Leadership With Heart
I just finished Bob Chapman’s Everybody Matters, and I found myself nodding along, underlining passages, and thinking, “Yes. This is the conversation we need right now.” Chapman’s central philosophy is simple - every person at work should be treated as someone’s precious child. Not a headcount number. Not an FTE (full-time equivalent). Not an expense line. Not a replaceable function. Someone’s son. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s beloved child.
That idea aligns deeply with the message behind my book, They’re Worth It! We spend so much time talking about performance, productivity, growth, and results. But before a person can deliver results, they need to know they are valued. And in an AI-powered world, that truth is becoming increasingly evident. AI can write, analyze, summarize, calculate, organize, and automate at remarkable speed. It can help us see patterns we might have missed and complete tasks that once took hours. For leaders, it offers tremendous possibilities. But it also raises an important question - if technology can replicate more of what we do, what remains uniquely ours?
The answer is our humanity.
An AI system can tell you that an employee’s performance has changed. A caring leader notices that the employee has become quieter and asks what is happening. A system can recommend a restructuring. A human leader has to sit with the consequences. AI can produce an answer. Leadership with heart asks whether the answer is right. “The more automated our workplaces become, the more valuable genuine human care will be.”
What I appreciate about Everybody Matters is that Bob Chapman did not present caring leadership as a soft idea reserved for special occasions. He treated it as a serious responsibility. In organizations, we have been trained to treat people as "resources," so when we have layoffs, reductions in force (RIFs), firings, terminations, and the like, we don't have to think of it as impacting a person. Re-look at the last sentence and find the humanity. In my research, the origin of "firing" seems to come from the French military (i.e., actually shooting at people). In the workplace, we can and must do better!
Human-first leadership does not eliminate standards. Care and accountability are not opposites. In a healthy workplace, they belong together. When people feel trusted and respected, they are more likely to speak up. They are more willing to experiment, learn, and admit when something is not working. It requires us to remember that the person we are leading may be carrying responsibilities we cannot see: a sick child, an aging parent, financial stress, grief, fear, or a private dream they are still trying to protect.
A metric cannot tell you the whole story. A person can. That is not just a better way to lead. It may be the only way to lead in the years ahead. I believe we're at the beginning of a human-first movement, and I welcome you to join me.
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Your Career Coach,
Ha-Keem
