Tackle The !@#$ Out Of Love

Recently, I was reading Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. In one of the letters, she talked about tackling “the [expletive] out of love.” Not tiptoeing. Not being careful. Not hedging your bets. Just going all in with no safety net. That sentence has stayed with me. 

A religious scholar once asked Jesus what mattered most. Jesus didn’t even have to think about it. “Love God with everything you are,” he said. Then he added a second part that’s just as important: “Love your neighbor the same way you love yourself.” Everything else—all the rules, all the teachings—hangs on those two things. Not your vision. Not your strategy. Not even faith or hope. Love. That’s the highest order.

What gets me about both of these ideas? They’re demanding. Strayed isn’t suggesting you have warm feelings or convenient affection. She’s talking about aggressive, intentional, no-excuses love. And Jesus wasn’t saying “try to like people” or “feel nice about your neighbor.” He was commanding action. Commitment. Sacrifice.

Here’s the hard part for those of us in leadership: you can’t lead people you don’t love. You can manage them—sure. You can organize them, direct them, even squeeze results out of them for a season. But actually leading them? Inspiring them, developing them, sacrificing for them, helping them become who they’re meant to be? That requires love.

And this is where it gets uncomfortable for a lot of leaders. Love in leadership doesn’t mean being nice or making everyone happy. It means tackling the hard stuff. Having the conversation that makes your stomach hurt because you care too much to stay silent. Making the decision that won’t win you any popularity contests because it’s what’s best for the team. Staying present with someone’s pain instead of rushing in to fix it. Seeing potential in people they can’t see in themselves yet—and refusing to let them settle for less.

The people who have loved me well as a leader? None of them made it easy on me. They challenged me. Called me out. Held my feet to the fire. But I always knew—could feel it in my bones—that they were for me. And that changed everything. When you know someone’s in your corner like that, you’re willing to risk. To grow. To fall on your face and get back up.

The opposite of love in leadership isn’t hate. It’s indifference—going through the motions, treating people like instruments instead of human beings, protecting yourself from the mess that real leadership brings.

When we tackle love the way Strayed describes—with everything we’ve got—we’re doing what Jesus called the highest command. We’re saying people have infinite value. We’re committing to their good even when it costs us something. We’re choosing to be uncomfortable, to absorb the stress, to do our own work so we can show up fully for the people who need us.

This kind of love doesn’t look identical for everyone. Some people need encouragement. Others need straight truth. Some need space to figure things out. Others need you right there beside them. But every single person needs to know you’re committed to their flourishing—not just their productivity.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it; this kind of leadership wears you out. You can’t fake it. You can’t keep it up if you’re running on empty. You can’t give away what you don’t have. That’s why leaders who love well also know when to rest, how to refill their own tanks, and where to draw the boundaries that keep them healthy enough to actually show up.

But here’s what I’ve learned: anything less than loving your people is settling for something that isn’t real leadership. It’s picking efficiency over humanity. It’s protecting yourself at the cost of the people who are counting on you.

Love is the highest order. And the best thing you can possibly do as a leader is tackle it with full force—no holding back, no protecting yourself, no settling for less. That’s how you change lives. That’s how you build something that lasts. That’s how you lead.

Tackling love with everything we’ve got is choosing the harder path because we believe people are worth it. It’s following the highest command—not because it’s easy, but because it’s the only way to lead in a manner worthy of the trust people place in us. It’s showing up day after day, not perfectly, but fully committed to the good of the people we serve—the Bison Way.