Leadership and the Power of Love

Favorite daughter, Megan, is now in the transitional season of life at the merger of college graduation, career and graduate school possibilities, and relational considerations.  Like many parents at this intersection my wife and I are carefully introducing her to the realities of financial responsibilities:   car and auto insurance payments, rent and utilities, medical insurance.  The four year period of our scraping together resources, seeking scholarship aid, and requiring her to absorb many of her own personal expenses has been challenging, albeit gratifying for all of us. As I too enter a period of change, having left the relative security of full-time employment to relocate to Florida and take a try at this thing called life coaching, financial stability and assurance now has less certainty.  We have sensitized her to this reality, no doubt presenting an awakening into the world of adult economic challenge. Each of us demonstrate love to our family members ...

During this Easter week when Christians around the world celebrate the ultimate demonstration of sacrifice and servanthood it is timely to consider our responsibility to share love in every aspect of life, especially in our vocational environments.  Since time immemorial our human nature has been towards a desire to achieve power through force, persuasion, greed, and financial means as opposed to more positive and less salient attributes such as gentleness, kindness, and meekness. An element rarely considered or discussed at work is love.  The love referred to here is not a romantic love and oftentimes is not emotional either, but rather pertains to goodwill, active listening, and servant leadership.  Servant leadership was demonstrated in an untold number of ways by my Savior--washing of feet, performing miracles, even submitting himself to the authorities and ultimately death for our sake. So how do we carry out servant leadership in every day lives?  In the wo...