Monday, August 3, 2026

Caring: The Underestimated Secret to Doing Well

I love coaching sports. I have coached several teams in different sports at different ages over many years. Generally, I get good feedback from parents and players and clubs, and I am asked to return year after year. Is this because I’m known as a great strategist or a brilliant tactician? I wish, but no. Is it because I know how to perfectly manage my bench? No. It must be because we win championships year after year? No. Again, I can only wish.

It turns out that it’s because I care.

This is interesting because when I have taken personality tests (like Myers Briggs and others) my strengths do not lie in empathy or sympathy. But consistently I get thanked and complimented for my coaching for caring for my players. I honestly wish it were flashier than that, but it’s not.

In speaking with CLAC reps and asking them about what makes a good rep, the answer is similar. I was thinking it would be about winning grievances, or ratifying new collective agreements, but the most important thing was caring about the members. Caring about their work conditions, wages, and benefits yes, but more significantly, caring about them as people and caring about their lives.

In the Bible, Jesus famously says to his disciples in John 13:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

New parents always worry and fret about whether they’re raising their children well. It’s the most important job in the world and yet there’s hardly any training for it. And parents, because they’re human, are always going to make mistakes. The lengthy list of family-focused TV sitcoms that mine the challenges of parenting highlights this. All in the Family, Growing Pains, Who’s the Boss, Married with Children, Home Improvement, Modern Family, the list goes on and on, as do the myriad problems and mistakes that these shows highlight. But what makes those families and sitcoms work is that, despite the mistakes and missteps, the parents genuinely care for their children. They always want what’s best for them.

International movie action star Jackie Chan noted, “Sometimes it takes only one act of kindness and caring to change a person’s life.” And author and speaker, Mandy Hale encouraged, “To make a difference in someone’s life you don’t have to be brilliant, rich, beautiful, or perfect. You just have to care.”

I recently read an article from the BPM (the Benefits and Pension Monitor) about how only 20 percent of global employees feel engaged at work. This has huge implications for productivity and turnover and many are wondering how to reverse this drop in worker engagement. Aoife O'Brien, author of Thriving Talent and founder of the Happier at Work platform, writes that “We need to genuinely care about the people that we work with. When we genuinely care about their well-being, their careers, their results, their progression, then that will come through.” For this sort of problem, the solution should be more complicated than that. There are other recommendations, but caring is the big one. It’s the one that naturally motivates all the other actions. If you don’t care, you don’t act to make positive changes.

It turns out that whether at work, or coaching on the sidelines, caring about others has enormous impacts and benefits.

Caring: The Underestimated Secret to Doing Well

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