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INTRODUCTIONIf you have ever received a package in the mail emblazoned with a “Handle with Care” label, what would you expect to see inside? Something fragile, no doubt. And perhaps something quite valuable. Your anticipation grows as you carefully unwrap the package and wonder about what might be hidden deep in the bubble wrap or buried in the shredded paper. After you solve that mystery, what happens next? You look for damage or if something is broken or missing. You wonder, if, in fact, the package was “handled with care.”Treating people (e.g., employees, colleagues, customers, and stakeholders) like they have “Handle with Care” tags affixed to their T-shirts, smocks, hoodies, sweaters, or lapels should be built into every leader’s DNA. Likewise, treating the pursuit of outcomes like they were wrapped with “Fragile: Handle with Care” tape should be a fundamental dimension of every leader’s passion.is norm suggests an important question: What does “Handle with Care” actually mean to those in leadership

BOB DEKOCH & PHILLIP G. CLAMPITT16positions? To many people, caring simply means expressing empathy, compassion, or concern. Fair enough. But we think it means much more—caring at a deeper level acknowledges the unique circumstances people face. ink of it this way: people, like packages, endure lots of jostling and bumping as they move through life. Likewise, well-developed plans get challenged and torpedoed, sometimes every step of the way.Shallow caring rarely produces magical outcomes. Amazon would never have become a Fortune 50 company if it merely shipped packages with best wishes for a safe arrival. Rather, Amazon thinks more deeply about how to properly care for parcels. For instance, the packaging in the box pro-tects the cargo, but so does the box’s structure and the way the item gets packed. Using the right packing material (visible) is important, but it must be arranged in the right way (sub-tle). Amazingly, Amazon has now reinvented package delivery with Amazon Prime service to underpin the importance of deep caring in delivery. Likewise, we think of caring leader-ship as composed of visible and subtle elements. You might fool some people with shallow caring, but you can’t lead them to extraordinary results by nodding concern and hoping for the best. You wouldn’t treat a valuable package that way. So, why would anyone lead in that way? Sadly, many in leadership positions do exactly that.Deep caring goes beyond short-term well wishes (see Table 0.1). We champion deep-caring leadership that focuses on long-term, proactive, and developmental relationships. e con-trast between shallow and deep caring may not be immediately evident to people. Yet over time, deep-caring leadership super-charges people and their organizations while unleashing latent energy on scales few could imagine. It never ceases to amaze us what people will accomplish when they know leaders:

LEADING WITH CARE IN A TOUGH WORLD 17

BOB DEKOCH & PHILLIP G. CLAMPITT18• Commit their time to develop them• Have their back• Sincerely recognize and appreciate their contributions• Display a genuine interest in them• Lead with a sense of warmth and empathy• Take time to listen to employees and make sure they feel heard• Encourage them to do their best work• Provide space for them to growIn this tough, competitive, and high-expectations world, many leaders don’t behave in ways that generate these instinc-tive feelings. Yet, when people sense these passions about their leaders, it magically awakens a visceral spirit of connection that engages people in wonderful ways. e passions, commitments, and sheer grit released by a caring leader springboards people to unseen and unparalleled heights.WHY DO WE NEED TO LEAD WITH CARE?Our businesses, our organizations, our governments, and our people are riddled with divisiveness. Consider five of the top concerns leaders across generations must address: —Employees lack engagement in their work-place. Gallup reported that only 15percent of employees in the United States are truly engaged in the workplace.1 Yet nearly 70percent of employees say they would work harder if they felt more appreciated. Over 90percent of the employ-ees surveyed believed their leadership “lacks communication skills to lead.” Another recent study estimated that low em-ployee engagement costs US companies $450 to $550 billion annually.2 We believe that estimate is too low.

LEADING WITH CARE IN A TOUGH WORLD 19—Citizens lack trust in public-sector leaders. Public-sector leaders recognize that trust in their leadership is approaching historic lows. Citizens are resisting their public health advice. Pushback regarding the direction of public school instruction makes daily headlines. e lack of trust emerges, in part, from poor leadership skills by those who govern. Many political leaders are pushing people apart rather than pulling people together. —e workplace in a post-COVID world will be reimagined. Work flexibility offered by remote work is considered a perk by many. In fact, 54percent of office workers say they’d leave for a job with more flexibil-ity.3 Envisioning an empowered workplace with a mix of on-site and remote workers represents an unprecedented leadership challenge.  —Heightened political activism by employ-ees has paralyzed many leaders. High-profile political pro-tests represent sentiments that percolate throughout many organizations. Vocal employees often demand action by their leaders on their political issues, even as other em-ployees directly or indirectly push back. Navigating these tricky waters requires a different and nontraditional lead-ership approach. —e sentiments behind servant leadership and emotional intelligence have proven to be a daunting challenge. A virtual flood of books, seminars, and podcasts about servant leadership and emotional intelligence culti-vated some of the core sentiments advocated in Leading with Care. Yet, many leaders struggle with how to act on these ideas in a practical way.

