Dare to care

So, (one of) my little secret(s) is out. I am not a huge fan of talking to strangers. Good thing, I found a way of looking at strangers as a not so strange thing (pun intended) – I am curious and I care.

Being curios and caring has made my life a lot easier, when it comes to making professional and ultimately personal connections. As a people leader, caring is the foundation of my leadership style. And in my humble opinion anyone that does not care, should not call themselve a leader and acknowledge they are bosses.

Why did I choose to make caring the foundation of my leadership style? I did not. If you read my previous post, curiosity for other human beings is what got me into genuinely caring for them. And this is clearly nothing I will “switch off” when it comes to the people I have the responsibility to lead.

I am happy to answer though, why I think we should be making caring the foundation of our (leadership) style. Unless we are planning on leading by “order” and with “demands” and (maybe even barked) “commands”, we will need to find a way to interest people in following us (and our lead).

Now of course we can (and should) lead by example. And under normal circumstances, no pressure etc. that might even work without you showing too much care. However when faced with hurdles, unpopular work, unattainable goals and so on and so forth – why would anyone follow us? What’s in it for them?

Maybe nothing obvious is in there for them. But they will follow us anyways – if THEY want to. And just in case you were wondering: no words we can say will make anyone want to follow us. So what will? If the following two come together, that will definitely help.

Trust is the first of the two. Bosses that build trust are on a good way to become a leader. No leadership and no followership without trust.

I know it sounds a little weird to talk about followership since this is not a cult or Facebook. However, if there is a leader that is “leading” the way, than who else are they leading other than people “following” them? So for me leadership & followership belong together.

Back to trust – trust is something that you have to earn. If someone feels we are genuinely caring for them, they are more likely to trust us. And no, we can’t fake it till we make it. If we do not care, we just don’t.

Integrity usually also helps build trust. If we talk the talk, we need to make sure we also walk the walk.

Candor is the second. And they are actually in order. Because candor without trust (and without the care coming with it) is probably at best a waste of time. Worst case it feels plain and simply rude.

Also, if we do not walk the walk and hold ourselves with integrity, things we say might not even be perceived as candid and honest – even if they are. But candor is one of THE most critical attitudes to have in any relationship. Trust can’t exist without candor and vice versa.

I personally have experienced bosses, that did not always speak the truth. And usually we found out. You can imagine that did not sit well with us. But Nannette, bosses or leaders can’t always tell you everything. What can they do? Say nothing, until you can. Do not make things up (good or bad!).

Honesty matters a lot. Candor goes a little further than that. It is the honesty that at times can be pretty tough for both the sender and the recipient. Candor is the tough feedback that someone needs to hear in order to be able to grow. But candor also means that positive feedback and compliments have a foundation and come with clear examples (instead of purely “you are great”or worse “great job”).

In order for candor to happen, trust has to exist in the relationship. And in order for trust to build, we really must genuinely care. And here things are coming full circle.

Once we have built that kind of relationship, we should never offend the other’s intelligence by not being candid. It would hurt them and our relationship a lot, did they find out.

Why? Because we did not care enough, to make the (difficult) effort of being honest.

And this is also the answer to the question if white lies are ok. Sure, we can say that the 2 sizes too small shirt looks really good on our colleague and justify this with not wanting to hurt their feelings. I would ask you this – who do we think we are kidding? We are just not caring enough for that person to be honest with them. Because if we did, would we not want to tell them nicely and caringly before someone else, that definitely does not care, does and not in a nice way?

Back to my previous post and the fact that I just met a lot of “strangers” in a project I am currently working on. None of them expected there to be a lot of respect, not to talk about “genuine care”. When you are working for a vendor, you are usually not experiencing a lot of either (I made my own experience here).

Respect is earned.

Honesty is appreciated.

Trust is gained.

Loyalty is returned.

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So when they were met with both right from the beginning, it set the tone for a totally different “client/vendor”-relationship. It created a true partnership. And the outcome is a great success of the project – success for both parties. A cooperation that would not have gone that smoothly, had I shown and encouraged less respect and less care. And it included a lot of candid feedback – which was possible because there also is the necessary trust.

Leadership does not just apply to people that are actually having people reporting to them. We can be a leader in a project, in our day-to-day work and even in our family (especially there). Now genuine care usually comes a lot more easy with our family (depending on the family, I guess). However, we should give it a try with strangers – who knows, we might be in for a huge, positive surprise!

If you would like to dive a little deeper into the topic of genuninely caring and how this is related to candor, I highly recommend the following book:

This is an affiliate link. If you decide to purchase the book using this link, I will receive a small contribution from Amazon.

I read the book and felt that for the very first time, someone found the langugae to describe my leadership style. And the struggles that come with it as well, of course.

So, do you dare to care?