“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
– Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
Martin Luther King Jr. has shown the path to us aspiring and practicing leaders in more ways than one, and on his memorial holiday I am writing about one of them, not because it is the most important or unique, but just because I am thinking often about it these days when trying to describe characteristics of the Adaptive Executive.
Many of us see leadership as service to others, our customers and users, fellow workers, managers, shareholders or tax-payers, and the societies and communities in which we live. Our aim is neither “sentimental and anemic” nor “reckless and abusive” leadership. To be effective executives we need to be powerful and be guided by love.
Love may be a surprising addition to the list of principles for an Adaptive Executive, but it is not the first time its central position is explained in a business context. To name just one example, Alan Mulally’s Working Together Management System is clearly a people-first approach. He frequently explained the role of love in Working Together and he repeated often a lesson from his mother: “The purpose of life is to love and be loved, in that order”. Simply put to put people first in your leadership you have to love them, and in practical terms that means a deep care for your employees, customers, and the communities in which you do business. That is why you want to serve them.
Many of us felt at some point in our lives disgust or thirst for power, and we came to realize that both attitudes towards power are often not helpful. Power is potency, and as all potential, it only becomes good or bad after it is used on something. Power is not a dirty word as without the potential to act and transform our reality, love is only a feeling which is not useful to anyone. If we want power as an end, then we hoard it, accumulating potential that at some point will get released. If we have no love to help us aim wisely, it becomes a loose gun. Firing without aiming is rarely a good idea.
As Adaptive Executives we aim at acquiring and using power in loving service of our constituents.
The Adaptive Executive 