I don’t think it really matters if you are loved or not in the work place as their leader.
For the most part, not always, but mostly people don’t want to be at work and it’s your job as a leader to ensure they do their jobs. No, do not be a taskmaster making them slaves. No, do not micromanage everything that goes on. But stay on top of things. You are the leader of course. Inspire those who can be inspired. Coerce those who need to be coerced. Discipline those who always need their hand held to get anything done at work. Manipulate those you need to manipulate, IN A GOOD WAY, to get what is needed to get done, done.
Whether you’re loved or not doesn’t matter. Your job as the leader is to ensure everyone does their job so the job as a whole is accomplished. It also depends on the individual. You cannot make everyone happy. Even the best loved bosses are hated by some employee and even the most hated bosses are loved by other employees.
So again, the goal of a leader is to ensure the group as a whole accomplishes the required task that they were presented with in an efficient and timely manner.
A leader was not hired to be loved. The leader was hired to get a job done. Being loved as a leader is good, but again, you cannot get everyone to love you. That is a choice of free will by each individual employee under the leader.
If a leader focused their energies to be loved then the actual job, in most instances, would never get done.
Look at many of the greatest leaders. True they were loved by many, but they were also hated by many too. Many of those who hated them worked under them, yet they still did their job.