BOB DEKOCH & PHILLIP G. CLAMPITT20Leading with Care directly addresses these concerns. It has broad, worldwide applications in both the public and private sectors. Leaders who practice this caring approach will bring about much-needed leadership change. It will unite people al-lowing them to accomplish the amazing.WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK? (AND WHO SHOULD NOT?)We wrote this book for aspiring leaders, practicing leaders, and seasoned executives seeking ways to unlock the untapped poten-tial of others, their teams, and their organizations.• Aspiring leaders often have the right desires but not the tools. If you are an aspiring leader, you will encounter an av-alanche of leadership articles and books. By placing Leading with Care at the top of your reading stack, you can develop the fundamental sentiments of great leaders as you learn the specific practices to act on those sentiments.• If you are practicing leader, you may have hit a rough patch because you recognize that meeting the organization’s ex-pectations is not enough on a personal or professional level. You may be seeking something more and want to invest in others in ways that produce magical results. At the root of your challenge may be the need to better understand the subtle skills of a caring leader. ese are the ones that few researchers and practitioners ever speak about. is book will help you discover and develop exactly those skills.• If you are a seasoned executive (leader of leaders) who wants to build a great place to work, you may be looking for a framework to inspire other leaders in your organization. Caring leadership can awaken deeper, more profound pas-sions in people. Nothing inspires people more than seeing caring leaders in action every day.

LEADING WITH CARE IN A TOUGH WORLD 21So, whom is this book not for? It’s not for those who are mired in self-deception and unwilling to shift their perspec-tive and do the hard of work of deep caring. If you think you might fall into that category, then we would recommend reading Leadership and Self-Deception as your starting point.WHY SHOULD YOU BELIEVE US?Some authors’ credibility flows from years of successful practice. Check. Other authors’ expertise emerges from novel research projects. Check. And a few leadership authors offer a new twist on the extensive writing in the field. Check.•  Collectively, we have over six de-cades of experience successfully leading organizations. Bob has held a number of leadership positions in a diverse set of high-profile businesses. In his previous role as president of the Boldt Company, he and the Boldt team transformed the company into a billion-dollar business with divisions all across the United States. is was accomplished totally through organic growth. Phil has been honored with mul-tiple named and endowed professorships and has received numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship while act-ing as department head in Communication and Information Science programs. Both of your authors have mentored and coached leaders in for-profit and nonprofit organizations. And, yes, both of your authors have made mistakes, but we have used them as learning opportunities to refine our lead-ership approaches. We use these experiences to enrich the practices advocated in this book.•  —We have conducted numerous inno-vative studies about uncertainty management, commu-nication satisfaction, progress making, organizational

BOB DEKOCH & PHILLIP G. CLAMPITT22culture, clear thinking, safety practices, and employee empowerment with thousands of employees across a wide range of organizations. We routinely monitor employee engagement in a variety of companies. For example, over a recent six-year period at the Boldt Company, we found that 93 percent of over four thousand respondents agreed that “team members collaborate to solve problems,” and the most frequent words used to describe their work environment were exciting, collaborative, and team. In another study we found that 98percent of employees believed the “leadership team has responded appropriately to the COVID-19 virus.” We used the insights from these various studies to formulate the sensibilities and key insights in this book.• Our respective shelves are stacked with books on leadership and biographies of great leaders, accumulated over decades of readings and pondering the core practices of excellent leaders. e books range from scholarly tomes like Sensemaking in Organizations by Karl Weick to more popular books like Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman to the softer but enlightening works like Who Moved My Cheese? by Johnson and Blanchard. Before writing this book, we scrutinized the heavily earmarked and highlighted passages from the stacks of books and articles that line our person-al libraries. We sought to distill the core insights into our unique perspective on caring leadership. We even revisited and refined ideas from our previous books. No doubt, some readers will recognize updates to that thinking in this book.In short, here’s why you should carefully contemplate the ideas in this book: we’ve uniquely synthesized our collective ex-pertise, novel research, and new twists on the leadership litera-ture in order to provide you with actionable practices to enhance your leadership style. We don’t claim to have all the answers,

LEADING WITH CARE IN A TOUGH WORLD 23but we believe this book offers profoundly valuable perspective to aspiring leaders, practicing leaders, and leaders of leaders. Embrace a little uncertainty, read on, and let’s find out!WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT?• Embracing uncertainty promotes growth• Progress making inspires extraordinary performance• Cultivating the right values builds a special sense of identity• Lifelong learning fosters humility• Acting with kindness is not being soft

BOB DEKOCH & PHILLIP G. CLAMPITT24ese fundamental beliefs are captured in Part One, “e Beliefs of Caring Leaders.”Part Two of the book builds on these core beliefs and high-lights nine key practices leaders need to master in order to deliver unexpected and remarkable outcomes. We start each chapter by defining the core practice and discussing why it is so important. Next, we share more specific techniques you should master in the quest to become a more caring leader. We divide these tech-niques into two categories: a) visible practices that people can easily observe and b) subtle practices that are not clearly visible to many but engage people on deeper levels.Parts One and Two are symbiotically related; strengthening one bolsters the other and vice versa. (See Figure 0.2.) As your com-mitment deepens to these core beliefs, so will your ability to act on those beliefs. Likewise, as you use more of the caring leader practices, your beliefs that support those practices will intensify.

LEADING WITH CARE IN A TOUGH WORLD 25Caring leaders embrace a deep, robust, and never-wavering commitment to their fellow human beings. Yet, sometimes car-ing leaders need to be tough to demonstrate that they care on a deeper level. In short, caring leaders are on a mission to inspire others to achieve even more extraordinary results than they ever dreamed possible for themselves and their organizations.So, let’s get right to the hard work. It starts with reexamin-ing your core beliefs about deep caring. Read on. Reflect further. And grow!