University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Love Leadership
Book

Love Leadership

The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World

John Hope Bryant
Jossey-Bass, 2009
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Background
  • Concrete Examples
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

John Hope Bryant’s childhood poverty and six months of homelessness fueled his desire to help people in low-income communities. After the Rodney King riots divided Los Angeles and the nation, Bryant started Operation HOPE. He discusses how his hard upbringing and subsequent efforts to start and run a nonprofit organization taught him the five main laws of leading without fear. Bryant includes interviews with both famous and unknown love-based leaders – including Bill Clinton and Prince Haakon Magnus of Norway – but their stories are mostly platitudes. Bryant’s own story is his most compelling example of love-based leadership. getAbstract recommends this uplifting book to all current and aspiring leaders. 

Summary

Love Leadership

John Hope Bryant’s belief in “love leadership” led him to start Operation HOPE – America’s first nonprofit, social-investment banking organization. Operation HOPE’s goal is to teach poor people financial literacy, lifting those in poverty by converting check-cashing customers into banking customers, renters into homeowners and dreamers into entrepreneurs. Operation HOPE provides financial training and empowerment through its nine HOPE Banking Centers.

Bryant grew up in Compton, California, near Los Angeles. When he was 10 years old, he sold candy from his home, “putting the corner store out of business in the process” since his house was closer to school. He learned his first business lesson: “location, location, location.”

White-collar criminals prey on the financial illiteracy and ignorance of poor people. Inner cities today share common features: liquor stores, pawnshops, rent-to-own stores and payday lenders. These businesses exploit fear. Poor people spend about $10 billion a year on “ghettoized financial services – high-interest and high-fee check cashing, high-interest loans on payday, refund anticipation loans, title lending, rent-to-own...

About the Author

John Hope Bryant is founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE – a nonprofit social-investment banking organization established to help people in low-income communities learn financial literacy and gain empowerment. 

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