Leadership That Cares: Going Beyond “How Are You?”

In A Leader's Journal, I share my personal reflections on leadership at the intersection of faith and work. I pray these articles would serve as encouragement for you, whether you are a young leader like myself or a seasoned one.

Have you ever felt as if exchanging the daily “how are you” at work has become a formality?

Or perhaps – maybe even worse – perceived that the other person was asking you as a formality?

If we’re honest, a lot of times we don’t care much because we’re already distracted with our own wants and needs, and in the end, we all expect to hear “good” or “fine” 99% of the time.

Who actually expects a real answer?

But what if we did start expecting real answers and asked real questions instead?

As leaders, we should care for how our team members are doing.

It seems basic, but many times we’re okay with leaders only caring about team members getting the work done. 

It’s trendy to want to be left alone by your boss (and even your colleagues).

We’ll often hear people concerned about AI taking the humanity out of work; however, I’d argue that in most workplaces the humanity has already been lost.

And it starts at the top: we’ve normalized leaders not caring about how their team members are doing, not caring whether they’re going through something, and it inevitably trickles down to others in the office.

On one of the newsletters my team runs, we recently featured a guest article from Triston Thompson MHA, ACS, RCS, RDCS, RVT, FASE , Imaging Manager at CHI St. Luke’s Health (and a great example of leadership!), where he mentioned that many times we don’t know what someone may be going through:

“We sometimes forget that each person on the team has a life outside of the lab where they may be raising a family, struggling to finish a degree, dealing with a financial crisis, praying through a medical emergency, or facing extenuating situations that we know nothing about.”

Oh, how easy it is to forget that the people we work with may be going through something we know nothing about! 

And yet, we’ll be quick to complain if they don’t seem to care about what we may be going through…

As leaders, whether we notice it or not, every time we brush off the chance to ask a genuine “how are you,” we are inevitably pushing aside the humanity of our team members.

Meditating on this topic of genuinely caring as a leader brought me to John 13, where Jesus – the One who the disciples called “Lord” – knelt to wash their feet.

It says, “…He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” (John 13:4-5)

Do we see the magnitude of this? The ultimate example of leadership was lowering Himself to the status of a servant. That was a big deal then and it still is now.

The disciples were shocked by this radical act: “He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, do you wash my feet?’ Jesus answered him, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.’ Peter said to him, 'You shall never wash my feet.' Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.’” (John 13:6-8 ) 

Of course, this was about much more than just washing the disciples’ feet. Yet, it speaks to me as a leader.

If my Lord was willing to wash the feet of others and humble Himself and care, then who am I to not care? Am I better than Him? Certainly not.

I’d argue that many workplaces would look radically different if those in leadership started showing genuine care.

So, when we ask “how are you?” let’s mean it. Let’s make it more than a formality.