Lead with Love: A Guide to Organizational Leadership That Starts with You

by Stephen Juracka Ed. D

Leadership Matters.

Leaders hold enormous influence over the culture, the environment and the processes that fuel every home, business, and community organization. Let there be no mistake, leadership is the linchpin for organizational success and effectiveness.

If you have witnessed leadership that lacks high mindedness and direction and strive to be a leader armed with a framework for organizational success, Lead with Love offers a direct and succinct guide to principled leadership. This book is steeped in the research behind positive psychology and covers the importance of personal well-being when managing a leadership role. Further, Lead with Love explores the heart and science behind creating an organizational environment that is people focused and intentionally designed for success.

Dr. Stephen Juracka has served as an educational leader for over 20 years and his writing is grounded in the research behind effective leadership and organizational design. If you care deeply about the quality of your own life as a leader and want to share that care with the people you lead, then you are ready to Lead with Love.

278 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 19, 2022

Reviews

[Dennis Ogbeide · Rating 5 out of 5]

This year I made a goal to read more books on self-help, growth and personal development - this is effortlessly among my top 5 best reads so far. It has taken me almost two weeks to read it, not because it is too long or uninteresting, but because I always take a step back, analyze and relate what I read to a time in my work-life, what I should have done better and how I could do better in future. The book doesn’t contain any new information on leadership, but it does this wholesome thing of relating it to your own personal growth and fulfillment as an individual and not just as a leader. I have had the opportunity to lead a team in the past, with no knowledge of what I was doing or how I was going to do it, but it warms my heart that the process and values highlighted in this book are the same ones I lead my team by even though I do have some learning and unlearning to do. There’s never a perfect leader and sometimes leader tend to forget, this book is perfect for oiling the wheels; it is comprehensive, well-detailed and written in a simple format, conversation style. It is a great book and you don’t have to be a leader to read it, it contains values that can be practiced in all aspects of our lives.

[Sarah Pearce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lead with Love: A Guide to Organizational Leadership That Starts With You, by Stephen Juracka Ed. D, is packed full of ways to bring the organization you lead to a higher level. Love, Stephen Juracka believes, is a verb. Love requires action and analysis in order to support those you are leading.

The book opens with advice we’re probably all familiar with–take care of yourself so you can show up for others. Juracka outlines various ways to recharge yourself such as meditation, eating well, exercising, and connecting to the spiritual realm. He also instructs all leaders to discover their why, and to discover their purpose in life. Leaders who are in touch with what they themselves require, and who have a sense of their why are able to show up to their work and be productive.

Part II discusses ways to support those we lead. Leaders should put their people first and help to make the workplace a safe space where workers feel heard, challenged, protected, and supported. Juracka refers to this part as “loving thy neighbor”. Juracka also discusses how to screen and hire candidates in order to create a stronger organization.

Part III focuses on ways to make love a verb. Juracka outlines specific ways to develop systems and workplace structures that will drive teams to be effective. The charts he includes give specific questions to answer and scenarios to consider as ways to make the workplace more effective.

I especially enjoyed two aspects of this book. Firstly, I connected with the personal stories and anecdotes throughout the book. These stories really helped to reiterate the strategies, as well as to help the reader understand a real-life application of the strategy. Secondly, I found the questions and scenarios at the end of each chapter extremely helpful in summarizing each chapter and making me examine how the topics he presented could be worked into my life.

Juracka’s book is filled with strategies, concrete examples, and even step-by-step instructions for leading an organization. Anyone in a leader position will benefit from reading this book. The amount of information and specific steps Juracka was able to fit into this book is amazing. I would 100% recommend anyone in a leadership position read and apply this book to their leadership experience.

[Hannah Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Accessible, well written, grounded in reality with clear messages and practical, effective steps--but was it anything new? No.

I think this book will help a lot of people and it will make it easy for a lot of people to connect with themselves, the people they lead, and their environments more solidly. It won't give a new perspective, it won't delve into movement work, grassroots work, or the many-layered and dynamic work that QTBIPOC folks are doing and have always been doing.

I do love part I's emphasis on the self and how you cannot become the best leader if you do not know who you are--an important lesson everyone should learn. So if as a reader what you're looking for is a quick, accessible read that will give you basic tips on how to improve your leadership asap, then this could be a good choice for you.