volunteer or give back. 

The evidence for these shifts tends to be qualitative but just as valid. It might include notes to you as the leader, stories of change, examples of meaningful moments or events with your team, observations of team members helping, amplifying, appreciating, or celebrating each other, and more. 

Are you watching for and tracking these examples? Create a document or a file to collect them. Be sure to anonymize them as appropriate. Don't miss this rich source of evidence for the value of Love at the center of work. 

 Let's be ready to make the case for love!

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Looking for encouragement and insights on being a loving, human-centered leader? Sign up here for Renée’s Loving Leaders email list and receive several short, supportive emails each week.