Caring and Leadership

In today’s world, leadership is about nurturing well-being, building trust, and empowering individuals. Caring is an essential leadership quality, which integrates compassion and empathy into leadership practices, promoting a human-centred approach. This approach improves leadership effectiveness and can significantly transform organisational cultures, fostering a sense of value and respect in individuals, and ultimately driving organisational success.

Caring in leadership extends beyond achieving organisational outcomes, focusing on the genuine well-being of others personally and professionally. Leaders who demonstrate care adopt an empathy-driven approach that acknowledges the human element in the workplace, prioritising their followers’ needs and providing emotional support. This creates an environment where individuals feel valued and respected, building trust and loyalty (Creeblatt, 2023).

Tronto’s (2013) care ethics framework offers a deeper understanding of how caring works in leadership. It involves four phases – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness – that leaders should follow. First, leaders must be aware of their employees’ needs, act on them, ensure they have the competence to meet them and adjust their approach based on feedback. This comprehensive approach fosters collaboration and mutual respect. Heinonen (2024) underscores that caring is a co-creational process, showing that caring involves meaningful, reciprocal engagement between leaders and followers, where both parties contribute to creating an atmosphere of trust, empathy, and respect.

Caring is central in many leadership styles, especially those emphasising relationships over tasks. Transformational leadership showcases caring through individualised consideration, where leaders build emotional connections and show genuine concern for their followers’ growth and well-being. This helps inspire their teams to work for the organisation’s greater good (Stone et al., 2004). Similarly, authentic leadership builds on caring by promoting self-awareness, ethical behaviour, and transparency, creating a supportive environment that fosters trust and encourages creativity (Gardner et al., 2011).

Among all leadership styles, servant leadership places the most significant emphasis on caring. Greenleaf’s (2007) concept of servant leadership revolves around the idea that a leader’s primary role is to serve others, rooted in a deep sense of caring for their well-being. Servant leaders prioritise their followers’ needs, focusing on empowering and supporting them. This approach challenges traditional leadership models by centring on serving rather than being served, with behaviours like empathy, active listening, and stewardship forming the foundation of this leadership style (Laub, 1999).

Servant Leadership: The Ultimate Caring Leadership Style

Servant leadership places caring at the forefront of leadership practices. This approach is distinguished by its focus on nurturing team members’ personal and professional growth. Sendjaya and Sarros (2002) underscore how servant leadership integrates caring into leadership more thoroughly than any other model. Servant leaders go beyond caring for individual well-being; they also promote the organisation’s and society’s collective good. This can be seen in how they make decisions that consider the long-term impact on the community, advocate for social responsibility, and encourage their team members to contribute to the greater good.

Caring behaviours in servant leadership include fostering a sense of community, empowering others, and creating an inclusive and supportive environment. Eva et al. (2019) identify six core dimensions of servant leadership that reflect caring: empowering others, humility, authenticity, interpersonal acceptance, providing direction, and stewardship. Servant leaders empower their followers by providing opportunities for growth and showing trust in their abilities. Their humility allows them to place the needs of others above their own, while authenticity helps build strong, open relationships. Through interpersonal acceptance, servant leaders demonstrate empathy and understanding, particularly when their followers face challenges.

Servant leadership emphasises that community building is pivotal in fostering followers’ sense of belonging and purpose. Servant leaders ensure that their followers feel valued and supported by creating a culture of care and support. This enhances organisational commitment, reduces turnover and reassures the audience about the tangible benefits of caring leadership in improving organisational performance.

The Importance of Caring in Modern Leadership

In a project management setting, caring leadership can be shown by providing support and resources to team members, understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment. Caring leadership, mainly through servant leadership, offers numerous benefits to organisations. When leaders demonstrate genuine care for their followers, it fosters a positive and supportive work environment. Employees are more likely to feel valued, increasing job satisfaction, engagement, and organisational loyalty. Recent studies show that employees who perceive their leaders as caring report higher trust, well-being, and psychological safety, contributing to better performance and, most importantly, reduced burnout.

Moreover, caring leadership encourages innovation. Employees who feel supported and valued are likelier to take risks and propose creative ideas. A caring leader provides the necessary emotional and psychological support to foster a culture of innovation. This connection between caring and creativity is highlighted in studies such as those by Gardner et al. (2011), who emphasise that leaders prioritising empathy and relational transparency create environments where employees feel comfortable sharing their ideas and taking risks.

Heinonen (2024) also highlights the importance of caring in digital environments. Although focused on chat-based service encounters, the study sheds light on the broader application of caring as a co-creational process in leadership. In the digital age, caring leadership is providing support. However, it also requires engagement and shared responsibility between leaders and followers to create an environment that fosters mutual growth and understanding. For instance, a digital team leader might show care by actively participating in online discussions, providing constructive feedback, and acknowledging the contributions of team members. This fosters a sense of community and promotes a culture of respect and understanding, even in virtual settings.

References

Creenblatt, S. (2023). Why Small Businesses Need a Leadership Team: Decentralized Approach Is Better Strategy for Long-Term Success. Systems contractor news. Vol. 30. Number 5. 22-. Future US Holdings Inc. d/b/a Future US LLC.

Eva, N., Robin, M., Sendjaya, S., van Dierendonck, D., & Liden, R. C. (2019). Servant Leadership: A systematic review and call for future research. The Leadership Quarterly. 30(1), 111–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.07.004

Gardner, W. L., Cogliser, C. C., Davis, K. M., & Dickens, M. P. (2011). Authentic leadership: A review of the literature and research agenda. The Leadership Quarterly. 22(6). 1120–1145.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.09.007

Greenleaf, R. (2007). The Servant as Leader. In: Zimmerli, W.C., Holzinger, M., Richter, K. (eds) Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70818-6_6

Heinonen, J. (2024). Caring matters: Co-creational Elements of Caring in Chat-Based Service Encounters (Doctoral dissertation). University of Eastern Finland.  https://erepo.uef.fi/handle/123456789/32975

Laub, J. A. (1999). Assessing the servant organization: Development of the servant organizational leadership assessment (SOLA) instrument. Florida Atlantic University.

Sendjaya, S., & Sarros, J. C. (2002). Servant Leadership: Its Origin, Development, and Application in Organizations. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 9(2), 57–64.https://doi.org/10.1177/107179190200900205

Stone, A. G., Russell, R. F., & Patterson, K. (2004). Transformational versus servent leadership: a difference in leader focus. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 25(3/4), 349-. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730410538671

Tronto, J. C. (2013). Caring democracy: markets, equality, and justice. New York University Press.