Leading with Love

What does it mean to lead with love?

As a classroom teacher, it always felt natural to say I loved my students. It was expected. How could anyone teach well without love? When I worked with preservice teachers, I would remind them of this. I’d say, “I know you love children. That goes without saying. There must be more.” Even then, I kept a cautious distance from the word itself, worried that naming love too openly might somehow make me less professional.

When I began preparing educational leaders, love rarely entered the conversation unless it was through Paulo Freire’s work on social justice—a kind of warrior‑love that felt safer to name.

Moving to New Jersey changed that. It changed me. Some of it was timing and what was happening in my personal life, but much of it came from being welcomed into a vibrant community where a treasured friend helped me see the love around me—and the love I could finally see in myself.

Ever the Bloom’s taxonomy devotee, I had to work my way through the levels. First, I could recognize the idea of leadership as love. Then I began to distinguish the ways love shows up in leadership. Eventually, I found myself facilitating acts of love within my team. Only recently have I been able to reflect on my leadership in terms of how deeply I love the people I serve.

Through that reflection, here’s what I’ve learned.

1. Leaders love because leadership is a human project.

Yes, leaders deal with budgets, policies, and procedures. But every decision touches people—students, staff, faculty, and community members. bell hooks reminds us that love is an action, and leadership is nothing if not a daily practice of showing up. Sometimes that means mundane tasks like approving requisitions. Sometimes it means gut‑wrenching decisions like budget cuts. Either way, the work matters because the people matter.

2. Love requires courage and truth‑telling.

When leaders love, they face harsh realities and help others face them too. James Baldwin writes, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without.” Audre Lorde’s poem “Ballad from Childhood” offers a similar lesson: love does not traffic in false hope. It names the truth, even when the truth is cold.

A leader must be a truth‑teller. But truth alone is not enough. Leaders must help others hear it, process it, and respond without slipping into either false confidence or false hopelessness. Recently, when asked what I would do if I led a struggling institution, I said I would tell them the truth. Then, just as I do with my doctoral students, I would ask them to reflect back what they heard—and then ask what we were going to do about it. Truth‑telling requires support, agency, and hope.

3. Love requires imagination.

Higher education has no shortage of harsh realities right now. But leading with love also means holding space for what is possible. Maxine Greene urges us to look at things as they could be otherwise. Love asks us to stay wide‑awake to possibility—within individuals and within communities.

4. Love is working together.

Leading with love means building possibilities with the people we serve. It requires trust, communication, and shared responsibility. Freire reminds us that “dialogue cannot exist without profound love for the world and for people.” Dewey frames this as shared inquiry—the foundation of a democratic society.

Leaders must create spaces where people can thrive, take risks, and grow. One of the most enduring lessons from my own leadership preparation is this: the true sign of leadership is when you can leave an institution and the work continues. That is the highest aim. It was never about us.

So what is leading with love?

It is work.

It is just.

It is courageous.

It is limitless.

It is reaffirming.

It is honest.

It is vulnerable.

It is essential.

Leading with love is not soft. It is showing up for people, especially when the work is hard, the path is unclear, or the stakes are high. It is the willingness to imagine better futures and the courage to build them alongside others. It is the quiet conviction that our institutions become more human when we lead from our own humanity. It is the kind of leadership our institutions need now more than ever.