Caring is not nice, it’s necessary for effective leadership. While deeply human, the ways in which we care in organizations aren’t always natural-feeling, which is where strategic design comes in.
Caring is not some “feel-good” leadership quality; it’s an effective, human-centred way to engage in systems thinking and deliberative action.
How? When you care, you pay attention. You need to attend to signals — both weak and strong — from across the organization. You listen to what people say, how they say it (and what they do), and notice what they pay attention to. Caring also means reflecting this attention back to people. Caring reduces strategy blindness by connecting leaders to the teams (and their work) that they lead.
Caring is attentional and intentional. It requires listening and acting in ways that show people you care. It creates a mechanism for exchange and dialogue that helps you understand what’s going on in the organization and system. Caring is what prompts curiosity and questions, and that opens the door to learning — all while being supportive and empathetic. The benefits of caring are many and, I would argue, essential to managing the complexity within an organization’s human members.
To Care Genuinely
You can’t fake caring very easily. People are good at spotting insincerity and BS, which undermines confidence, trust and followership. Be yourself and care in your own way. (You can also learn to do it better as individuals and organizations — which is what strategic design can bring).
Caring is not to be mistaken for ‘niceties’. Caring means ensuring your financial viability, strategic alignment, staffing needs, service and performance demands are all looked after. Caring might mean having difficult conversations and making hard choices, but in being open and communicating clearly about those choices, we can show care in the face of difficulties. That’s standard leadership fare.
When you are caring, people receive it; that’s part of what leadership is.
There is no model for caring, be yourself. If you’re not great with people, bring those who are into the leader’s tent and give them a role. Showing you care can be as simple as providing your teams with what they need to succeed and the encouragement and feedback to do the work with care.
Caring is a simple yet powerful act that pays off, allowing you to see systems, engage with them, and learn, all while making your organization the kind of living system you (and your team, clients, and partners) want to be a part of.
Caring, Complexity and Innovation
Leadership in the face of complexity requires connection to the living systems your organization is and is a part of. That requires attention and investment. Caring is a means to connect those two parts of the leadership equation together.
How do we design for caring?
Among the first steps is creating a climate of psychological safety. Psychological safety and trust building research by Amy Edmondson and colleagues emphasizes that psychological safety is foundational to caring leadership. Leaders must create environments where team members feel safe to express vulnerability, admit mistakes, and seek help. This requires leaders to model vulnerability themselves and respond to failures with curiosity rather than blame.
Perhaps not surprisingly, these are the same qualities that promote innovation and creativity in organizations.
Nurturing relational leadership approaches is another step. The literature highlights the importance of relational competence – leaders who prioritize authentic connections and demonstrate genuine interest in others’ wellbeing. This includes active listening, empathy, and what researchers call “presuming positive intent” in interactions with others.
The third focus for design is shaping the organizational culture and systems that support rewards, risk, and expression. Studies show that caring leadership flourishes when organizational systems reward collaborative behaviours and long-term thinking over short-term results. This includes performance metrics that account for how leaders develop others, retention rates, and team psychological wellbeing indicators.
Connecting these three with a clear set of intentions and aligning your strategy (and plans) with your outcomes (evaluations of impact) is the surest statement on care. Even in times of disruption, care can motivate, support, and empower your teams. When you create plans and process that support care from the beginning and by design, care becomes part of who you are.
And by who you are, that means a high-performing, innovative, complexity-ready organization.
Want to become one? Reach out and let’s talk about how I can help you.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash and Matt Ridley on Unsplash