Our friend and wise colleague Irwin Federman, former CFO, CEO, and currently with US Venture Partners, once said to us:

Your experience is likely to be similar to Irwin's. And yet, while it's almost taboo to talk about love and affection in an organizational context, when people describe their personal best leadership experiences it's not uncommon to hear them speak those words. There's a much deeper human connection when people are engaged with those they care about when doing things that really matter.

Love is the soul of leadership.^[81] Love is what sustains people along the arduous journey to the summit of any mountain. Love is the source of the leader's courage. Leaders are in love: in love with leading, in love with their organizations' products and services, and in love with people.

The dictionary tells us that love is a "feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection." In an organizational context, management consultant Rodney Ferris defines love as "a feeling of caring or deep respect for yourself and others, of valuing and believing in yourself and others, and of helping to achieve the best of which everyone is capable. It means finding a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and fun in your work, and helping others to find these qualities in their work as well."^[82]

Exemplary leaders do not place themselves at the center; they place others there. They do not seek the attention of people; they give it to others. They do not focus on satisfying their own aims and desires; they look for ways to respond to the needs and interests of their constituents. "Servant leadership" is what many have called this relationship, wherein the task of leaders is to serve others.^[83]

In our interview with Pete Thigpen, a senior fellow at The Aspen Institute and former president of Levi Strauss & Company USA, he reinforced this point when he advised leaders to:

Love enlarges lives. Love creates the desire to serve others and to see them grow and become their best. While constituents may initially be dependent on you for some benefit or gain, your end objective is to make them independent of you. We have repeatedly observed that, when working at their personal best, leaders transform their followers into leaders.

By understanding the needs and values of their constituents, exemplary leaders interact in ways that make others feel more confident and capable. They elevate people to a higher plane. They raise others' moral and ethical behavior, heighten positive emotions, elevate strategic thinking, enhance physical well-being, and generate significantly improved performance.

Gary Strack, former CEO of a regional health care system in Florida, told us that he strongly believed "the purpose of leadership was to create a legacy and not a legend." He went on to say:

Self-centered managers can never achieve this kind of transformation. They're too focused on satisfying their own needs to be concerned about others. They're too concerned about becoming a legend and not leaving a lasting legacy. This explains why nearly 50 percent of administrative professionals say that having a "bad boss" would be the most important factor in a decision to leave their jobs. Compare that with only 4 percent who indicate that they would leave their jobs because of poor pay or the 2 percent who would leave because of poor benefits.^[84] When you're around people who're more concerned about themselves than about you, you look for the nearest exit.

It's not enough to be in love. As you know from personal experience, you have to show your love. That means you have to pay attention to your constituents, recognize them, and tell stories about them.

The primary way that you show that you care for someone is by paying attention to them. Giving your appreciation is an active process. You have to reach out to others, listen to their words and emotions, be open to their experiences, ask them questions, and express a willingness to learn from them. Making other people the center of your attention tells them that you feel they're important, it tells them that you regard their input as useful, and it tells them that you value their ideas.

Judith Wiencke, an engineering manager at Australia's Telecom, explains how...

Formal and informal recognitions are another visible way to show you care. They call attention to others' good work. This kind of appreciation is positive information that tells people they're making progress, are on the right track, and are living up to the standards. It also builds trust and a sense of shared contribution to success.

When Ying Qui was asked to become the principal of the primary school she was teaching at in Tongling, China, many people doubted her leadership ability. But as time progressed, she eventually doubled the size of the school's enrollment by getting the teachers to see how the success of the school connected to their own success. She worked hard at making everyone feel important and that they all made a difference. For the teachers who ranked at the top of their annual performance reviews, for example, the school publicly displayed their names and held a recognition event for them.

And what about everyone else? Ying explained: "We also had a number of special rewards for people who were making improvements." Caring about the people who worked in the school was critical, because Ying said: "It is a team, not 'me' but 'we,' and if everyone is supporting you, things will become much easier."

Recognitions don't need to come in the form of elaborate events or expensive awards. In fact, the more personal they are, the more impact they can have. William Hwang told us that he had "learned over the years that it isn't the size of the gesture that is important, but the simple fact that you noticed someone's contributions." At InnoWorks, the non-profit that he founded—an organization dedicated to opening the world of science, engineering, and medicine to underprivileged children—recognition ranges from acknowledgments in publicly distributed materials such as conference and journal papers, brochures, and the website, to simple thank you's in emails to the group.

