Thoughts on what constitutes good leadership go back thousands of years. And, like it or not, military leaders dominate as role models in the early thinking. Contrary to expectations, these figures are marked not just by their physical prowess or high levels of courage, but also by their compassion, their displays of care.
Alexander the Great, one of the greatest leaders in history, is famously said to have refused a helmet full of water on the battlefield in favour of soldiers who were in greater need. This demonstration of care, so the story goes, inspired a level of devotion that built an empire.
Servant leadership, a management philosophy popular since the 1980s, echoes the belief that caring and leading go hand in hand. But isn’t business in the end about results, about getting the job done — in scope, on time and, ideally, under budget? If this is our modern reality, is there really a case for compassion? Do we still need to care about caring?
The Covid-19 factor
The concept of care is, ultimately, about motivation. It’s a belief that something matters, whether that is maintaining something, achieving something or simply paying attention to something. In this sense, we all care deeply most of the time. As Daniel H. Pink outlines in his book Drive, we were all born with the same core and intrinsic human drivers: our needs for mastery, autonomy and sense of purpose, including at work. We also care deeply for those we love, our family and our friends.
In the Alexander the Great story, the focus of his care is very clearly on his followers. This is a typical narrative in leadership — that good leaders should care about their employees. Empathy is a prerequisite for this to happen, a honed sensitivity to the needs and feelings of others. Conversational intelligence is also required alongside this emotional intelligence. Most leaders find it hard to talk meaningfully with their staff about their feelings. They are underprepared for using those forms of therapeutic techniques that would allow employees to express themselves safely on potentially complex issues that are associated with complex emotions.
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted both the importance of caring for others and the challenges of doing so. Many leaders have had to handle radically heightened levels of emotionality among their teams. Conversations changed away from everyday subjects and towards the anxiety created by working online and the fears connected with job insecurity, family illness and the tragedy of bereavement.
The need for leaders to show care has perhaps never been greater in modern times. And many leaders at all levels responded very well, taking the time to care deeply. As a result, relationships between staff and leaders have improved in many cases, as have relationships between employees and their organizations. This is not surprising: care is a core driver of trust.
As remote-hybrid working patterns become more widespread, they are likely to trigger even greater demand for leaders to focus on emotional connectivity. Leaders will also need to be more vigilant about potential mental health issues related to isolation and to the domestic challenges of working from home.
Other dimensions of care
The emotional dimension of care at work must be placed in perspective, how-ever. As mentioned earlier, we care about many things in our professional life, not just about people’s feelings and well- being. And some of the other things we care about have an uneasy relationship with how others feel. In short, some leadership behaviours that are driven by care will make some people feel that they are not cared for. Many leadership decisions are actually predicated on not caring about how people feel because there are more important things to consider.
We can’t forget that business is also about tasks that must be completed, financial targets and deadlines that need to be respected, levels of quality that have to be assured. The list of typical unpopular decisions made by leadership is long: job cuts, delayed pay increases and promotion, cancelled training, weekend meetings.
Leaders who need to focus on the harsh financial realities of doing business — which are often invisible to their staff — frequently need to demand a lot of other people (and sometimes even more of themselves). This “care for results” triggers many negative outcomes. Employees experience stress and may feel a sense of disrespect. Work ethics seem to be compromised, and professional dreams are disappointed.
Employees in under-resourced, cash-hungry organizations frequently find themselves in almost impossible situations. They may have to deliver to customers on unrealistic promises made by colleagues in other parts of their organization. Indeed, customer focus, or customer care, often leads to co-workers feeling that no one cares about them. And many leaders simply rationalize this by saying “you can’t please all people all the time”.
A question of balance
As is true in most areas of life, effective leadership is a question of balance. It is about juggling the tougher realities of economic life with the need to manage the pain of people’s inner lives. Dealing with the former is simpler and quicker, and at the same time less reflective and more instructional. Dealing with the latter demands more nuance in your leadership style. It’s more explorative, more aligned to an invisible emotional world that is difficult to gauge. It’s more complex and prone to failure.
Human beings typically prefer a simpler, quicker, more easily achievable approach. So, maybe we can’t blame leaders for defaulting to a “task-care” approach, particularly if they don’t have the training, time and tangible rewards to do otherwise. The problem with this default position, however, is that the intangible fruits are left unpicked: increased trust, motivation and commitment, improved performance, better health, and more happiness at work and at home.
In the end, it all comes down to what you care about as a person, as a leader. If you simply want to care about cash, you can still be highly successful. If you don’t want to care about other human beings, and don’t want to invest time in supporting the psychological and emotional well-being of those around you, then don’t. Curiously, performance and results may not suffer.
But do take the time to ask yourself whether you are happy as a leader to leave others feeling unhappy. If not, use this as the moment to think about how you can care more about others — and show your care.