From the beginning, it's all about the love.

Leaders fundamentally shape the initial tone, the attitude, the climate and culture of the buildings and spaces they occupy.

Anyone can be a leader if they choose the path. Some leaders are born with those innate skills within them, embedded in their DNA-it is a calling:

the willingness to guide, to lead, to navigate, to safeguard and nurture, inspire and motivate; make the challenging decisions others may not want or be able to make. Leaders can also be forged, shaped, and developed by other leaders who carry compassion, patience, love, and grit as some of their professional tools when uplifting others, and that type of work is as much an act of love as is the art of stewarding children or adults on paths of academic, social-emotional, and/or life and career success.

From the beginning to the end, it is all about the love that a leader, whether they be a novice or veteran, brings to the work, and the processes that shape that work and the community. None of this is easy, not even close, and often concepts like love are considered, by some, to be impractical, philosophical in nature, idealistic, too ethereal, or lacking substance as tools to fundamentally mold lives or shape productivity. Those approaching leadership from that opinion would, I think, be missing a critical key to the work, and perhaps not listening to their own hearts.

Heck, loving one's self is a tough enough challenge, but loving large numbers of people, in equitable, authentic ways, in order to create and implement policies, practices, strategies on a grand scale? Come on, staggering is a good word that comes to mind, and yet this is exactly the type of work love can lead.

My position is that leading with love, in love, being a heartleader, is about shaping work around the guiding principle that leaders who carry a yes in their hearts, who move from a place of love, engender work that is love-bound, that is linked to making the classroom or the workspace, a place to be cared about. There is a shift from job to calling, from passive to passion. Everything from critical conversations and classroom learning, workgroups and lunch meetings, discipline and interventions, parent conferences, orientations, professional development, grading, boardrooms and breakrooms, when supported by a love leader the culture lifts a student, an employee, a parent, a staff member, to care more about others and the work of that school, business or community. The work, the effort, is elevated to a place built on this sense that people belong to something greater than themselves, and yet unified around the mission and vision of their respective callings.

And colleagues, I get it, leaders of every type and skill level, this is tough stuff...Iam there with you as we stand on the frontlines of unparalleled shift, digging through the rubble of phenomenal amounts of uncertainty as we triage the last few years of our collective pain, but from this, I believe, comes healing and recovery, and it is love that heals all wounds.

This is just the beginning...after all, a heartbeat has to start somewhere.