05/15/2026
“It’s not my job to take care of you.”
I hear leaders say this a lot.
It’s not my job to worry about your feelings or to be your babysitter. You’re here to do a job. You’re here to honor a contract.
And I get why we say it. I’ve said it too, especially when I was overwhelmed and frustrated by the demands of leadership. Because those demands are real. They are relentless. And leadership is not for everyone.
I was thrown into leadership in a lot of ways. My first leadership job was as a bar manager. I thought my job was to bartend. But there were people reporting to me. Schedules to make. Call-offs to cover. A building to lock up. Books to manage. Problems to solve. A lot.
And if I’m honest, I didn’t want to deal with people’s feelings. I didn’t want to babysit anyone. I wanted people to show up, do their job and keep it moving.
What I didn’t understand then is that one of the primary responsibilities of leadership is care.
Not coddling. Not rescuing. Not absorbing everyone’s emotions. Not removing accountability.
Care.
That lesson became clearer when I started learning more about TPS/lean and the principle of respect for people.
Respect for people is not soft. It is not sentimental. It is not avoiding hard conversations. It’s recognizing the humanity, intelligence, skill and perspective of the people closest to the work.
It is shoulder-to-shoulder leadership.
Getting close enough to the work to understand what people are actually dealing with. Listening to their ideas. Removing barriers instead of becoming one. Looking at the process before blaming the person.
That was a hard lesson for me.
Because once I started learning to look at the process instead of immediately blaming the person, I realized how many leadership skills I did not yet have.
I did not have enough patience. Empathy. Curiosity. I did not know how to solve problems without slipping into blame or shame.
And maybe most importantly, I had not yet accepted this truth:
If you work with people, you are in the emotions business.
That does not mean every feeling gets to drive the bus. It does not mean every behavior is excused. It does not mean leaders become therapists. It means people bring their humanity to work because they are human.
And if we want to lead well, we have to learn how to meet people where they are while still helping them move toward what the work requires.
To care for people, I had to learn how to people well. And if there is one lesson I wish I could go back and give my younger self, it is this:
Take care of each other.
We spend so much of our lives at work.
It is ok to look out for one another. It is ok to care enough to speak up before someone steps into the same pothole again. It is ok to care about someone’s well-being, their success, their development and their perspective on how to make the work better.
Leadership is not babysitting. But, leadership is care. And care might be one of the biggest responsibilities we have.
