Do you love your team?

Rethinking “Love” Through the Ancient Greek Lexicon

In Western discourse, especially in professional contexts, the word love carries a narrow and often awkward connotation. It’s entangled with romance, intimacy, or familial affection, making it almost taboo in leadership vernacular. But the Ancient Greeks possessed a far more nuanced vocabulary, naming distinct forms of love to reflect the complexity of human connection. For leaders, revisiting these terms is more than intellectual curiosity, it’s an invitation to transform the ethical foundations of how we lead.

To ask “Do you love your colleagues?” in today’s workplace can feel intrusive, inappropriate, even absurd. Yet this discomfort often stems from the conflation of love with Eros, passionate or romantic attraction. What happens when we discard this conflation and approach leadership from the standpoint of Agápē, the highest, most divine and universal form of love the Greeks conceived?

Greek Words for Love, A Lexicon of Connection

• Philia: Deep Friendship and Loyalty

  Rooted in shared values, trust, and mutual respect. Found in committed partnerships, longstanding team dynamics, and enduring collaboration.

• Eros: Passionate Desire

  Rooted in romantic or physical attraction, its emotional volatility makes it an unstable and inappropriate foundation for leadership relationships.

• Storgē: Natural Affection

  The quiet, nurturing love seen in familial relationships. It is patient, enduring, and unassuming, offering care without fanfare.

• Philautia: Self-Love

  Balanced self-regard is essential to ethical leadership. It supports resilience and clarity, distinguishing integrity from ego or narcissism.

• Agápē: Unconditional Moral Love

  Selfless, sacrificial love that seeks the highest good of the other, regardless of reciprocity or recognition. It is the love of humanity at large, the love that dignifies, uplifts, and empathises across difference.

Agápē Love and the Ethic of Leadership

Agápē transcends emotion and attachment. It is a conscious commitment to uphold the intrinsic worth of others, not because they perform well, are align ideologically, or boost one’s status, but because they are human. It invites leaders to:

• See beyond role and function to intrinsic dignity.

• Offer compassion even when it’s inconvenient.

• Build systems that honour people, not just performance.

• Exercise authority as stewardship, not control.

Leadership grounded in Agápē is not passive or soft. It demands courageous empathy, fierce moral clarity, and disciplined accountability. It transforms hierarchy into service, and influence into responsibility.

When Agápē enters the frame, leadership becomes not just an act of directing others, but of loving them through meaningful, ethical stewardship.

Reflection Questions for Leaders

Consider your own motives, habits, and deeper orientation toward others:

• Do I see each team member as a person first, or as a resource to be optimised?

• Have I built systems that allow people to flourish, or merely perform?

• What sacrifices am I willing to make for the long-term good of those I lead?

• Can I celebrate the dignity of someone I disagree with or find difficult to manage?

• Do I offer patience and support when others fall short, or only recognition when they exceed expectations?

• Is my leadership marked by fear, control, and output, or by courage, care, and trust?

Closing Thought

To lead is not merely to direct or inspire. It is to hold the ethical weight of others’ lives with compassion, responsibility, and love. If love, real love is too radical a word for leadership, then perhaps leadership has become too shallow a concept.