Leadership to Careship

Instead of Leadership – Careship / How to eliminate potential hires who may not align with your values / The US Falls in the World Happiness Ranking / Young Adults are the Least Happy

The US Falls in the World Happiness Ranking

According to the World Happiness Report, the United States has fallen to #24 in overall happiness. One report by Inc Magazine says it is due to a “kindness recession.” There is growing concern that America is experiencing a decline in kindness, community connection, and compassion. Extensive research shows that showing and receiving kindness have powerful effects on our mental and physical well-being. Simple acts of kindness can improve recovery outcomes for heart attack patients and reduce the effects of aging at the cellular level. The positive impact of kindness on happiness is likely greater than you might think.

Young Adults are the Least Happy

The report finds that if you were only to assess those below 30, the U.S. wouldn’t even rank in the top 60 happiest countries. This year’s report placed greater emphasis on the importance of social support and interpersonal trust—both of which are strong indicators of individual well-being. Alarmingly, nearly 1 in 5 young adults in the U.S. reported having no one they could rely on for support. Additionally, the number of Americans eating alone has risen by 53% over the past two decades.

*Related – The Day Maker Dopamine

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Lead with Love

Leaders’ primary duty is to care for their people. They must inspire teams to embrace a customer purpose and enable their success by allocating sufficient time, education, and resources to accomplish this mission. Leaders must role model, practice, preach, and teach the values that systematically reinforce a loving culture through symbols, words, and deeds.

Instead of Leadership – Careship

In today’s workplace—especially with younger generations—emotional intelligence, support, and authenticity inspire loyalty and high performance. Titles like “manager” or “boss” don’t cut it anymore unless they’re backed by real connection. Would you want to work for someone who “leads” you or someone who cares for you? That’s a cultural shift. It is time to Create environments of belonging and psychological safety and develop compassionate team relationships.

Maybe it’s time to get rid of the word “leadership” like the label “manager.” Hubert Joly, who turned around Best Buy, has suggested the term “careship” which more accurately describes what the senior team needs to do for the employees. There’s no way your team players will care for your customers, company, or you if they don’t feel you care for them.

A Shift from Traditional Leadership Models

The concept of “careship” instead of “leadership” suggests a shift from traditional leadership models, which often focus on authority, control, and organizational goals, towards a more empathetic, caring, and people-focused approach. This idea emphasizes the importance of leaders being deeply invested in their team members’ well-being, growth, and success, not just in the context of their roles and responsibilities within the organization but also in their personal development and well-being.

The transition to careship doesn’t imply abandoning traditional leadership principles, such as vision, strategy, and execution. Instead, it integrates these with a more human and empathetic approach, recognizing that caring for the team’s well-being is fundamental to achieving sustainable success. This concept is particularly resonant in the modern workplace, where employees increasingly seek meaningful work, supportive environments, and leaders who genuinely care about their well-being.

How to eliminate potential hires who may not align with your values

In his book Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, author Adam Grant suggests a great way to screen out the potential employee candidates who don’t align with your organization’s value. Grant suggests presenting them with situational interviews. But not the way most organizations do them.

Don’t Ask Them What “They” Would Do in a Situation

“A lot of organizations do behavioral interviews that are backward looking and asking about your history, what you’ve accomplished, what challenges you’ve overcome, and those actually don’t turn out to be very effective. They suffer from an apples and oranges problem, it’s very hard to compare it to people’s work histories,” explains Grant.

Even taking it one step further, Grant doesn’t suggest asking the candidate what they would do in a given situation because most people would give the “right” answer, not necessarily how they would truly react in that situation. What Grant suggests is, instead of asking, “What would you do?” ask, “How do you think most people would handle . . . ?”

Projecting Motivations

Grant explains that most of us tend to project our motivations onto others. So, suppose you give someone a scenario where it’s unclear what the appropriate behavior is. In that case, people will predict based on what they would do in that situation, not realizing they just shared some insight on what they likely would do in the same situation.

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