"When was the last time you followed up with a colleague about something personal they mentioned in passing? A race they were training for. A book or TV show they were excited about. A weekend that felt big in some small way. These moments are easy to overlook. Work moves fast with back-to-back meetings and pressing deadlines. Yet when someone circles back and asks, "How did it go?" something meaningful shifts. You feel remembered. You feel seen."
"Care often appears in small acts of attention. It lives in remembering a detail someone shared and asking about it later. It shows up in following through on a conversation or making room for someone's full life to exist alongside their role. One misconception we often hear is that caring at work means oversharing, prying, or turning professional spaces into therapy sessions. That is not what this is about. Care is demonstrated through steady, respectful attention. It is expressed through curiosity and follow-up, not intrusion."
Small, attentive behaviors at work—remembering personal details, following up, and showing curiosity—create a sense of community and meaning. Love, framed as the human capacity to care, reflects instincts to cooperate and extend warmth that supported survival. A leader’s demonstrated concern for employees’ lives outside work strongly predicts employees’ sense of belonging. Care is enacted through steady, respectful attention rather than prying or oversharing. Courteous follow-up and room for employees’ full lives alongside their roles strengthen relationships. Social neuroscience indicates that social rejection engages neural regions associated with physical pain, underscoring sensitivity to social signals.
Read at Psychology Today
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