When Melanie Dulbecco became CEO of Torani Syrups 34 years ago, he entered as his first non -1 million non -1 million leader in annual sales and an uncertain future. What happened later challenged expectations. Under its leadership, Torani has averaged more than 20% annual growth year approximately year for three decades, doubleing its size every few years. In 2024, the company reached $ 500 million in sales and is on its way to reaching $ 1 billion by 2030.
The unexpected success of Dulbecco is attributable to its non -traditional leadership style. She says: “Those financial numbers are lagged indicators. The main indicators have everything to do with the growth and development of our people.”
The Dulbecco part of a growing wave of leaders who adopt a more holistic model with the belief that the most effective leaders are not due to gender features: they are based on the entire range of human strengths. By combining a wide range of “male” and “female” features such as care, vulnerability, trust and decision, thesis leaders are building the most resistant and high performance organizations today.
This change in the approach challenges the decades of conventional wisdom, which goes back to the 1973 study “Think of the manager, Think Male” of 1973 of Dr. Virginia E. Schein. Schein identified a persistent association between leadership and traditionally masculine qualities. This effect “thinking about the manager, masculine” was just American, was global and has been replicated in numerous studies since then.
This narrow definition of leadership has long devalued features such as empathy, emotional care and intelligence, or considered “soft skills.” This excessive emphasis on male leadership leaves many leaders concerned about the expression of anything considered feminine in special women’s leaders in the workplace in environments dominated by men concerned with being seriously tasks.
Studies show that, although effective leaders show traditionally “male” qualities such as trust, strategic thinking and decision, they also Show “female” traits such as collaboration, empathy, resistance and communication.
This is how three of these attenuated features generate exceptional results:
How care increases commitment, retention and growth
Care is not a “soft skill.” It is strategic. In 2024, employees’ commitment fell to 21%, only the second decrease in more than a decade (the other duration of COVID-19 pandemic). It is estimated that this disconnection, 70% of which is linked to the manager of a person, will cost the global economy more than $ 400 billion in loss of productivity last year. Leaders who can involve their teams will shape the future of work, and all they have to do is return to the basics: take care of people.
Employees who feel attended are three times more likely to participate, 70% less likely to experience exhaustion and 36% more likely to report prospering out of work. However, only 25% of employees feel that their manager really cares about their well -being.
The co-founder and Co-Coo or the EO products based in California, Susan Griffin-Black, prioritizes an affectionate leadership approach, striving to guarantee that their employees feel attended. “We are all human and we want the same things: security, belonging, meaning and being loved and careful,” she says. Its first leadership of people is one of the reasons why the company’s participation rates occupy 33 points above the industry average.
Attention also promotes retention. Almost 75 % of employees say they want a manager who leads empathy and support. When they have one, they are 70% less likely to find a new job.
Pete Stavros, Global Private Capital Co-Board in KKR, recently brought the head of the Stanford Neuroscience Laboratory, Jamil Zaki, to test Stavros’s stress, Stavros’ observation that the best performance CEOs in the KKR portfolio were the most empathy. The results? The CEOs that indexed the highest in empathy had income and commitment rates from 1.5 to more than 2 times stronger than the reference point.
Why deep listening generates trust, feeds innovation and improves belonging
The great leadership is based on a deep listening. When managers are attentive and communicate openly, they promote greater commitment, a stronger retention and better equipment performance. But too many leaders are still lost the brand: 86% of employees say that not everyone in their organization is heard a lot, and more than 60% say that their leaders have ignored their voice.
When employees feel heard, they are 4.6 times more likely to function at their best. They are also more likely to inform a sense of belonging, and have some of the highest levels of commitment of the organization.
Griffin-Black says that deep listening is one of the leadership skills on which it relies more, like other holistic leaders such as the restorer in Wade. When Wade opened the classroom of the Mac-And-Queso restaurant in Oakland in 2011, it was proposed to restore dignity in the works of the food industry. Your main strategy? Listening to his team.
Wade Hero optional, paid weekly meetings for his complete team of more than 100 people, from dishwasher, managers and listen to their perspectives and cook the decisions. He practiced the management of open books, the finance of the shared company and reviewed the daily comments of the employees every week. The message was clear: his voice is important here.
In Homeroom, employees possession averaged 2.5 years, compared to the standard of the industry of only 90 days. Financial, the restaurant was constantly classified in 1% higher throughout the country, while Wade was in the helmet.
The critical link between vulnerability and equipment performance
While Dr. Brené Brown has drawn more attention to the importance of vulnerability, where he defines “uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure,” leadership, many leaders still fight to be vulnerable at work. Only 24% of higher leaders say they show vulnerability in the workplace. However, it is not surprising, since many were hindered to equate the leadership with Invulnerability. But those who break that mold call vulnerability a skill that changes the game.
Vulnerable leaders admit errors, recognize what they do not know and remain open to the ideas of others. CEO of Charter Next Generation (CNG) Kathy Bolhouse, one of the leaders in the KKR portfolio that obtained the highest maximum in the empathy index, regularly requests opinions and ideas to improve its more than 2,000 employees. When he does, he is open about the fact that he does not have all the answers. When leaders model vulnerability like this, their employees have 5.3 times more likely to trust them.
Being vulnerable is also proven to boost creativity and innovation. These key benefits help explain how Bolhouse has grown CNG from an assessment of $ 50 million in 2010 to a current valuation of $ 5 billion. In addition to vulnerability, the two additional leadership skills are linked to their success: care and listening.
The holistic leadership approach
Holistic leaders do not trust a single feature. They move fluently between the best features, regardless of the association with “masculine” or “female”: filling and impulse, humility and trust, compassion and responsibility. They lead with a complete range of human qualities, adjusting according to what their people and their context require. And their organizations thrive for that: greater commitment, deeper confidence, stronger innovation and longest employee retention.
To success in the evolutionary workplace, leaders must unlearn books of obsolete plays. This change is not about gender. It’s about the range. The leaders who succeed in the modern workplace are those who know when to be bold, when to be quiet, when to challenge and when to nourish.
They do not play a role. They embody all their humanity.