On Caring Leadership

Caring leadership: What is it?

Wouldn’t it be great for a knowledgeable, skilled, and experienced leader to also care for his or her people?

This is the essence of caring leadership, i.e. a leader showing that he or she cares for the people within his or her organization.

Caring leadership vs. servant leadership

As a matter of fact, caring leadership could go a step further than servant leadership.

Servant leadership refers to serving the needs of people in the context of organizational structure.

Caring leadership could take the form of paying attention to, supporting, and considering people as individual personalities, and even becoming friends with them, and thus going beyond simply serving the needs of those people.

The personal element of caring leadership

Caring leadership is a continuous human-centered process that has a strong element of personal touch.

As a result of adopting a caring leadership style, a leader inevitably builds strong personal relations with those working at different levels around him or her.

Therefore, caring leadership can be a highly effective approach, since it is based on the solid foundations of personal contact.

Caring leadership: A powerful informal approach to leadership

In order for a caring leader to have a positive impact on his or her followers through this approach, he or she should first prove that his or her caring intentions are honest and genuine.

However, once he or she manages to do that, the positive effect of caring leadership can be more powerful than following official rules and sticking to formal procedures.

Can caring leadership be taught?

When it comes to answering the question whether caring leadership can be taught, there are a few things to consider.

Undoubtedly, those leaders who already have a natural inclination to care for people, even outside of the strict limitations of organizational life and behavior, such as in their personal life, are off to a running start, because they can apply caring leadership naturally.

Although a leader can be trained and learn many new methods and approaches to leadership, there is no formal way to train a leader on how to really care for his or her people.

Unless he or she was born as such, or became a caring person with time and experience, teaching a leader through formal training to be empathetic and care for his or her people can have no effect at all, if that leader is a proponent, for example, of an authoritarian or autocratic leadership style.

Nevertheless, there could be a way to teach an authoritarian leader how to care more for his or her people, and thus become a caring leader.

This could happen by emphasizing on the actual benefits of caring leadership, and pointing out to him or her that caring leadership be more effective than other, more rigid approaches to leadership.

Or, it could be a life-changing event that could soften even a tough and uncaring leader, and turn him or her into a highly caring person who is emotionally attached to his or her employees.

Caring leadership is contagious

Just like any type of positive behavior, caring leadership is contagious.

As a result of its benefits and positive effect, it can spread fast among the people of an organization, to the point that every employee becomes a little caring leader himself or herself.

Caring leadership in hard times

The impact of caring leadership is best felt in hard times or during a crisis.

Even though an authoritarian leadership style would seem to be more appropriate amidst a crisis, due to the elements of authority and direction that are much needed during that time, caring leadership can motivate people and mobilize their inner strength, which can play a decisive role in helping to deal successfully with a crisis situation.

This article was originally published by me on Medium.com
You can read it here