CHAPTER 2

LEADERS WHO LOVE

It’s actually kind of interesting. When we type into a search engine various combinations of “love,” “love workplace,” “love leadership,” and the like, we get a lot of hits—but not the ones we were hoping for. What we see are lots of articles on love in the workplace. Like, romance love. Like, who’s-the-new-data-analyst-and-do-you-think-there’s-a-dinner-date-on-the-horizon love in the workplace. Ah, the salacious details of office romance. Sorry, we’ll admit that the topic would be a fun one to explore, but not in this book! When we say leaders who love, you know what we mean—and what we don’t. Think of it as a companion-like love—a love entailing connection and warmth. Yep, we’ll go with that!

Love rightly exists in the finest leaders, and it is a beautiful thing to behold. Leaders who love create environments of compassion and caring. Why? Because they have compassion, and they care! And not the kind of artificial compassion and care marked by the scheduled all-hands meeting where the leader brings the coffee and doughnuts, and staff members get to ask obligatory questions. We’re talking real love here, the kind that comes from the heart and radiates vulnerability and kindness. It is the kind of love that transforms organizations and becomes legendary. It’s real.

An argument could be made that leaders who love have some sort of organizational advantage that allows them to have a reputation for love, but this would be a faulty assumption. There are of course the big companies we all know about, and their leadership gets lots of credit for their approach to love. The Container Store, with their “We Love Our Employees Day,” engages in some endearing and wacky activities each year to show love to their team. PepsiCo, Zappos, and Southwest Airlines all make use of the words love and caring in their organizational principles. Southwest Airlines even has a heart as their logo, and their flight attendants are really funny.

The truth is, there is no one-size-fits-all type of organization for loving leaders. Most come from organizations we have never heard of. They hail from small, midsize, and large companies. They face financial hardships, difficult personnel decisions, and technology barriers. They work in competitive environments with dwindling resources and the ever-present challenge of recruiting top talent. In short, they come from everywhere. And they love.

The leaders we admire the most are not simply following a protocol, implementing the latest trendy strategy, or using some established format or silly gimmick to create a culture. They don’t depend on the most popular leadership gurus to guide them. Rather, they have tapped into their own hearts, have recognized what is most important to themselves as a human being, and exude it into the universe around them. They know what they’re doing. Let’s have a look at a couple of them.

Our Love Heroes

Love Hero #1

Imagine being in a workplace where you hear words like these spoken by your colleagues: “We all gelled right away” and “It was just real chill, like a family atmosphere, just genuine love.” When asked what made the environment so great, the response was, “We’d have these long conversations about … anything.” Or, “It was pretty cool to see how we would all get super-focused and locked in. It was really fun with this group. We got so close and had each other’s backs. Everybody was genuinely happy for each other and having so much fun.” And this: “It was incredible. I’ll never forget how fun that time was.” And still another noted, “We knew we could do it if we stuck together and didn’t listen to any of the outside stuff. And we came out on top.”

And what about a team lead who says, “About the legacy of this team, it’s really tough for me not to get emotional. They had all of those things: passion, great skill, incredible leadership, unselfishness, a love for one another, and on and on.” Uh, like wow. We want some of that.

Reread these statements and imagine who this leader may have been. Ideas?

While you’re thinking, ponder this: Is this how you would describe your team? Sometimes as leaders we have to face the music—either our teams are like this one, or not. Do our teams have the passion, the fun, the commitment, and the care for one another? What made this team come together, love one another, and have fun?

These quotes came from Dawn Staley’s team members. You may or may not have heard of Dawn. She is not a CEO of a famous company. She doesn’t produce leadership YouTube videos. She doesn’t teach leadership development classes. She isn’t the author of the latest best-selling leadership book. She is a basketball coach, and a pretty doggone good one. Our bet is, she’s improved the lives of more people than most we know. As the coach of the women’s basketball teams at Temple University and the University of South Carolina, she did just that. And guess what? She took her teams to the top.

Dawn is a former Women’s National Basketball Association star. She played professionally in the American Basketball League and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), where she was voted in as one of the top fifteen players in WNBA history and inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012. Prior to her professional basketball success, she was a player who was a three-time Olympic gold medalist, played for the University of Virginia, and was a gold medal winner at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Talent? We think so!

She didn’t really want to coach, but she still accepted the head coach role at the University of South Carolina in 2008 and brought her team to the number one ranking in the country, winning the Southeastern Conference (SEC) championships after only six seasons. We all know this is only because she was a tough, demanding, screaming, and scary coach who kept players on edge. Except we would be wrong. By her own words, Dawn wasn’t focused on winning. She cared more about the players and their work-life balance than winning games, and it paid off. Her love-first approach yielded five SEC regular season championships, five SEC tournament championships, six Sweet 16s, two Final Fours, and South Carolina’s first NCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship. Her team was on its way to the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo when COVID-19 hit and everything came to a halt.

