People who are cared for, develop more

As the old adage goes, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

That’s exactly right! If you want to cultivate an environment of development, you need to learn how to care for your people. Check out this video for two things you can begin doing today.

As always, I’m here to help you integrate these concepts into your organization. Reach out if you are ready!

TRANSCRIPTION

Glad to be back with you as we continue our series on how to cultivate a culture that develops our people. Here's our main idea for today: people who are cared for, develop more. What we know to be true is that when human beings feel cared for, it opens them up. They have a chance to grow, accept challenges, and lean in to do all the things that we know they need to do if we want them to develop. 

Now, the question for us is two things. One, do our people feel seen by us? And by seeing I mean, do they know that you recognize the uniqueness of them? The thing that makes them tick, the thing that lights them up - and are you able to tell them?

Maybe you're an excellent gift giver, so you notice the unique things about them and you offer them a gift that makes them feel seen. Maybe you are great at words of affirmation, so you can say, “Hey, I see what you did there on that project and I just want to encourage you.” Maybe you're a great listener, so in the midst of a challenge you are able to reflect back to them that you see that they're going through a hard time. Whether or not our people will feel cared for is tied to whether we help them feel seen.

The second part is, do we help people feel heard? David Augsburger has a great quote that says the experience of being heard is so close to the experience of being loved that for human beings, it is indistinguishable. If you want your people to feel loved, you want to make sure that they feel heard by you. 

Now, to be heard means that we have to be good listeners, and my one tip for you to be a better listener is to think about tuning in. You know that old time radio station in which you have to tune it just right to hear the Yankees game? I love listening to baseball on the radio but you’ve got to dial it in! When you're standing in front of a person, think about yourself dialing in to their emotions and their hopes and their desires and their challenges and their struggles. Reflect that back to them so they know you hear them, because if they feel heard, they'll feel loved. And if they feel loved, they'll be cared for. Of course if we see our people and hear our people they'll feel cared for - and people who are cared for, develop more. 

If you need some more help, you can head over to my website (kylepipes.com) and there’s a free download on how to be a better listener. I really encourage you to check it out to remind you so that you can be the kind of leader that cultivates an environment of development because you can't legislate it. I look forward to seeing you again soon! 

Kyle