Did the word “love” in this question make you raise an eyebrow, cough nervously, or think about moving on to the next article? These questions are going to get increasingly personal as the pages turn, and you’re going to have to make a decision about whether or not you’re going to stay with them. Being a leader requires that you go to a deeper level instead of staying on the surface. Oh, you can manage by skimming the top of issues, emotions, and people, but you can’t lead from there.

Leadership requires thinking about and acting on things that occur beneath the surface. It requires that you care enough to confront. People who have heard me talk about teams have heard me say, “Hate is not the opposite of love. Apathy is.” Leaders can’t be apathetic. So we need to talk about love, enthusiasm, fun, and meaning. Can you handle that?

What do you love about your job? I hope it doesn’t take too long for you to answer. It’s easy for leaders to get so caught up in all the important things they’re supposed to do that they forget the things that brought them to their profession in the first place. I remember when my Aunt Elsie, who became a nurse during World War II, realized that she wasn’t happy being a nurse because nurses no longer spent much time with patients. Her first impulse was to quit nursing since the part of the job she loved the most no longer occupied most of her time, but she came to understand that, by changing the kind of nursing she was doing, she could do more of what she loved. She left the hospital setting and became a visiting nurse. She devoted the rest of her nursing career to direct patient care.

So let me ask the question again. What is the part of your job that you love? The part you would do if they paid you or not? What are the ways you can work more of those activities into your schedule?

Just one other thought. What about loving the things you have to do? There is a great greeting card that says, “In order to love what you do, don’t do what you love, love what you do.” Pretend I’ve just sent you that card. Hold it in your hands, stare at it for a while, and ponder the message. Just some more food for thought.

The company knew they had to do something. Customer satisfaction ratings were dropping, employee turnover was rising, and nobody wanted to talk about morale. Serious competition was looming. A group of leaders were appointed to do something about the situation and to do it fast. Meeting after meeting produced idea after idea. Consultants were hired, and a final decision was reached.

“We’ll create a video that tells everyone why they should be happy that they work here,” they decided. “We’ll prove that the future’s bright by showing our grandly produced video to everyone. Spare no expense,” they said. “Just get it done.”

So, the script was written, the actors were hired, and the locations scouted. Production began and money was spent. The final version was shown to the executive team and they beamed at each other. This would do it; things would change now. After all, they had spared no expense.

Employees were ushered into the meeting room and given plastic cups filled with sparkling grape juice. The lights dimmed and the video began. The music was powerful and the videography impressive. The leaders sitting in the front of the room led the applause and raised their glasses in a toast to the renewed commitment they were certain everyone in attendance felt. People filed out of the room talking about their weekend plans. That’s when I heard one of the participants say, “I can’t believe they’re trying to get us to put our hats back on with that crap!” No one else seemed to hear his comment. Curious, I followed him out of the building and asked, “What hat?”

“Oh,” he replied offhandedly, “When I first started, fifteen years ago, we all had hats with the company’s name and logo. I was like most guys; we wore them all the time. We wanted everyone to know where we worked. We were proud to work here. I haven’t worn my hat for a long time.”

Many organizations, in an attempt to improve morale, spend dollars, time, and energy externally and forget that morale is an inside job. Please don’t ask consultants to help you improve morale in your organization. Start by asking this question yourself of the people on your team, really listen to the answers, and go to work.

Fear is a powerful emotion. It can paralyze you in times of crisis, cause you to cower in the face of an adversary, or lash out in an inappropriate direction. Fear will keep you silent when you should speak. Fear will open your mouth when it’s better left shut. And, worst of all for a leader, fear will convince you to back off and hide just when you need to be most visible.

You don’t, however, need to eliminate fear in order to be a leader. If that were the case, only idiots could become leaders. Fear, in addition to being a powerful emotion, is a necessary one. Rational fears cause us to think carefully and research diligently before we invest large sums of money in a project. Intelligent fears propel us to have a tough conversation before promoting a marginal job candidate. Gut-level fears remind us to forgo a walk on a dark street in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Eliminating any of these fears would be just plain stupid. Think about fear this way—you just need to make sure you control fear rather than letting fear control you.

If you approach leadership with a great deal of fear, your behavior will be influenced. If you’re afraid that you’ve been promoted beyond your competency, you’ll be hesitant to ask questions that might show your ignorance. If you’re afraid that people think you don’t deserve to be a leader, you’ll avoid necessary confrontations. If you’re afraid to make a wrong decision, you’ll second-guess yourself into a really bad decision or, even worse, make no decision at all.

A leader’s fears must be self-diagnosed. You need to spend time thinking about what you fear. Your task isn’t to search out your fears in order to eliminate them. Your job is to think through how those fears might influence your leadership behaviors. You might want to discuss your conclusions with a trusted advisor in order to get a fresh perspective on how fear might be influencing your actions.

Don’t let fear get in the way of your development as a leader. What am I afraid of is an important question to ask yourself and an even more important question to answer honestly. Don’t let fear keep you from doing just that.