The environment that Dawn cultivated was not only about the technical aspects of basketball but also about the broader cause. Her team members all had a 3.0 or better in the classroom, and they all contributed to the community in which they lived. Their community contributions were built around the idea of giving hope to others, sort of like what their coach did for them. Dawn had an extraordinary skill in bridging the dreams she envisioned for the team and using that as a platform for encouraging them to give hope to others.

Beyond the basketball court, Dawn established the Dawn Staley Foundation to offer at-risk children in Philadelphia skills they need to grow and become good, responsible citizens through after-school programs and mentoring. She also recognized early in her life how important sneakers were to children in low-income areas and made a commitment to help bring new pairs of shoes to the children in her community. The program, Innersoles, extended far beyond shoes. It focused on academics, attendance, behavior, and physical fitness.

During her induction into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013, Dawn was quoted as saying that she knew she had made the right decision to coach when, as she stated, she cared more about the players than about winning the game. And this, our friends, is the biggest question leaders can ask themselves: Do you care more about your team members, or do you care more about yourself, your mission, and your accomplishments? It sounds harsh, and it may make you uncomfortable, but what do you care more about, self or others? Be honest.

She didn’t really want to coach. Did we say that already? Maybe this sends a message.

Love Hero #2

Everyone goes to the grocery store. Well, we suppose some order their groceries online and have them delivered, but you get the idea. Let’s be honest, grocery stores are pretty tame places by their nature. Everything is organized by type, size, and color. For those of us who like symmetry, it’s heaven. And there’s food, which means taco fixin’s.

Even still, grocery markets, or chains of stores, can have their own drama, drama that is belied by the quiet aisles of goodies and polite clerks who know where to find the tahini. This love leader was a grocery guy, and he was so loved by his grocery market employees that when he was fired as CEO, six high-level managers resigned, and employees held rallies outside the grocery markets across Massachusetts and New Hampshire. While they didn’t strike (they weren’t part of a union), they participated in protests and demonstrations on their own time, including during their lunch and breaks.

Arthur T. Demoulas is a member of the family that started Market Basket. He joined the Board of Directors just out of high school, rose to president, and ultimately was revered by employees and community members as the one who fought the Board. His focus was on maintaining high wages and benefits for employees while still being able to provide the community with low prices.

In 2008, when Arthur became the president and CEO, he managed to expand the chain with sales growing from $3 billion to over $4 billion annually. Meanwhile, the size of the company doubled from 14,000 employees to 25,000 at a time when the grocery market was struggling and other grocery chains like Stop & Shop and Shaw’s were closing many of their stores. It wasn’t as if Arthur had not faced hardship. During the 2008 financial crisis, he forced the company to make up a $46 million loss so as not to negatively affect the employees’ profit-sharing fund. He knew his business.

Arthur enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for caring more about his people than about profits. His Market Basket chain was known for its low prices and high-quality foods and became a community supplier especially for the elderly and those in low- and middle-income areas. He was also known for his ability to remember all of the employees’ names (at all levels), birthdays, and even milestones in their lives. He attended many of their weddings and funerals, cared for them, asked about them, and knew them. Many described Arthur as a father figure, comparing him to George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life for putting people before profit.

Then, due to a series of family disputes regarding the stores, he was fired. Family drama, what a shock!

When Arthur was let go, employees commenced the protesting. Unlike people at most demonstrations that would follow such an ousting, these employees were not demanding higher salaries, better benefits, or management changes. The employees at the family-owned Market Basket chain were paid just above minimum wage; they had great benefits, sick leave, and even a profit-sharing fund. They felt so well taken care of that they didn’t need a union. Their commitment was to their CEO, whom they felt took great care of them. All they wanted was Arthur, nothing more. They wanted their kindhearted leader back.

Giraffes played a role as well. During the demonstrations, employees held blown-up signs and photographs of their beloved CEO and carried stuffed-animal giraffes. You ask, “Why giraffes?” We asked the same thing. These employees were using giraffes to show the grocery market board and their community members that they were sticking their necks out for their CEO. They wanted him back.

The Board began firing employees for organizing rallies, but it backfired. Within twenty-four hours, an estimated five thousand people gathered outside the Market Basket in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. In his first statement to the public, Arthur called for the reinstatement of all those fired. Protests continued at all seventy-one of the stores, with managers and assistant managers preparing a petition stating that they would all resign if Arthur was not reinstated.

