.jpg)
Strong Leaders Serve with Teri Schmidt
The leadership podcast for people who are in leadership not for the status and power, but instead to use that status and power to turn potential into performance for positive change.
Hosted by Teri Schmidt, Leadership Coach & CEO of Strong Leaders Serve.
Each week we focus on supporting leaders who are dealing with the overwhelming realities of transitioning into and operating in roles where their success isn't just defined by their performance, but by the performance of their team.
Roles where they are responsible for building trust, promoting psychological safety, conflict management, taking care of their team member's wellbeing, motivating other humans, and managing up, all while trying to GET THINGS DONE.
Through solo episodes with focused and relevant leadership tips and inspirational interviews with seasoned leaders and experts, we help leaders get past their overwhelm to careers of courageous impact.
Listeners hone their skills in making their workplaces more compassionate and just through their leadership.
Strong Leaders Serve with Teri Schmidt
173. Balancing Compassion and Results in Leadership
Do you feel torn between being a compassionate leader and driving business results?
You’re not alone.
Listen as we unveil the CARE model—a practical guide to leading with both heart and head.
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teri-m-schmidt/
Get 1-on-1 leadership support from Teri here: https://www.strongleadersserve.com/coaching
Set up an intro call with Teri: https://calendly.com/terischmidt/discoverycall
Welcome back to Strong Leader Serve. As you know, this is the podcast where we explore how compassionate, driven leaders can effectively lead while holding the tension between caring about the humans they are working with and driving business results. I'm Terri Schmidt, and as we continue our season talking about some of the biggest challenges for compassionate, driven leaders, I wanted to give you a peek behind the curtain into an easy to remember model that we use with our clients. It's called the CARE model, and we'll explore how it fits seamlessly into our leadership model that we've talked about before of Ground, Grow, Give. If you've ever felt torn being a compassionate leader and a results driven one, this episode is for you. Okay, so let's start with a common leadership dilemma. Imagine this, you're leading a project and one of your top performers, Sarah, is falling behind. You know she's dealing with personal stress and your instinct is to ease her workload. But the project is time sensitive and the team is counting on her contributions. Do you lean into compassion and give her space, risking the project timeline? Or do you push for results, potentially damaging trust and engagement? This tension between care and accountability is something that leaders face daily. As we've talked about before, Brene Brown in Dare to Lead said clear is kind. True compassion includes honest conversations and accountability. That's where the CARE model comes in. A framework for leaders to lead with both heart and discipline. Okay, so what does CARE stand for? Well, the C is Connect with Humanity. This is all about building authentic relationships through trust and empathy. The A is to Align Expectations. To set clear, mutually agreed upon goals. The R
Microphone (Wireless Microphone RX)-2:Reinforce.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone RX)-4:It's to celebrate small wins while driving outcomes.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone RX):And the E is to empower with trust. Delegating meaningfully, giving autonomy with support.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone RX)-1:Let me share how this played out for a leader we'll call Mary. Mary was a senior level manager in a new role. She had a newly formed team and they became highly reliant on her as the central point of contact instead of working together with each other. She initially leaned into compassion, jumping in to provide them direct support. She was rescuing them instead of serving them. With her as a bottleneck and no accountability for working as a team, project stalled. When we applied the CARE model, here's what changed. First, she started connecting more deeply. She began weekly check ins where her team members could share not just work updates, but where she could learn what motivated them and how they liked to collaborate. She aligned expectations, clarifying her ultimate vision for how the team would work together, sharing the rationale for that vision, and ensuring the team buy in. She reinforced progress. Each time they worked together as a team to solve a problem, they would get an email or a shout out, and she would recognize and thank them for working together as a team. And finally, she empowered her team by clarifying their roles, giving them flexibility and encouragement to lean on each other, while communicating that she'd always be there to support if unusual issues arose that they couldn't solve as a team. The result, the team had higher engagement, fewer missed deadlines, and became more resilient. It's not surprising that this worked. The CARE model aligns very closely with Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety. So if you've been following Strong Leaders Serve for a while, you probably have heard me talk about our leadership model of ground, grow, and give, and how that is a spiral of different phases that we will continue to go through throughout our leadership career. So, no, we are not getting rid of ground, grow, give, but care actually fits right in to ground, grow, give. If you think about our ground phase, we all know that leadership starts with self awareness, knowing your strengths, values, and biases. The C in CARE, connecting with humanity, begins with connecting to your own humanity. To really understanding who you are as a unique person. So I'm curious, when was the last time you asked yourself, Am I leading from my values today? On to the grow phase. Leaders grow by learning. Not just from books or workshops, but from real time feedback and reflection. The A and the R, align expectations and reinforce progress, drive that growth. Take Lisa, a leader who struggled with delegation. By aligning her expectations and tracking progress, She built the confidence to step back without feeling like she was abandoning her team. And finally, the Give phase. Leadership, as you know and believe, isn't just about personal success. It's about uplifting others. The E in Care, Empower with Trust, is about giving your team autonomy and support. Research on self determination theory shows that intrinsic motivation. So how can you start being a leader who cares today? First, to connect. Maybe start every on one with a personal check in. A question like, what's one thing I should know about how you're doing this week? Number two, to align. Clarify one expectation with your team. Pick something that maybe there's a little bit of lack of clarity around what success looks like. And make that crystal clear for your team. Number three, reinforce. Pick one small win to celebrate, either publicly or privately. When we get in the mix of doing, doing, doing, sometimes it's hard to think about stopping and celebrating accomplishments. But this reinforcement of the small wins can have a huge impact. And lastly, empower. Think about one decision that you can delegate without micromanaging. So this week, I encourage you to pick one care element and put it into practice. And I would love to hear how it shifts your leadership. And remember, until next time, leadership doesn't have to be a choice between compassion and results. Instead, it is a moment to moment dance that you can navigate using some of the skills that I talked about in the CARE model. And when you do that, you're not just transforming your leadership. You actually have the power to transform the lives of those that you lead. Join us next week as we talk to ENSEAD professor Henrik Bressmann about the themes from the book that he co wrote, X Teams, and how to lead when team boundaries are much more fuzzy than they used to be. It was a great conversation and I can't wait to share it with you. Have a great week.