Garry's Late Summer Reading Series Part 2 -- The Art of Caring Leadership

My mission with our late-summer reading series is to gently shake your shoulder and invite you to reconsider the new culture of your company and your role in fostering the best environment where your tribe can flourish. – Garry Ridge

Now that we’re easing our way back into some semblance of ordinary workdays again – your mileage may vary – many of us are asking ourselves what wisdom we have learned over the last 18 months or so. And how are we better for the experience that we all shared on a global basis, while no two experiences were alike? As leaders, are our skills up to snuff? Are we kinder, deeper, more empathic as a result of this shared human adventure into frontiers of uncertainty that no one could have predicted? 

What was needed from you as a leader, say, December 2019, is not entirely what is needed from you as a leader the late summer/early fall of 2021. A philosophy of caring will carry you through this next phase of “Oh my gosh, what’s next?” If there was ever a time to deepen and broaden your capacity for empathy, now would be it. But how to start creating a development program about something so nebulous, so subjective?

This is the reason why I chose Heather Younger’s The Art of Caring Leadership: How Leading with Heart Uplifts Teams and Organization as the second installment of our late summer reading series.  (Are you just joining us? Visit the first installment here for our first book discussion – Anxiety at Work – and an introduction to the entire late summer reading series overall.) In her exquisitely timed book, Heather gently introduces us to an entirely new approach to leadership, where empathy takes the wheel. Using moving and inspiring success stories of leadership who exemplify the behaviors that support caring leadership, Heather introduces us to nine approaches that enrich any workplace culture in which individuals can flourish. 

Am I going to tell you what they are? No. You have to read the book to discover them for yourself. But I will tell you that she extends the “art” metaphor into the way the book is organized, presenting the nine approaches on an artist’s palette. It’s clever, to be sure. But I also like this particular presentation because colors are meant to be blended on the palette, each color being its best when combined with a selection of some or all of the others to meet the demand of the moment. You can’t silo leadership behaviors and philosophies. They work best when they work together. 

In this new era of re-entry, we’re discovering in a fresh new way that caring leadership must start with the way we care for ourselves. In this exclusive one-on-one interview Heather and I talk about self-care, what personal experiences of her own brought her to this work, and how we can take what we’ve learned about our people during the last 18 months into the new workplace. And create new bonds of authentic connection where everyone will feel not only welcomed back, but also known on a deeper, most meaningful level. 

Garry:  Many elements of your book struck me as especially powerful. But what stood out especially for me was the role of leaders to create a workplace culture where people feel emotionally supported and cared for. 

Heather:  One of the things that I really admire about you, and all the leaders who follow your example, is that you know that when you give yourself the chance to think about your work and leadership from this new dimension, you are more richly fed emotionally yourself. There’s deeper gratification in the way leaders interact with their people, because it has to come with a healthier way they interact with themselves. The first people who have to be convinced that they belong in their role are the leaders themselves.

Embracing that recognition creates a solid core of presence, grace, rapport with self, so that employees feel that they can belong too. Why? Because the leaders are comfortable in their own skin. That’s the most important part. Which is why the first part of my book is on self-leadership.

Garry:  It’s hard enough to be able to do that in face-to-face relationship building with our people. But we’ve been Zoom-dependent for over a year now. And, in many cases, people still prefer to use Zoom, or stay home and interact from their computers. How do you extend that presence, grace, rapport beyond yourself as a leader and to the people in your tribe?

Heather:  Your people may not be sitting face-to-face with you. But these virtual meetings from their home give you an even better advantage when developing authentic relationships with your tribe. Candidly, you’re able to see more into their private lives. Do they have an elderly cat sleeping on the easy chair in the background? Maybe there’s a toddler running around with just a diaper on. One person I know is living with his father who has Alzheimers. Every now and then he’d put in an appearance. Does Max the Wonder Dog make cameo appearances during your meetings from time to time?

This has been a time when we can learn more about the people we work with every day that we may not have known before. Maybe we can connect with them on an entirely different level because we have something in common. Or we simply remember these details about our tribe members – details that are especially meaeningful to them but they wouldn’t necessarily bring to work with them. This is your chance to learn these things that are important to the people who are important to you.

My advice to you and anyone who is reading this: Don’t forget these details. When you let people know that you care enough about them to remember these elements of their lives, you are practicing the art of caring leadership. And share those details that are important to you in your private life with your tribe. The bond of caring is reciprocal. 

I think that was actually a gift during the pandemic.  I know more about the people I work with.  I know more about you. I don’t want to forget what I know about you so I can continue to connect with you on that level. There are so many different degrees of complexities that we have as humans. The more we can know about one another, even at work, I feel like the better we are.

Garry: Was there a time in your early career when you felt like you were in the hands of an especially caring leader who made you feel that there was emotional hope?  Was there a time in your life when you thought, “Oh, I’m finally feeling safe.  I feel like I belong.  I feel like I’m welcome. I feel like I’m being honored and being cared for?”

