Lead by Loving

Can you imagine a team that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres? A team with these attributes is a team I want to build a business with! These are the attributes of love found in 1 Corinthians. Understanding love, who it comes from, and how to give it, will help us develop these attributes in our company.

Hebrews 10:24 “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds“

The absence of love in a business is seen when people simply stop caring (no longer protect, no longer trust, no longer hope, and no longer persevere). A filthy restaurant is the result of people no longer caring about cleanliness. Broken equipment and processes is a lack of caring about maintenance. Errors and defects happen when we stop caring about the process that was designed to prevent those errors. We often hide behind the excuses of time, bandwidth, accountability, and expectations…behind these excuses however you will often find an individuals who stopped caring…stopped embodying the attributes of love. We should care deeply about our business, and care deeply about our employees. Hebrews 10 urges us to provoke love. Just as we can push people’s buttons to provoke anger we can also provoke love in each other. Our job as leaders is knowing our employees well enough to bring out their potential. Hebrews 10 challenges us to spur one another on towards love and good deeds. How can we spur our employees on to love? Another way to ask this question is by asking…how do we spur our team to be patient, to be kind, to not envy, to not boast, not prideful, not disrespectful, not self-seeking, and not easily angered, not keeping a tally or wrongs and inconsistencies, not delighting in failure, but a team rejoicing in good. A team that loves is a team that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. This is the biblical definition of love and this is what we are to spur one another towards. It will transform our business.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Another power of love is its fear crushing ability (John 4). Where there is perfect love, fear does not exist. Receiving Gods love snuffs out our fears. Likewise, loving others eradicates their fear. Insecurity and fear paralyze so many people, holds back our businesses, and locks in human potential. Understanding Gods love for us and then learning to love others will unlock mountains of potential that is held back by fear and insecurity.

We need love in our business and it starts with God.

Loving others is an overflow of experiencing Gods love. God poured out His love on us, giving us the capacity to love others. John 4:7 “whoever loves has been born of God and knows God”. We will fail at loving others if we don’t understand Gods love for us. Let me repeat that. We will fail at loving others if we don’t understand Gods love for us. God is love. We can’t just muster up will-power to love. Love comes from God and only He can change our heart, giving us the capacity to love. Love outside of God is simply manipulation in disguise. Manipulation for a desired outcome…its not love.

So let us lean into Gods love, be transformed by it, so that it reflects onto our business for Gods glory and our joy.

John 4:7-21 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us….By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

How have you seen the power of LOVE impact your employees or business. Share your story in the comment section below.