Great Leaders Take Time To Show They Care
by Jacqueline Brodnitzki, President, Conscious Success
The second topic in our “leading with heart” series is: take time to show you care. Last time we talked about how great leaders authentically care about their employees. A powerful way to demonstrate this caring is to spend time with staff.
Spending time with employees fuels their motivation, engagement, social wellness and productivity.
It also has the same impact on the leader by bringing personal meaning to the leadership role.
We are social creatures. Sure, we want some alone time, and even the most introverted of us benefit from interaction with other people. The University of California, Riverside, calls this call to interact and be part of a community Social Wellness.
As leaders, we create the atmosphere in our team. We create a caring, personal atmosphere or one of personal disinterest and sole attention on work.
Employees are fueled both by the work they do and by the atmosphere of the organization and face-to-face interaction. I know a man who was excited to go to work for a company, only to realize after he’d been there a few months that no one talks to each other. Not even to say, “Hi” when passing in the halls or arriving in 
the morning. He enjoys the work, and finds the lack of communication a real negative.
Alex Petland, author of Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread – The Lessons From A New Science, studies relationships at work. His research with companies shows that informal face-to-face engagement has the single largest effect on productivity.
Let’s ask ourselves this week, how we can spend some informal face to face time with our team members to show we care. An uptick in our own social wellness and the productivity of our team, makes it a worthwhile investment of time.
