Why care?
A lot is written about leadership traits such as vision, integrity, resilience, positivity, accountability, and even humility. It is my opinion that genuine care is the cornerstone of leadership and deserves a great deal more attention and reinforcement than it gets today. Genuine care epitomizes our purpose—not just in the workplace, but in all things we do. A corporate vision is only as good as the team’s genuine care for customers and employees. Integrity represents genuine care in our actions. Leaders who exercise genuine care achieve greater results, and make choices they are less likely to regret.
Who cares?
There is no doubt in most people’s minds about the benefits of genuine care. After all, what could feel more rewarding than helping others? Yet, most people find it hard to prioritize genuine care above other work-related actions. There always seems to be something more urgent or more critical to do.
A couple of years ago at a national CIO summit, a question came up about aligning CIO priorities with those of the business. A CIO in the audience literally asked a panel, “Where do I start?” One of the panelists responded that the most practical idea he could think of was to attend a sales call with a customer. The responder then proceeded to poll the audience. He asked for all CIOs who’d attended a sales appointment with their organization’s prospects in the last 12 months to raise their hand. To my surprise, only 3 hands came up out of maybe 120 people in the audience. If CIOs genuinely cared about their organization’s success, they would make a point of learning what the customers need firsthand. Yet, they apparently allocate time to other priorities.
Let’s not be too hard on CIOs. The same assertion can be applied to CMOs, COOs, CHRs, and General Councils, etc. Many leaders seem to leave genuine care for customers to the sales team, while sales teams mostly care about meeting quotas.
There are plenty of people who do cultivate a discipline of genuine care for customers. In IT, many define their Digital Transformations as using data on the end consumers of their product or service to provide new or improved products or services. In a way, Digital Transformations are the manifestation of genuine care for customers.
Who do we care about?
In the workplace, there is a spectrum of subjects to care about depending on the circumstances and context. On the small end of the scale, we start with individuals and small groups and expand outward to customers and other external parties affected by our actions.
Individuals
An example of genuine care about a colleague might be asking them about their career objectives. Maybe that person reports to you and you conduct their performance reviews. Maybe they don’t report to you but contribute to your project. Learning about their objectives and trying to help them out goes a long way toward building goodwill and trust.
Organizations
An example of genuine care for the organization might relate to a new IT initiative. The project might be exciting because it is ambitious and has high visibility. But while it mobilizes many people, you may question how the new technology will actually make the end customers or internal users happy. If you genuinely care about your organization and customers, you want to find out how the project will affect them. It is OK to go beyond the excitement and the ambiguity and ask stakeholders and sponsors for an explanation of the business case. They will hopefully appreciate the conversation because it comes from a place of genuine care, and you will feel way more motivated about the cause.
Suppliers
Sometimes multiple care groups come into play. But rarely does genuine care for all the groups create a conflict. For example, you might be designing a new product that your customers will love. A new product might not use a component that one of your specialty suppliers makes. A move to a new product may put your supplier out of business. Genuine care for the supplier would call for full transparency with them early and often. This way you give them a chance to help them find a way to stay in business despite losing a valuable revenue stream.
