*3.6. How Is CL Valued in Your Organisational Leadership Culture?*

Leaders provide statements on their views on how CL impacts on their national, socio-cultural and leadership culture. Altogether, 13 individuals say that CL is not a priority in their culture, referring to German, US-American and South African culture explicitly. Four statements mention that love is usually hidden in leadership culture in general. P18, a female, US-American leader, takes a critical view regarding love and her US-American culture:

"In the US love is not valued in leadership culture and barely at all in culture as a whole. Our patriarchal capitalist system is such that it seeks to undermine the individual in order to control her—to summarize Carol Gilligan, patriarchy separates men from women, men from men, and everyone from everyone else. It stunts emotion. There is a false narrative that rationality is the proper focus of attention for a leader, but this rationality rarely is founded in actual logical principles but in a wish to dominate."

#### A male, US-American leader, P5, contributes:

"Again, I don't think most of our political leaders are acting out of tough love, they appear to be acting out of narcissism, which I suppose you could call self-love, or narcissistic love. In America we generally believe that only narcissists are motivated to pursue leadership. My sense is that given the choice, Americans would rather be their own boss, rather than be someone else's boss and those who aspire to power and rank tend to be those least deserving

of it. I suspect this stems from the idealization of the independent family farmer at the time of the US's initial formation, an ideal that has remained powerful into the 20th century. My ancestors immigrated to rural Minnesota from Europe to farm or start small businesses (barber) and I suspect that small family business ethos continues to permeate the American psyche. Although leaders elsewhere, like Korea, in which hierarchy runs deep through all social relations, do not seem any less narcissistic, loving or noble than anywhere else."

Ten statements emphasise that CL is of high value in the leadership culture, referring to aspects of CL in the US, German, Black African, Afrikaans and Japanese leadership culture. P9, a German male leader, says that there is CL in the German leadership culture, but there is also a need to increase it:

"I think there can be love in the leadership culture and also one can love their work in the sense of a general love. However, this is rather seldom. We need more love in the workplaces in future to overcome all the challenges."

Finally, P10, a Japanese female leader, says:

"In our leadership culture, jintokku (benevolence) is valued. Leaders should be competent, but competence only does not necessarily serve as a requirement for a great leader. Of course, leaders should be competent. But at the same time, they have to be kind and considerate towards others."

According to several participants (Table 6), CL is not necessarily reflected in their national culture or their organisational culture but is often part of their individual or socio-cultural group culture. Several leaders highlight that they would wish for a CL leadership culture and some leaders connect CL with other outstanding values, such as benevolence for the Japanese leadership context.


**Table 6.** Love in leadership culture.
