In the fourth entry of the Liberating Leadership blog series, we move into communal love and the place it holds in leadership practices. This fourth installation of the series pulls different experiences Equity Labs facilitators have had that demonstrate communal love and leadership.

“I love you” is one of the most pervasive phrases in the Western rhetorical tradition. We reserve it for our most valued relationships. We seek it, we yearn for it, we miss it when we don’t have it. Now, imagine spending a third of your life in a space where you cannot speak that phrase out loud let alone feel as though you are loved. Most working adults spend up to 8 hours a day at work, in a place where most have deemed love has no place.

Love is not simply a state of being or a passive emotion. Love in its richest manifestation is an active choice to advance the personal, professional, and spiritual well-being of the people you are in relationship with, argues bell hooks. At work, you are in relationships with your peers, your stakeholders, your supervisors, and your customers.

Communal love as a liberating force and leadership practice works because there is an implicit understanding that even as you act out of love and attend to the best interests of others, the reciprocal nature of communal love means a collective ‘other’ is attending to your interests. The most important liberatory move in a loving workplace is that we no longer need to be governed by self-interest because the weight of our success and survival is disbursed to a community that has a vested interest in our humanity and dignity.

The concept of love as liberatory leadership can be radical. Below some of our loving colleagues share stories of when love as a liberatory practice was present in their workplace. It is hard to build something you can’t imagine. We invite you to imagine with us.

Rooted in Love & Liberation: Amplifying Comunidad in Leadership for Justice and Transformation

By: Dr. Patricia Gonzalez, Equity Labs Facilitator and Assistant Dean for Access & Community Engagement at University Colorado of Boulder

Through my 16 years in education, I have worked in various organizations and witnessed how care and love for employees manifest differently depending on leadership. For me, communal love in the workplace is reflected in collective care, shared leadership, and a commitment to justice, as explored in Good Troublemakers: Freedom School Servant Leaders as Change Makers (Shimshon-Santo & González, 2024). This article, co-authored by my good friend Amy and me, centers our experience working with South LA’s Community Coalition’s (COCO) Freedom School site and highlights how servant leaders cultivate transformative spaces rooted in love, dignity, and community responsibility—principles that extend beyond education into broader workplace practices.

As Site Coordinator for COCO’s Freedom School in 2017, I experienced communal love firsthand when leadership prioritized relationships over hierarchy, fostering an environment where I and others felt valued and supported. Like Freedom School, servant leaders who engage in deep listening and mentorship, workplace leaders practicing communal love invest in the holistic well-being of their teams. This looks like offering emotional and professional support, ensuring fair workloads, and creating spaces for collective decision-making. I modeled the same care and support that my supervisor and Site Director extended to me, as they led with compassion and integrity.

Communal love also means centering justice and accountability with care. Shimshon-Santo and González emphasize how servant leaders challenge oppressive systems while maintaining compassion (2023). In workplaces, this translates to advocating for equitable policies, amplifying marginalized voices, and addressing conflicts through restorative rather than punitive measures.

Finally, communal love is reflected in shared power and co-creation. Just as COCO’s Freedom School site empowered students as change agents, workplaces that embody communal love encourage all employees to contribute ideas, shape culture, and feel a sense of belonging. Through these practices, workplaces become spaces of mutual care, empowerment, and justice—where individuals thrive not just as employees, but as whole people.

Shimshon-Santo, A., & González, P. (2024). Good Troublemakers: Freedom School Servant Leaders as Change Makers. Urban Education, 59(10), 2954-2980. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859231175661

Grief and Healing in the workplace: Communal love as practice

By: Brianna Johnson, Equity Labs Facilitator and Associate with Lotus Engineering and Sustainability

One of the most important displays of communal love in the workplace is how we manage and support one another in grief. The loss of a loved one can halt all sense of self and movement toward any goal. When I lost my beloved pup just a month after starting at my job, I experienced communal love and support that made the hole in my heart easier to manage. I then lost a very close friend to suicide just one month after the loss of my dog, the team wrapped me in care, letting me know they would manage my workload as I grieved. I received a heartfelt gift from the organization, further acknowledging that they understood — or could at least imagine — my heartbreak. The president of my company was open with me about her own grief of losing a loved one, and it made it ok for me to outwardly express mine. I felt held at work when everything else felt like it was falling apart. This is what communal love and thoughtful leadership looks like.

