Aroha: Leading with the Energy of Love

Leading propelled by the energy of love is respectful towards everyone and focused on integrity. The leap from rational thinking to seeing with one’s heart – as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry put it in The Little Prince – is a formidable challenge that only few leaders can take on. However, it is precisely this shift – from an intellectual grasp of concepts and the search for causes to a loving and respectful embrace of the unified whole and all there is – that holds the key to acting with the energy of love. When we act with the energy of love, we accept everything as it is, support it as such, and gently nudge it towards improvement. Such actions resemble the mature love of parents toward their children. Mature love creates the conditions for the development of children, while simultaneously setting boundaries and demands that are not necessarily to the children’s liking but which nevertheless foster their progress. While I definitely do not want to apply a parent-child relationship to leadership, this metaphor serves to illustrate the point that a person who strives for his or her development and is nearing the tipping point of starting to act with love towards everyone has a more comprehensive view of the world and sees the big picture.

When I first uttered the word love at a workshop for leaders, I curiously awaited the response. No one wondered, no one scoffed; the participants accepted it as something utterly ordinary in a business setting. I think that this applies to all universal truths. Perhaps we are not awake to them, but when confronted by them we simply take them as our own. We simply know that they are true.

As David R. Hawkins so eloquently put it in his Power vs. Force, love is not intellectual and does not proceed from the mind. Love emanates from the heart. It has the capacity to lift others and accomplish great feats because of its purity of motive. Love deals with wholes. This ability, often ascribed to intuition, is the capacity for instantaneous understanding without resorting to sequential symbol processing. This abstract phenomenon is, in fact, quite concrete; it is accompanied by a measurable release of endorphins in the brain. Love has the capacity to discern the essence. It focuses on the goodness of life in all its expressions and augments that which is positive. It dissolves negativity by recontextualizing it rather than by attacking it.

The ancient Greeks knew several words for love – eros, agape, philia, and storge – because they differentiated between various shades of it. I first chose agape for the metaphor of conscious leadership. This is love that is invincible and that always gives, even in the face of uncertainty, and thus creates value. Later, however, I decided on another word, aroha, which comes from the Maori in New Zealand. Aroha also means love on various levels: between people, towards the environment and in connection with the universe. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual love, love towards past and future generations, and love towards nature.

The word aroha is further composed of four words: aro, ro, ha, and oha. Thus, it is multi-layered and rich in meaning. Aro represents thought, the life principle, as well as focus; ro means internal, introspection; and ha is the life force, breath, energy. Oha corresponds to generosity, progress, abundance, and health.

Leading from deep introspespection, aligned with life force, maintaining focus, energy and generosity for progress and abundance - this means leading with the energy of love.