Heather: Several years ago, I worked at an organization that was going through a merger. We were the company that had the most revenue, but we weren’t the tech-sexy one.  One of the co-founders of that tech-sexy company became my direct manager.  And he just had this way about him – of giving you his undivided attention and making you feel like you’re the most important thing in that moment. So when he would talk to you, you just felt super special.  

He uplifted you right in the moment by giving you positive words of affirmation. He may have been my manager for six months or so before everything went downhill because of the realities that come with any merger. But during that initial period of time, I felt a real closeness to him.

But there was no putting off the inevitable outcome of the merger – the layoffs. And I was in the first round who had to go. I’ll never forget how he handled it. Everyone around me was acting kind of weird. But him? He was just plain distraught. It wasn’t a fake distraught. He was in legitimate pain.  

He said, “Heather, I am so sorry.  We’re having to lay off a lot of people.  I really wish I didn’t have to do this, but you’re going to have to be one of them.”  He made me feel that I was authentically cared for. His compassionate leadership style inspired my book.

Garry:  I’ve just been thinking about your own personal story.  Not always feeling cared for and that you belong have always been a major part of your own life experience. 

Heather:  I would say that my family didn’t go out of their way to make me feel like I belonged.  I don’t believe it was their intention to make me feel unwelcome. Like all humans, I feel like they were grappling with their own set of insecurities. They just had their own struggles. And they had no clue what they were putting me through in order to make sure that they were meeting their own needs, which was belonging in their community. They couldn’t do something that would ruin their chance of belonging. So they were on their own journey. And they hadn’t reflected on what they were doing to me as a child, and the impact that would have on me for years to come. I go into more specific detail about that side of my story in my book.

At work we have the chance to fix this, or at least mitigate that feeling of not belonging. We’re together 40 hours a week. So as leaders we have to find ways to fully engage with our people, to make them feel welcome and cared about. As leaders we have a wide variety of opportunities to give our people a sense of belonging to a community that values them. Personally, I hug my people.

I’m always going to be the one to say, “Oh, I’m part of your team!”  And, “Oh, you’re part of my team!” And, “Ooh, let’s hug each other!”  I seek out belonging, I seek out inclusiveness. I’m always on the lookout for the person who seems to be an outsider in the group. If there is someone sitting by him- or herself, I’m going to sit down next to them.  

Garry:  That to me sounds like a calling.

Heather:  It absolutely is a calling. It’s so amazing how I’ve come full circle with this idea of creating the culture of listening and belonging. And how that’s now the business I do. Organizations come to me for that reason. They come to me saying, “Yeah, we know there’s something that people aren’t telling us. And we’ve heard that you are somebody who can help us understand what that is that we’re not understanding. We’ve heard that you’re really good at doing that.” It’s a gift that was just given to me. So how do I get to the bottom of what’s not being said?  Well, I get to it because I include people immediately.  I expand the circle right away.

Garry: That’s inspiring.

Heather:  The main thing I embody is caring leadership and I want to create an ecosystem of caring leadership that will take the readers far beyond what they read in the book. Readers deserve to have somewhere to go to continue the learning. So I created a self-assessment as the next first step. After they take the self-assessment, they might want to gather people who also were lower in the same areas or stronger in the same areas. Let’s create a Caring Leadership community where other people on the journey are there, you’re all talking, you’re all gathering.  This is that idea of expanding the circle, inviting people in and having more people share what their issues are. And how we can help each other.

And then I’m creating the Caring Leadership Academy, where there will be courses that will expand on the behaviors that are in the book, where people can continue to fill the gaps that they have. People can feel those gaps that their leaders are wrestling with. They may not be able to put a name to those areas that need to be worked on. But the assessment helps in that way.  

I’m always asking myself how much additional support I can provide for people who have an appetite for more development. So the next thing is offering a caring leadership coaching model. 

So that is the ecosystem of caring leadership idea. I wanted this message to be more than just a book. I want it to be an entire support system.

Garry:  Everyone is starting with the book, though. Let’s say that they read the book, they think, “Okay, I’m on board, I get it, I want it, I want to integrate it into my life.”  What is the best thing that they can do?  

Heather: The best thing is for them to commit to being consistent with little tweaks and changes but not be too hard on themselves for perfection. Hold everything gently and loosely, so that the first caring leader that you work with is yourself.

Garry: What is the worst thing they can do?

Heather:  The worst thing they can do is do nothing, saying to themselves, “This doesn’t apply to me.  I’m perfect.”

Garry: What is the first thing they should do? 

Heather: The first thing they should do is take the self-assessment. They’ll be able to pinpoint where they are, and then start working on the gaps that they have identified. 

Garry:  Any other additional insights that you’ve gotten from readers after the book has been done that you want to add?

Heather: What resonated the most with the readers so far has been this idea of self-leadership and the fact that caring really does start with them. Readers are surprised to discover that they have to practice caring for themselves first. As we pay attention to so many details about our people that we see in those Zoom meetings, and we pay attention to more things in their lives, and we try to be more present, and all these things with our people, we will be depleted in the process if we don’t first care for ourselves. That has been the biggest surprise for all of us.