Leadership is Love.

Last week I wrote about how love was not enough to keep a friend from taking his own life. Today I write about love from a very different perspective.

I’ve been reading about leadership lately. There is A LOT to read: if you search “Leadership books” on Amazon you’ll get more than 60,000 results. Many of the most popular focus less on tactics of the how of leadership and more on the why: As a leader who are you? What makes you tick? The prevailing wisdom seems to be that the most effective leaders are authentic, humble and prioritize a culture or trust within their organizations.

But I think good leadership can be summed up in an even simpler way. Good leadership is love. I don’t mean in the sappy sense of the word. I mean in the relationship between people that leads to love. Think about it: How do you love someone? It's not fireworks and romance; that has its place, but it's not what love really is. Love is showing up every day, taking care of the little things, making sure your partner feels valued. It's a thousand touch-points over a thousand days.

Love is not Valentines Day. Love is Monday morning.

Good leadership is like this. Just as you don't fall in love in a day, good leaders aren't defined by a single event. Are there times when a leader stands up and gives a rah-rah speech inspiring the troops? Of course. But how many would follow that leader into battle if every other interaction showed that person to be shallow, fickle, inconsistent, and capricious? If there was no certitude that this leader could be trusted to have your back?

Good leaders are consistent. They show up. They don't point fingers or blame others. They value trust in their relationships and they don't lie. They also don't see apologizing as a weakness, but rather see it as an investment in the other person. They are willing to hear criticism in the spirit of making things better.

And most of all, good leaders put their people before themselves. It's telling that the United States Marine Corps, an organization where leaders lead their teams into actual battle where people are shooting at you, there's a leadership principle that "Officers eat last." It means that you take care of your people before yourself. It's embodied in the story of General James Mattis standing guard duty on Christmas Day in 1998 so that one of his junior officers could be home with his family. That's why Mattis was so revered by the Marines under his command. He could have been at home or at the O-club enjoying a luxe Christmas dinner. But instead, he was sleeping on a cot in a guard house.

That's the essence of leadership as love.

What do you think good leadership is?

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Ken Davenport is an entrepreneur and the author of two novels, The Two Gates, an alternative history of the early 1960s, and The Bug Hunter, a futuristic sci fi thriller.