Storytelling is another powerful way to show that you care. Stories exist in all organizations and are an integral part of defining what an organization is and what it means to work for it. Indeed, much about the culture of a company can be learned as a result of listening to and understanding the stories told about it.^[85] Researchers have found, for instance, that organizational members who were able to tell many stories, particularly positive stories, exhibited far more evidence of organizational commitment and resilience from hardship than those who told few stories.^[86] Similarly, storytelling boosts self-esteem in children, improving their interpersonal skills and resilience in the face of adversity.^[87]

Lidia Kwiatkowska, personal banking area manager at Canada's Bank of Montreal/Harris, has experienced first-hand the power of sharing positive success stories about how lasting relationships are built through exceptional service. "Weekly," she says, "we share these stories, and how individual team members exhibit the customer attributes. We don't just celebrate, but challenge each other as a team." Before Lidia's arrival, her area hadn't achieved their revenue goals for several years, and within six months of her arrival they exceeded their targets for the entire year!^[88]

One of the most significant ways in which you can show others that you care and appreciate others' efforts is to be out there with them. Walk the halls, meander around the corridors, eat in the cafeteria, listen to complaints, go to parties, attend organizational events (even when you are not on the program), and be able to tell stories about their successes. This type of visibility and availability makes you more real, more genuine, more approachable, and more human. It helps you stay in touch with what's really going on.

That's what Carolyn Borne makes it a point to do in her three leadership roles at the UCLA Medical Center: unit director of the General Clinical Research Center, program director of the Women's Health Initiative, and Magnet director. For example, after leading the Medical Center to Magnet status—sometimes called the "Nobel Prize for Nursing"—she intentionally has kept the pride and momentum going by constantly thinking about others and what she can to do make their lives more rewarding. "I don't want them to lose the power of what they felt when we finally got Magnet," she told us. "I am constantly deliberating with them, talking with them, sensing them, finding out where they are, what they want, how they are feeling about the organization, and what they want me to bring to them."

Whether hard at work or over coffee, at lunch, or just "hanging out," Carolyn sees each encounter as an opportunity to show that she pays attention to each member of the team as an individual as well as a professional. "I hope that at the end of the day I've given my staff, or any of the people that I'm in contact with, the feeling that I cared about them."

Leadership is tough and demanding work. There are a lot of successes and victories along the way, but there are also a lot failures and defeats. Leading takes considerable persistence and patience—and a lot of hours and energy. It's impossible to envision getting up day after day, putting in the long hours and hard work it takes to inspire, strengthen, and encourage others to get extraordinary things done, without having your heart in it.

When we asked Jim Autry, former president of Meredith Corporation's magazine group and author of several books on leadership—including the aptly titled Love and Profit—about the connection between these two words, he told us that "creating a caring workplace—a place in which people have friendships and deep personal connections and can grow personally and emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, as well as financially and professionally—is an important aspect of creating profit." As part of that process, Jim recommends,

To become the best leader you can be, you have to fall in love with the work you are doing and with the reason you are doing it. You have to fall in love with leading and the purpose you are serving. By "falling in love with leading" we don't mean the kind of covetous love that so many people get when they imagine what it'd be like to be the leader of something. They imagine how cool it'd be to be on top, to be in charge, to be able to get people to do things for them, to be famous, or to be wealthy. Leadership to them becomes one of those television reality shows where people connive and compete to win a million dollars. That's not what we're talking about. It only creates envy, jealousy, and greed.

We're talking about the kind of love that Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, authors of the bestselling book Freakonomics, write about when they say, "When it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love—because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good."^[89] We're talking about the same kind of love people feel when they have a passion for something, when they want to be the very best at something.

This is exactly the realization that Adam Carson, as vice president at Morgan Stanley, came to. "Everything that I have accomplished as a leader that I am most proud of," Adam told us, "has come when I was passionate about the role I was in and the organization that I belonged to. No question about it and this makes complete sense." As Adam explained:

When you're passionate about a profession or avocation, like Adam is, you wake up in the morning excited to be engaged in something that gets your juices flowing. You just can't wait to do it. You're devoted to learning more. You're eager to put in the hours to practice getting great at it.

Loving leading means that you're passionate about values and visions that make a difference, that you look forward every day to devoting your time to strengthening others and building teams, that you relish the chance to tackle a daunting challenge and search for new possibilities, and that you truly enjoy recognizing others for their contributions to the success of the enterprise. This is the work you must fall in love with.

