Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World

The crisis in America today is not economic. It is a crisis of virtues and values. We must choose to prosper as a society, not just as individuals.

In LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass, August 2009, $27.95), John Hope Bryant describes the current environment as wracked by fear, and fear as “the ultimate prosperity killer.”

LOVE LEADERSHIP makes the case that, as unlikely as it sounds, the best way to get ahead is to figure out what you have to give to a world seemingly obsessed with only one question: “what do I get?”

LOVE LEADERSHIP recognizes that you want to do well in life, but it also suggests that the best way to do well and to achieve true wealth over the long term is to do good, and you’ll never be wrong doing right. But right now we look around and it is apparent that our great nation, and its leaders, have simply “lost our story line” and are focusing on the me instead of the we. It isn’t a matter of “love v. hate,” that takes too much energy. It is a matter of indifference.

LOVE LEADERSHIP distills love-based leading into five fundamental laws:

1. Loss Creates Leaders (there can be no strength without legitimate suffering)
2. Fear Fails (only respect and love leads to success)
3. Love Makes Money (love is at the core of true wealth)
4. Vulnerability is Power (when you open up to people, they open up to you)
5. Giving is Getting (the more you offer to others, the more they will give back to you)

In LOVE LEADERSHIP, Bryant shares the lessons and practices of numerous love-based leaders, as well as his own experiences.

John Hope Bryant has been on both sides of the political aisle, both sides of the boardroom table, and both sides of poverty. From years of experience getting things done, including his self-made rise from poverty and homelessness, John came to realize that he was not a Republican or Democrat, he was not a business-as-usual CEO.

John Hope Bryant is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, vice-chairman of the non-partisan U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, the original inspiration that established financial literacy as U.S. federal policy in 2008, and a proud member of the “Get Things Done” party.

From his vast experiences with others in power, Bryant has observed successful, and unsuccessful, leadership. He has written LOVE LEADERSHIP to share the exemplary skills he has learned as a result of caring more about others than himself – Bryant’s power comes from love, and that’s why people want to follow him.