Bringing Caring to the Workplace

In my experience, the new work-from-home culture has a distinct and different feeling.  My teammates greet me with children and pets popping in and out of the zoom calls and sharing personal passions and successes are ranked equal with work subjects.  When my nine-year-old interrupted a seven person call asking for help spelling a word, colleagues agreed it was worth pausing the call.  It feels very different, refreshing, and fantastic.

As communicators we always have an eye on ethics and this experience brought me back to my ethical training.  Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, based on a study of only boys, posited that we develop toward an ethic of justice focused on equality and fairness. His student Gilligan challenged him on this and theorized that girls and women, in particular, develop toward an ethic of caring, a sense of weighing our own needs with those of others.  Later writers have broken down the binary gender assignment in these theories, but agree that trans- and cisgender women are more likely to adopt an ethic of caring.

As women in male-dominated workplaces, we often experience and are accustomed to the ethic of justice as the guiding principle.  This can show up as a supervisor assigning the same number of hours of overtime or time on-call to each team member, regardless of family or other obligations.  It could also show up as a more senior but less talented colleague getting promoted first out of concern for fairness.  It also looks like enforcing rules in a way that may feel fair and equal but could have very different impact on the individuals.  Fairness and justice are important, of course, but aren’t always the only or best North Star.

One of my favorite books to share with members of my team is The Thin Book of Trust.  It states that four conditions have to be in place to have trusting work relationships: colleagues mean what they say, colleagues have the capacity to do what they say they will do, colleagues will follow-through and do what they say they will, and colleagues care about the well-being of the organization and eachother.  It makes sense — you can’t trust a coworker who shows a disregard for your professional success.  Yet, although most workplaces seem to be justice-focused, this model shows that care, not justice, is paramount to trusting relationships.  Perhaps care is more important than many workplaces acknowledge.

As a woman leading teams, I’ve often felt social and time pressures to adopt to the more masculine ethic of justice in my work.  It feels faster — focus on the work rather than the people, apply the rules, and move on — but it feels robotic and uncaring.  When I show caring toward teammates, it can feel awkward and invasive in a non-caring culture.  But without that interpersonal caring, workplaces can feel off– just a little cold and unwelcoming.

Caring is the special lens we as women more often bring– a concern for relationships, an interest in equity, and an eye for supporting whole people rather than just people as workers.  While traditional workplaces have devalued this ethic, it’s an ethic that I believe contributes to a more supportive workplace and can even reduce turnover.  Caring for people matters.  And I think that’s what’s different about this work-from-home feeling.

The new culture I’m experiencing is a strong argument in favor of not adapting to a masculine workplace ethic but asserting our feminine ethic of caring.  If I bring my whole, caring self to work, I can create for others a space where they can be valued as whole people and where we establish more cohesive trust.  It’s yet another way that we as women can make our organizations and jobs better by just being ourselves.

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