Claire Owen is founder and leader of vision and values for the SG Group, a medium-sized firm in London designed to meet the marketing and human resource recruitment needs of agencies and corporations. In one interview with Claire, she said to us: "If you are excited about the business, and if you are excited about where it is going and what is happening in it, then there is a buzz, a physical buzz. It's my job to create that kind of place."

Claire added, "You see that I get excited about things. When I do, people go, 'Well, Claire is excited by it, so I'm going to get excited by it. She believes in and she thinks it is going to be great—well I think it is going to be great.' That's really all I do."

Claire is a living example of how "enthusiasm is infectious." When she is excited and animated, other people get excited and animated. People have told us from the first day we started researching the characteristics of admired leaders that they want leaders like Claire. They want people who are positive and optimistic. They want leaders who are inspiring and full of hope for the future. It's part of what makes a leader credible. It's part of what attracts people to leaders in the first place.

Claire's experience illustrates the power of positive leadership. People feed off of their leaders' moods and their leaders' views of the world. Positive leadership breeds positive emotions.

This isn't conjecture. This is fact. Barbara L. Fredrickson, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been studying positivity for more than twenty years. Her findings indicate that

Positivity "broadens and builds," observes Barbara. It stretches our minds, helps us to see new possibilities, and expands our worldviews. In the research she and her colleagues have done, they've found that as positivity flows through us we see more options, and we become more creative and innovative. It's not just wild and crazy ideas, either. When feeling positive, managers are more accurate and more careful in making decisions. They're also more interpersonally effective.^[91]

And that's not all. People who enjoy more positivity are better able to cope with adversities and are more resilient during times of high stress. They are also more likely to see the commonalities between themselves and others. These are certainly the kinds of outcomes that are needed in a world that has become more diverse and more adverse.

These findings are further supported by the work of researcher Marcial Losada and University of Michigan professor Emily Heaphy, who examined the performance of sixty top management teams engaged in annual business planning activities.^[92] In their field research they discovered that they could distinguish high-performing, medium-performing, and low-performing teams based on the ratio of positive to negative statements exchanged in team meetings. Positive statements are those that are supportive, appreciative, helpful, approving, and complimentary. Negative statements are those that are critical, disapproving, contradictory, and cynical and the like. For the high performers the ratio of positive to negative was 5.61 to 1, for the medium performers it was 1.14 to 1, and for the low-performing teams it was .93 to 1. In other words, the more positive the groups, the better they performed. The more negative the groups, the worse they did.^[93]

In related studies of other interpersonal relationships, investigators have found evidence that when people experience a ratio of at least three positive emotions to one negative, they are more likely to be lasting and healthy.^[94] Whether the ratio is 5:1 or 3:1, the important point is that relationships—whether work, personal, or family—flourish when people experience more positive than negative emotions. Those who experience little or no positive emotion languish and often die.

At this point, you're thinking about the voices of some cynics you've heard say: "Come on. Get real. This is a tough, hard, cruel world. You can't just paint a happy face on our problems and make them go away." Of course you can't. Leaders shouldn't turn a blind eye to reality or hide it from their teams. You must be honest with your constituents about the state of the organization's or the nation's health. Then you have a choice.

You can tell people they're doomed, criticize the ideas they present, contradict them at every turn, and offer little or no support as they struggle to survive. Or you can give them hope. You can tell people that if they apply themselves—and if they're willing to struggle and suffer—they will overcome one day. You can tell them you have confidence in their abilities, help them to broaden their perspectives, build on their ideas, support them as they look for solutions, and recognize their contributions. It's not hard to recognize the right option to choose.

Positive energy is especially important in volatile times. When the news is worrisome, and often downright scary, it's pretty easy for folks to become negative. And people become negative even faster when they see it in their leaders, whether overtly in speeches or even if they just mope around a bit. Negative leadership breeds negative emotions. And these negative emotions are far more damaging to an organization's and an individual's health than doing nothing at all. In uncertain and challenging times, it's your obligation as a leader to accentuate the positive. If you don't, you're either keeping things the same or making them worse.

Call it the physics of leadership: positives attract, negatives repel. In order to get through the difficulties of today and tomorrow and to seek out opportunities, you have to believe that there is a positive future out there. It's imperative that leaders paint that attractive picture and generate the human energy necessary to enact it.

The Truth Is That Leadership Is an Affair of the Heart. Leaders put their hearts in their businesses and their businesses in their hearts. They love what they're doing and they stay in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations produce, and with those who honor them by using their products and services. They show they care by paying attention to people, sharing success stories, and making people feel important and special. Exemplary leaders are positive and upbeat, generating the emotional energy that enables others to flourish.