Leading With Love When You've Been Hurt

Leading with love is easier when things are going well. Budgetary requirements are being met. Employees are happy. It’s smooth sailing.

You won’t always lead in good times. There will be rocky days, months, and years.

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

Maybe the finances are no longer there. Perhaps a close colleague turned their back on you.

Leadership has times of extreme pain.

How do you lead through these times of hurt? How do you lead with love during the hurting times?

That’s a good question. We should be asking this question, so we know what to do when we get hurt.

Leading With Love When You’ve Been Hurt

I’m going to offer three ways you can lead with love when you’ve been hurt today. These are not going to be easy things to implement. Some of these are going to require you to fall on your sword or accept responsibility when you’re not the one at fault.

I know these suggestions will help you to continue to lead with love.

1. Remember your why:

One of the easiest ways to get back to loving when you’ve been hurt is remembering your why. Your why will pull you back in.

The why of why you lead helps you to remember the reason behind you leading. You didn’t start leading because it was easy. Or because you wouldn’t get hurt. NO. You began to lead because you knew it would make a difference.

What is that difference? What is the why?

Get back to that and you will be able to lead with love after being hurt.

2. Remember people are hurting:

You got hurt because the people who hurt you are hurting. It’s a vicious cycle. Hurt people hurt people.

The people you lead... They’ve all been hurt. Sometimes their past hurt will bleed over to the business world.

Maybe it was a bad boss. Maybe it was a subordinate they once led.

Whatever the reason, people are hurting. We have to navigate that tricky space with love.

When you remember people are hurting, you can begin to understand why you need to lead with love. Leading with love will help resolve some of the past hurt people have faced.

3. Remember you’ve hurt others:

What?!? Really?!? I’ve hurt others in the past?!? I never would’ve thought about that…

Yeah, right.

We all know that we’ve made poor decisions, communicated in the wrong way, and have done other things that have hurt people. Yet, we struggle to admit to this.

To lead with love when you’ve been hurt will require you to realize you’ve hurt others.

This could be the time you blew up at your spouse. You said some hurtful words. Or what about Bob in shipping? Remember the time you let him have it for a late shipment? You didn’t realize how deep your angry outburst hurt him.

We’ve all hurt others. This means others will hurt us.

Begin patching up the relationships you’ve damaged because of your hurt. You’ll see these relationships come back together. You’ll also begin to have a heart for those that have hurt you because you’re in their shoes, just with different relationships.