In this video Sean Spence, Director & Business Coach of Sean Spence & Associates and Stephen Moir discuss the impact of caring.
Transcript:
Stephen Moir: I’m here with Sean Spence and we’re just talking about how caring links directly into leadership. Um and particularly, I suppose it might be good, Sean, just to start with you know defining what is caring within an organization. What do you think?
Sean Spence: Well, I think one of the things that came clear for me for the conversation yesterday is that um caring is a thing that’s good in itself. It’s a human interaction that creates trust. It’s an initiative that you take to seek. To understand and look after the other person. But when you’re in a position like a CEO, you’ve got this dilemma that you the whole system needs to do something like that as well. And one of the participants said it’s extremely powerful when you see the CEO’s narrative around care, um uh integrated through the organization and everybody’s aligned and it produces incredibly powerful culture. Yeah so it sounds fluffy, but I’m quite convinced that caring is a lead indicator, it’s a lead cause of performance rather than something that’s a luxury to have afterwards.
Stephen Moir: And do you think there’s a conflict there between building caring into a system that has to also deliver results?
Sean Spence: Well, that’s what I’m saying, I think one of the things that you see in organizations is events that are taking place, but there’s no measure for what’s going on. And caring is in that sort of zone where we know if not caring is happening ‘is the reason why somebody left, but that’s not measured. It’s not, it’s certainly not shifted home to the person that’s responsible. Whereas caring also doesn’t seem to have any measures around it yet when you do do it well, you find the organization performs well. We had a lovely story about two organizations where one of the participants have been involved with. Yes. One of them doesn’t exist anymore. And the other one does, and it’s the caring one that exists. It’s sustainability as well as performance.
Stephen Moir: Yeah I thought that was a good story. I like that idea of caring being a lead indicator. I also liked um this Gallup question, which says ‘my supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person’ and that being integral to engagement in a business?
Sean Spence: Yeah it’s a metric, it’s a soft metric, but it’s a metric all the same.
Stephen Moir: Yeah excellent. Thanks very much, Sean
Sean Spence: Thanks a lot, Stephen
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