Communal Love as practice: Putting the “Human” back in human resources

By: Linda Newell, Equity Labs Facilitator and Training and Development Consultant

When I first got into Human Resources, there wasn’t much “human” in it. In some places, that can still be true, but I knew, and have re-discovered, that sometimes, there’s no way to prevent love from showing up in community, even in a workplace. I’m not talking about the intimate kind of love, but the feeling of unity, togetherness, and support we can feel on a team or in a group of people. Some might call it team spirit or camaraderie, etc., but I join Equity Labs folx in calling it “communal love.”

Now before you scoff and stop reading, let me share a short story with you that may help explain. For those of us who were alive, the tragic event of 9/11/2001 rocked an earthquake feeling in all Americans individually and collectively. That morning, I was to facilitate a full-day training. But as we gathered around the latest news, I opened the conversation to sharing about what people were feeling and thinking. That’s when it showed up–communal love–right in the middle of a corporate training room. One by one, participants shared their innermost thoughts, grief, and fears with each other. We made all our decisions collectively and treated each other delicately and kindly that day. From that day on, we continued to support each other no matter where we were in the organization. It was one of the most loving experiences in my corporate career.

But communal love in the workplace doesn’t need to be confined to crises. It can show up in potlucks, team volunteer days, or on a project that needs the whole team’s collaboration or support. Communal love can be present in trauma-informed approaches where we think about others’ lived experiences and perspectives as we make decisions or interact with fellow employees. Optimistically, communal love in the workplace can appear every day in a culture of care– dignity, respect, and kindness for each other as fellow humans, no matter any differences among us.

Now more than ever, we all need a bit of communal love, wherever we are. Don’t we?

Lead with Love, Rise Above: Communal Love and how it Impacts Leadership

By: Ebony Wilkinson, Equity Labs Facilitator and Program Associate at the Ford Foundation

“Without community, there is no liberation.” These words from Audre Lorde, the Black feminist, writer, and activist, remind us that true freedom and progress are collective efforts. Lorde’s work emphasized the power of community, intersectionality, and shared responsibility—values that are equally essential in leadership.

Leadership is often imagined as a singular force making decisions that guide the way. But true leadership, the kind that sustains and transforms, is not about the power of one. It is about the power of many. It is about communal love.

Communal love in leadership is the understanding that leadership is not about authority but about responsibility—responsibility to one another, to shared well-being, and to the collective good. It is the willingness to recognize that no single person holds all the answers, that strength is found in collaboration, and that the best decisions are made with, not for, the people.

This kind of leadership shows up in the ways people hold space for one another, ensuring that no voice goes unheard, and no need goes unnoticed. It is present in the hands that rebuild after a storm, in the meals shared after a devastating loss, and in the doors held open so that more may walk through. It is in the collective decision to prioritize care over competition, listening over ego, and justice over convenience.

Communal love in leadership challenges the idea that leadership is a position rather than a practice. It must be a conscious decision to shift leadership from command to connection and, in many cases, from hierarchy to harmony. This type of leadership thrives on reciprocity—the understanding that leadership is both guiding and being guided, teaching and learning. When leadership is rooted in communal love, it becomes less about titles and more about how people move together. It is measured not by individual accolades but by the strength of the community it nurtures.

In the end, communal love is the unseen force that uplifts—not from the front or the top, but from the heart of the people. It is a leadership that does not seek to lead alone but to build a world where everyone has the power to lead together.

In a more divided world, we are constantly looking for pathways to work through the hate and division. The practice of love is a viable remedy. It is just as contagious as hate, and it has much more healing potential than hate ever had.

Building Your Leadership Ethos

Section 4: Responsibility to People

It is easy to forget the people who we don’t interact with on a regular basis. If we imagine our networks as concentric circles, the people who are closest to us are the people we regularly interact with. We bear witness to their successes and failures. We can empathize with them because our environments collide, and the quality of their lives is often consequential to us.  

As you consider the possibilities that love affords you in the practice of liberatory leadership we invite you to reflect on the following questions as you think about the people who make up your community of love and how to incorporate them into your leadership ethos.

Remembering occasions when you felt loved at work, what were your needs and interests that were well attended to, and who were the people who attended to them?
Who are the people, both directly and indirectly, do I serve and how do I create a reciprocal and loving relationship? What are their needs and how do I attend to them?
What fears, anxieties and restrictions prevent you from acting out of love toward your supervisors, peers, supervisees, or clients? How can you openly or subversively contest those barriers? How does that manifest for others in my community?
Are there people or communities for whom it is harder for you to act out of love? Why might that be? What would it take for you to recognize their humanity?

Other Blogs in the Series

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