Demonstrations went on, with roughly three thousand employees and customers picketing at various store locations, warehouse workers and drivers refusing to make deliveries, and customers boycotting stores. This guy was loved! Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Governor Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire finally stepped in to help negotiate. Meanwhile, more than 160 mayors and legislators in Massachusetts and New Hampshire signed petitions agreeing to boycott Market Basket if Arthur was not reinstated.

Bipartisan? Amazing!

Arthur eventually returned, and the first thing he did was announce that all associates were welcome to come back to work and restore the company to normal. Employees were quoted as saying, “I feel like I won the lottery” and “I’m thrilled, this is epic.” Company bakers came in at midnight after Arthur made his statement and started baking cakes that read, “Welcome back Artie T: Market Basket Strong.”

If you can’t see the love here, put the book down!

What We Learn from Dawn and Arthur

Dawn and Arthur embodied love. How do we know? Look at those they touched, those who were willing to go an extra mile for them, support them, and love them. Both Dawn and Arthur excelled in creating environments where love ruled and where people mattered. Did they ever attend a leadership class or get a certification? Who cares? They didn’t tout it if they did. What they did do was change lives.

Remember philia? These examples exhibit this kind of love, the love that is more about being able to trust the person, see the good in the person, and be able to depend on the person. As we defined earlier, this love is shared between equals, and at some point in this love relationship each person grows with the other because of mutual respect, admiration, and trust. Dawn and Arthur saw the good in their people, trusted them, depended on them, and also respected and admired them. They saw the human beings, not the players or key grocery employees—they saw and loved the people.

The other love that we see clearly is philautia. We identified this love as being crucial for one’s ability to lead others. This is that authentic, humble self-love, where you are able to accept who you are and be open to taking risks in both personal and professional relationships. This self-love gave Dawn and Arthur the ability to keep growing and learning, not only about themselves, but also from those around them. Failures and setbacks didn’t lessen their self-value or give way to blame, but rather strengthened their love for self and for others.

These leaders also understood the limits of a professional work relationship. Work affiliations are too often bound by a set of boxes and lines on organizational charts where protocol and practice is defined. Sometimes these norms exist through visible formal processes such as reports or weekly meetings. Sometimes they manifest themselves through more covert processes, like unspoken cultural rules. As much as your authors would advocate for joining hands and singing around the campfire, we have to admit that formality has some value, especially early on when people are navigating through multifaceted organizational structures and job responsibilities. There has to be some formality in order for organizations to function effectively—there, we said it!

But what happens? People get hired, and they learn the technical aspects of their jobs. They learn the requirements, what is expected, and what success looks like. We ease into a flow of performing the work we were hired to do. There is often a honeymoon period of sorts. “You are amazing! We’re so glad we hired you!” Then things mature. If all we have between us is the work we do, we transcend into an exchange relationship. “Why didn’t you finish that report? If you do this for me, I’ll cover you.” This is where relationships cease to be relationships between people. It is where work relationships begin to be contracts, sterile and void of passion. Nothing matters but the work being done.

This is precisely why these faux relationships have a breaking point, and it coincides strictly with the point where the contractual aspects of the relationship are established and a real relationship emerges. Or, it doesn’t. Both Dawn and Arthur provide clear examples of relationships growing to a new plane. They bonded with those they led at a human level, not at a contractual one.

They accomplished this in unique ways. Dawn admitted that she cared more about the players than about winning. She instilled a sense of what was possible with her players and gave them a vision about what they could be. One can’t do this following a matrix. It comes from the heart. She put her players first, focusing more on their well-being than on her own coaching résumé. If we can embrace her perspective on leadership, on how her coaching impacted her team’s ability to succeed, we can realize the value of letting go and loving each one of our team members.

Dawn is just another human being, like you, and she doesn’t have certifications or a license from a training program. She doesn’t quote books or faddish approaches to leadership. She believes in and lives what she feels with her team. She exhibits her true love for the team and the game and seems to deeply understand that results are achieved when everyone is connected. When this happens, everyone trusts their own talents and the abilities of their team members.

Arthur’s love approach was the direct cause of employees’ holding rallies and customers’ boycotting seventy-one grocery stores demanding his reinstatement. Employees on the picket lines would tell stories about how Arthur touched them personally. He checked on workers who were ill, asked and knew about their children and spouses, and offered comfort when needed. One employee shared that when his daughter was in a car accident, Arthur called him and asked about her. He then asked if the hospital was able to handle her injury and whether or not there was a need to move her to another facility.

Arthur fought for his employees first and foremost, and he treated all employees, at every level, like family. His employees didn’t want to leave, because they felt loved and cared for. One manager noted that fifteen years later, he wouldn’t work for anyone else. How many of those we lead would say that about us?