Last Updated on November 11, 2024
Leading with love
There are two basic leadership styles:
Fear and love.
Some leaders demand obedience, and harshly punish dissent.
Other leaders are loved, because first they love those they lead.
Both leadership styles can create followers.
But the consequences of these are radically different!
The dictator gets people to follow them only through threats of fear and pain.
Whereas the beloved leader gets people to follow them because people feel understood and inspired.
Fear-based leaders create unstable, violent communities.
Beloved leaders create stable, peaceful communities.
Self-leadership
We are all leaders of ourselves.
Whether we like it or not!
Without realizing it, many of us do fear-based self-leadership.
We try to motivate ourselves by thinking about all the negative things that will happen if we don’t take action.
We punish ourselves with negative-self talk and feelings of shame when we fail.
But there is also self-leadership without self-aggression.
It’s like a parent that is both gentle and firm, loving and empowering.
Instead of motivating ourselves with fear and pain, we connect with our desires.
Instead of pushing past objections, we integrate them.
And instead of punishing failure, we lean in with love, learning from each attempt so we get better over time.
We focus on our strengths, and say to ourselves, “I can do it!”
Power and love
Sometimes people think love-based leadership is indulgent.
For instance just letting yourself do whatever you want, regardless of consequences.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Love-based leadership is the integration of power and love.
Kindness without power is loving but weak.
Power without kindness is strong but cruel.
Neither kindness nor power is neglectful and indifferent.
But when power and love come together, that’s when we get loving leadership.
Taking good care of yourself
Imagine your body is someone else’s.
Your job is to take good care of this body.
Would you never challenge it?
Would you never let it rest?
Would you let it consume endless nutrient-poor junk food?
No, you would seek to challenge it sufficiently and rest it fully, while feeding it nourishing food.
Imagine your mind is someone else’s.
Your job is to take good care of this mind.
Would you let it wander all day?
Would you work it until exhaustion?
Would you indulge it in mindless consumption of depressing and superficial content?
No, you would take care to challenge it some and rest it some, avoiding the extremes.
And you would feed it uplifting and deeply meaningful content, things that inspire you and make you happy to be alive.
President You
Imagine your body looks to you for leadership, like a dog looks to their human.
Imagine your mind looks to you for leadership, like a child looks to their parent.
Be the President of the United BodyMind.
Act the part.
Be “presidential.”
(Somebody’s got to be!)
You can lead yourself with integrity, dignity, and wisdom.
You can lead with love.
Be the leader you want to see in the world.
Take care,
~Duff
(they/them)
