Abstract
This essay aims to make the case that our dominant concepts of leadership are constraining, thus prohibiting us from meeting the higher meanings residing within leadership, namely love. Blinded by our “existential frustration” (Frankl, 2014, p. 71), we have existed within conceptual notions of leadership that contend for mediocrity and production rather than beauty, goodness, and love (hooks, 2001). The origins of leadership implore humanity to a new paradigm that seeks beauty, even where none is intended (Bolz-Weber, 2022), and takes others along. By examining the etymology of leadership and applying Viktor Frankl's (2006) concept of will to meaning as a hermeneutic, I contend that leadership, like life itself, invites each leader to consider, what is leadership expecting of me? Furthermore, I maintain that the fuller truth of each leader's answer will look much like the fruit of love. In that way, I offer servant-leadership as a leadership paradigm consistent with Frankl's (2006) will to meaning and a framework that allows the paradox of freedom and responsibility to reveal love in leadership.
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