Why caring leadership isn’t soft, it’s a competitive edge

The organisation Todd spent years building was at genuine risk of sliding backwards. What he did next is one of the most informative leadership stories of the pandemic era, writes Graeme Cowan.

In March 2020, Todd Harper AM, CEO of Cancer Council Victoria (CCV), was facing every leader’s nightmare. Melbourne had entered what would become the world’s longest COVID-19 lockdown. Overnight, CCV’s fundraising events were cancelled, research labs closed, and fundraising collapsed. Employees were fearful. Cancer patients – already among the most vulnerable – were facing deeper isolation than ever. Todd himself felt “very isolated” and uncertain how to lead when face-to-face connection had simply vanished. The organisation he’d spent years building was at genuine risk of sliding backwards. What he did next is one of the most informative leadership stories of the pandemic era.

A question that changed a culture

During this volatile and uncertain time, Todd discovered my Caring CEO podcast and the ideas he encountered there sparked a question he brought back to his leadership team: How do we help people feel empowered when so much is outside our control? From that question emerged three deceptively simple anchors: kindness, connection, and gratitude.

These weren’t posters on a wall. As Todd explained: “We could exhibit gratitude how we wanted. It was up to us to connect in a way that felt authentic for each of us.” Every leader was trusted to embody these values in the way that best suited their team – no script, no mandate, just an invitation and genuine ownership.

Kindness sat at the centre for a specific reason. “Kindness is so powerful as a way of giving people back control,” Todd said. “We all have it in ourselves to exhibit kindness to others.”

Addressing the objection

Many leaders still equate care with weakness – worrying it undermines accountability, blurs boundaries, or signals that performance doesn’t matter. It’s an understandable concern, but the evidence doesn’t support it at all.

The leaders who struggle are rarely those who care too much. They’re the ones who confuse care with conflict-avoidance or believe that pushing people hard and supporting them well are mutually exclusive. They’re not. People perform better, stay longer, and take greater ownership when they feel genuinely valued – not despite being held to high standards, but alongside them.

The results were remarkable

Within six months, 98 per cent of CCV employees said they were proud to work there and would recommend it as an employer. Productivity increased despite the chaos. Most strikingly, voluntary turnover dropped to nearly zero – at a time when many organisations were losing talent.

This wasn’t luck. It was the compounding effect of a culture-built conversation by conversation, act of kindness by act of kindness.

Culture doesn’t live in strategy documents. It lives in the micro-conversations happening every day across your teams. Most leaders underestimate how far a good question can travel when people feel genuine ownership over the answer.

The science backs it up

This isn’t just one organisation’s experience. Gallup’s Q12 research – drawn from over 2 million assessments across 100-plus countries – identifies a single statement that consistently predicts productivity, profitability, customer satisfaction, and retention: “My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.”

When people feel cared for, psychological safety increases. They raise problems earlier, collaborate more freely, and bring discretionary effort – the difference between doing the job and doing it brilliantly. Care isn’t a mood; it’s the conditions under which people do their best work.

In presentations, I often ask leaders and teams to recall the best team they’ve ever been part of – at work, in sport, or in community – and ask (via an anonymous poll) what made it different from other teams. The same three qualities surface nearly every time:

• We cared about each other.
• We had each other’s backs.
• We encouraged each other.

Care isn’t a soft skill. It’s a strong quality, and its link to high performance is compelling.

Your turn

In this time of relentless change, focusing on what we can control – how we treat each other, how present we choose to be, and how generous we decide to act – releases energy and motivation that fear cannot beat.

If you were to anchor your team’s culture in three words, what would they be? And what’s one conversation you could have this week to bring those words to life? It could be as simple as asking a team member what they need most right now, or pausing in your next meeting to acknowledge someone’s contribution. Small acts, repeated consistently, are how cultures change.

Todd Harper didn’t transform Cancer Council Victoria with a new strategy. He did it with a question, three words, and the courage to trust his people with both.

Graeme Cowan is a leading conference speaker, a founding director of R U OK?, and host of The Caring CEO podcast.