A commonly held view in organizations today is that “caring about people” and “caring about the business” are mutually exclusive.  That is, that when leaders of enterprises shift their focus from RESULTS to PEOPLE, the inevitable consequence of this is poor business. In other words, “The boss is serving the tea and crumpets and the business has gone to hell!”  Simply, caring for people is bad for business.

Actually the opposite is true. This idea was brought home to me most graphically when I did a piece of work at an aeronautical company.  One of the many problems at the time was a machine shop inspection backlog problem.  The number of pending items made it difficult to get into the inspection area.  Despite the crisis that the backlog was causing the business, there was absolutely no sense of urgency.

I asked the inspectors why this was the case?  Their frank reply was as follows: “They don’t give a \[BLEEP\] about us, so we don’t give a \[BLEEP\] about their business.”

In plain speaking: If you want people to care about your business, then you genuinely need to care about them.  Your commitment to them will be commensurate with or directly proportional to their commitment to the achievement of the goals and objectives of your business.

Allied to this, there is a view that you can either care about your people or grow them. Between these two, growth typically takes precedence.  The care element is somehow of less import.  In fact, care and growth are of equal significance.  When one of the two is missing, the consequences are inevitable.

If leaders care, but do not grow their people, the result is stagnation, complacency, and low standards.  Care on its own breeds dependency and cultivates conditions where people take advantage of what they perceive to be weak leadership. They may like, but do not respect, those in command.

If leaders grow but don’t care for their people, their people feel under the whip.  They may be driven to produce results, but they do so unwillingly.  Their loyalty is not to the leadership, but to themselves.  This means that they will be inclined to leave when made a better offer.

More important, if the organization hits a bad patch, they will elect to jump ship rather than pick up the oars and help weather the storm.  They may respect those in charge for their ability to deliver the results, but they will not be loyal to them.  They certainly will never love them.