The Truth Paradox: Truth Requires Love

I talk about alignment a lot - you might even say I’m obsessed with it. And one thing I know to be true is this: alignment requires truth.

But what I’ve also learned, over and over again, is that truth requires love.

Now, before you flinch at the word love - let’s define it. Love in leadership isn’t sentimentality. It isn’t indulgence or softness. It’s not about liking everyone or avoiding accountability.

Love in leadership is the active commitment to care for what you lead - people, purpose, and progress - enough to want the truth for it.

It’s the kind of love that drives clarity, demands honesty, and creates safety. Because when you truly care about something, you can’t look away from what’s real.

In business, truth and love are rarely discussed in the same sentence. It's usually truth and courage.

But I’ve seen it again and again - truth without love becomes cruelty; love without truth becomes denial.

Truth alone can cut through, but it doesn’t heal.

Love alone can protect, but it doesn’t move things forward.

Together, they create the conditions for transformation.

Love motivates truth. It insists on integrity and alignment because it wants what’s best for what it leads.

And love makes truth safe. When people feel respected and valued, they can face hard realities without fear or shame. In that space, truth becomes an act of care - not criticism.

That’s the paradox of truth and love: love gives truth its motive, and truth gives love its integrity.

Love gives truth its motive, and truth gives love its integrity.

When I was CEO of Teach Starter, I learned this lesson the hard way. There was a team member who had been through an incredibly difficult season -grief, isolation, and heavy expectations. None of this was a problem in itself, but over time, it began to show. She became irritable, withdrawn, resentful. The team’s energy shifted.

And though we all felt it, no one said anything - including me. It wasn’t a lack of care. It was a misunderstanding of it. We’d mistaken comfort for kindness.

Eventually, I realised that love required something harder: truth.

When I approached her - not with judgment, but with genuine care - the truth was easy to speak. I told her gently what we were seeing, that we knew she didn’t mean for it to happen, and that we needed her to come back to us.

She didn’t resist. She received it. Because she felt the love it was grounded in.

That conversation didn’t create rupture - it created reconnection.

And it taught me something fundamental: when truth is motivated by love, it doesn’t wound - it restores.

Water is the perfect metaphor for this paradox.

• Pure water cleanses and sustains - just as truth, when held in love, brings integrity and renewal.

• Stagnant water distorts -when love is conditional, truth becomes clouded by fear.

• Poisoned water destroys - when love is absent, truth becomes toxic, weaponised, and corrosive.

The healthiest cultures flow like clean water - open, honest, restorative. People feel safe to speak truth without fear of punishment or shame.

Even Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety - the belief that it’s safe to speak truth - is the strongest predictor of team performance.

Alignment isn’t built through perfection or performance. It’s built through leaders who care enough to tell the truth and love enough to make it safe.

Where in your leadership are you avoiding truth in the name of comfort - and what would it look like to lead with love that tells the truth?