Podcast: Why a culture of Care is replacing Traditional Leadership

With the dramatic changes to organisational life in recent years, the idea that leaders need to have all the answers is no longer the case, says Amanda Sinclair. 

"What I've argued over many years now, and with some fresh evidence through the last couple of months, is that leaders need to be able to build cultures of care for their employees, for their clients and customers, for their stakeholders," Dr Sinclair says.

"This idea is not that leaders need to just get soft and much nicer with everybody. It's much more about developing new skills of paying attention to the wellbeing of people that leaders interact with."

Dr Sinclair is a Professorial Fellow at Melbourne Business School whose research examines how the mental and spiritual approach of a leader affects various segments of organisational life.

In the latest episode of the Melbourne Business School podcast, she speaks with Yasmin Rupesinghe about how traditional leadership is no longer working in today's business context and on her insights on what leaders need to do to change for the better.

"I've been very inspired by a lot of Eastern philosophy around this and particularly observing and reading Eastern leaders – for example, the Dalai Lama," she says.

"I can remember very powerfully reading his statement about what the role of a leader was, and he said: 'It is the role of the leader to create a strong and warm heart for an organisation and to see things as they really are.' For me, that was just such a profoundly different view of what our leaders could be doing.

"In the last six months or so, we've actually seen quite a few examples of this and so I also feel hopeful that there's been a lot of adaption and innovation in the area."

Listen to the full episode above, or visit SoundCloud: Podcast: Why a culture of Care is replacing Traditional Leadership