Leaders, you may have heard: Your job description has changed. It’s no longer enough to set goals, give assignments, provide feedback, and measure performance. Now, you also have to care…especially if you lead millennial and Gen Z employees. But how important is that, really? Very important, insists Gary Harpst—and this summer is the perfect time to start.
“What caring actually means is showing employees unconditional love,” says Harpst, author of Built to Beat Chaos: Biblical Wisdom for Leading Yourself and Others (Wiley, April 2023, ISBN: 978-1-3941584-0-9, $25.00). “That means relating to them with their best interests in mind, whether or not they reciprocate. It’s not easy. It’s also not optional.”
Loving your employees—i.e., investing in their well-being and helping them live up to their potential—isn’t a touchy-feely “add-on” to your other duties. It’s the essence of your job. It’s what gets people to subsume their individual desires and pull together to meet company goals.
“Just as there must be a form of energy holding together the trillions of atoms that make up a single cell in the body, there must also be a force uniting team members,” says Harpst. “In the network of relationships that create a great organization, love is that bonding force. Learning to practice it is the number-one job of a leader. It’s a huge part of bringing order out of chaos.”
Harpst says summer, with its typically slower pace of business and focus on family togetherness, is a good time to start showing employees the love. A few tips:
Do some summertime self-examination. Over the next few months, pay attention to your attitude toward other people. Do you care for people as a manipulation technique or as something worthwhile in itself? If you are being kind and loving only as a way to get what you want, people will eventually recognize that you are being insincere. It’s not enough to go through the motions—your caring must come from within.
Spend one-on-one time with your people. Harpst says when he spends one-on-one time with his grandchildren, the conversations differ greatly from those held in the chaos of all of them together. These conversations are more focused and less influenced by what others around them may think or say—and they value receiving his undivided attention. Adults are no different.
“You might look at your summer calendar and schedule a lunch date with each employee,” suggests Harpst. “It’s a good time to get to know them as individuals, talk about their goals for the future, and so forth. Keep the discussion friendly and informal, but pay attention—you can learn a lot that will help you individualize their work experience, training, etc.”
Take an interest in their life outside of work. Employees won’t believe you love them if you don’t know them. You can start by asking about vacation plans or what their kids are doing this summer, but also ask about their interests, concerns, and joys. (Harpst says questions are powerful because they penetrate more deeply than statements, since the brain has to do enough processing to provide an answer.) Be aware that you will need to demonstrate openness, too.
“Share some of your own interests and let people see who you are,” says Harpst. “You can do this without getting into inappropriate personal information. The point is to allow yourself to be vulnerable. This can be incredibly difficult for some leaders, but real relationships cannot happen in the absence of vulnerability.”
Make sure employees are taking their vacations. Loving your employees means watching out for their well-being. Taking regular vacations to relax and rejuvenate is a huge part of that. Yet a recent study from Pew Research Center shows that nearly half of all employees don’t take the paid time off (PTO) they’re owed. Don’t let this happen, says Harpst. Not only is making sure employees take their vacations the right thing to do, it will make them more productive, motivated, and dedicated.
“Sometimes employees don’t take vacations because leaders don’t take them,” he observes. “Other times it’s just so hard to get away that people don’t feel it’s worth the stress to get ahead of the game beforehand and then to catch up afterward. That’s why leaders need to set the right example by taking their vacations—and do everything possible to make it easier for employees to get away.”
Give them a surprise summer break. One way to show employees you care is to give them a bit of extra time off to spend with their families and/or enjoy the warmer weather. This could mean gifting everyone a couple of extra vacation days, moving to a “half-days-on-Friday” schedule, or finding some other way to help them celebrate summer.
“No matter how much people may love their job, I can guarantee they love their free time more,” notes Harpst. “Giving them time away from work to focus on what matters most—and just to have fun—shows them you acknowledge that.”
Know that leading with love isn’t all sunshine and light. It’s also about accountability (theirs and yours). Sometimes “tough love” interactions are in order. Don’t back down from tough conversations. If you are coming from a place of care and concern, and not from a place of anger, your message will be received. But remember, this isn’t a license to be cruel. You can say anything you need to say as long as you say it with sensitivity, kindness, and, above all, care.
“The other side of the equation is just as crucial,” says Harpst. “Hold yourself accountable, too. Apologize when you screw up. Do it quickly and mean it. When we invest in our relationships with people, we are more likely to tolerate and forgive each other as needed. It really is a two-way street. Caring for people makes for a more resilient organization where our inevitable failures don’t derail the teamwork.”
Finally, treat people right, even if they don’t reciprocate. Unconditional caring or love means giving 100 percent, regardless of how the other person treats you. The alternative is to go through life in reaction mode, which is a surefire recipe for chaos, says Harpst.
“This is really hard for me,” he admits. “I want to treat people based on their behavior. After reflecting on this for years, I realize what I really want is for others to treat me right, regardless of how I treat them—‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ As leaders, we need to keep working at this, even though we won’t always succeed. Over time, employees will look back and see that we’ve done the best we can by them despite their imperfect behavior.”
Gary Harpst is the author of Built to Beat Chaos: Biblical Wisdom for Leading Yourself and Others. He is the founder and CEO of LeadFirst. LeadFirst was founded in 2000 (as Six Disciplines) with a mission of building effective leaders and helping small and mid-size companies manage change, grow, and execute. Its four-part leadership development system—comprised of people skills, data-driven management skills, management platform, and just-in-time learning—helps organizations bring order out of this swirling chaos.
