How to Show You Care
The 5 C’s of a Conscious Company Culture: Care
As we enter a week of thanksgiving and the season of giving, this edition of the newsletter will focus on the third of the 5 C’s of a Conscious Company Culture: Care.
Business mogul Richard Branson once famously stated, “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
Some leaders may disagree with Branson, but research shows that people really do care about how much their company cares about them. One study found that retention rates soar when employers show workers they care. Another study revealed that 69% of employees would be willing to work harder if they felt their efforts were being recognized and appreciated. And 82% of employees say it’s important for their organization to see them as a person.
This wisdom of showing care for your team seems obvious, but so many businesses focus on everything but the team who helps them achieve their success. It’s stunning how many organizations will invest in every part of the company but the people. By neglecting to show proper care for their team, they slip into a steady decline.
To create a conscious culture, we must prioritize showing we genuinely care for each team member as a whole person, not a cog in a machine.
For each of the 5 C’s, there is a question you can use to rate yourself. For Care, the question is, “Does your team feel safe, belonging, and trust?”
Rate your Care on a scale of 1-10; 1 being not at all, 10 being absolutely. You can also ask team members to offer their own rating of Care. If you or your team rates your level of Care below a 10, there is opportunity to invest in expressing more care for your staff.
Here are concrete ways to express more care:
Promote Belonging
Be Transparent
Provide Whole Person Wellbeing Benefits
Create Psychological Safety
I’ve included links above to help you think about ways to express more care for your team. All of these are important to demonstrate care in the workplace. But you can also ask each team member what care looks like for them.
Maybe it’s flexible work hours. Or covering therapy as a healthcare benefit. Or extended maternity/paternity leave for new parents. Companies like Google give each employee and manager the ability to provide spot bonuses to a colleague. This is a fantastic way to show care and recognize each other.
Underpinning this demonstration of care is psychological safety, which I wrote about last year. This is perhaps one of the biggest challenges for organizations that lack care.
A term coined by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson, psychological safety is “a shared belief held by members of a team that it’s OK to take risks, to express their ideas and concerns, to speak up with questions, and to admit mistakes — all without fear of negative consequences.”
Lack of psychological safety in the workplace is rampant. In almost every coaching session with professionals, I’m struck by how a lack of psychological safety causes so many issues. One of the best ways we can show care is to increase psychological safety and help team members feel that they can be themselves and speak their mind without fear of reprisal.
As we enter this season of gratitude and giving, consider how you, as a conscious leader, can better foster care for your team. Make a commitment that in 2024 and beyond it will be a key priority for cultivating a more conscious culture at your organization.
Thanksgiving week is a wonderful reminder to be grateful for our many blessings. I want to thank each and every one of you, my readers, for your support. I’m always amazed by the kind words I receive about this newsletter; how it encourages and challenges you to be a more conscious leader.
As a working mom with an active 2-year-old, some weeks it’s a struggle to get the newsletter and podcast out on time. But I’m continually motivated and inspired by your feedback and the vision that together we can transform the prevailing work experience of stress and frustration into a work experience where we all thrive. By growing together, we can truly work, live, and BE happy.
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant, and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
Contact her to develop your conscious leadership and transform your organization into the workplace of the future.
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