Choose Love Not Fear: How the Best Leaders Build Cultures of Engagement and Innovation That Unleash Human Potential

“Great leaders create great teams, and with Choose Love, Not Fear, Gary and Ryan show how creating a human-focused culture is the only way to win the future. Deeply researched and filled with inspiring examples, this book is an essential handbook for today’s leaders.”
—Arianna Huffington, Founder and CEO of Thrive Global
“Gary and Ryan Heil have issued a clarion call for a new approach to leadership in our offices, classrooms, and playing fields. They show that relying on intimidation and control is not only inhumane&mdash it’s also ineffective. The very best leaders today must embrace intrinsic motivation, vulnerability, and, yes, love. Fear, we now know, makes us dumber. This remarkable book will make you smarter.”
—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of DRIVE, WHEN, and TO SELL IS HUMAN
“Every leader should read this book! Gary and Ryan Heil have distilled the essence of great teams and great leaders into a few short, but profound principles. Choose Love, Not Fear shows a unique and compelling way to build exceptional organizations. Wisdom on every page.”
—Admiral William H. McRaven, U.S. Navy (Retired); Former Commander of the US Special Operations Command and former Chancellor of the University of Texas System
Why, despite $50B a year in investment and decades of effort, have we made so little progress in developing better leaders? What separates exemplary leaders from the merely good ones? If innovation is so valuable, why do so many leaders talk of the need for creativity but then punish creative expression? How must leaders change to be effective in a world where technology has rendered leaders more necessary and less powerful?
Practical. Challenging. Well-researched and unflinchingly candid, this book - based on a decade-long study - provides leaders at all levels an actionable framework for building cultures that support higher levels of engagement and innovation. Choose Love, Not Fear challenges readers to overcome a history of fear-based processes that unnecessarily render us less capable, restrict what we see, and narrow what we believe is possible. This book shows how the best leaders build teams where love and positive emotion are the foundation of making the rhetoric of engagement a reality.
Choosing to lead from love and not fear does not guarantee that a team will become highly engaged and innovative. It is, however as the authors note, the inescapable first step in unleashing human potential.