Training

Caring for people as a lever of performance and managerial competence

Riccarda Zezza's book highlights how caring, understood as competence, is fundamental to modern leadership

by Gianni Rusconi

3 November 2025

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

A strategic lever capable of improving team engagement, reducing turnover, stimulating innovation and generating tangible value for companies: what component meets these requirements more than 'caring' for the people who make up an organisation? And why is the term 'caring', once confined to the private and personal sphere, now synonymous with a fundamental skill for those who manage people and companies?

Riccarda Zezza, the founder and Chief Science Officer of Lifeed, tries to answer these questions in her new book published by FrancoAngeli, "Cura", a text that explores how this concept is an essential skill for facing the challenges and complexities of a world of work undergoing profound transformation, amidst transition models and an increasingly rapid spread of digital technologies.

Caring, as the author argues, is not just kindness, nor is it an accessory gesture, but the real infrastructure of human work. And if the ability to listen and create inclusive environments are essential skills for the 'new' leaders, many companies are already recognising and valuing caring as a real organisational asset

Among these, about one hundred realities in Italy and abroad have adopted the method developed in Lifeed (Life Based Learning) to enhance life experiences as a source of strategic learning: parenting, caregiving and volunteering, in particular, should not be confined to the rank of marginal experiences at work but considered as practices that allow one to train fundamental skills such as resilience, negotiation, empathic listening and conflict management.

Crossing the boundaries between personal and professional life

At the heart of this method, as Zezza explains, is the concept of transilience, i.e. both the ability to transfer skills from one context to another, crossing the boundaries between personal and professional life and enabling these two spheres to be mutually enriched. The first real challenge facing managers (and in general those responsible for the work of other people) is therefore to make these skills visible in the name of a more human leadership and at the same time capable of integrating efficiency without sacrificing performance. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to overcome the cultural resistance common among managers (e.g. the 'I don't have time' or the 'It's not part of my role') and to be fully aware that care and performance are not in conflict: companies that invest in the well-being of their employees achieve greater retention and are more attractive, while improving their reputation. "You don't

Looking at all dimensions of oneself

Ma qual è il profilo di manager più sensibile al tema della cura come asset strategico e organizzativo? E quanto incidono età anagrafica e ruolo svolto in azienda nel farsi promotori della valorizzazione di questo concetto? A precise domande, l’autrice risponde con la propria esperienza personale. «Lavorando in questi anni con migliaia di manager, ho visto come non vi sia un profilo ideale per età o per ruolo. Nel momento in cui guardano a sé stessi attraverso tutte le dimensioni di cura che gli appartengono, ne intuiscono l’efficacia nel migliorare la propria leadership nel contesto lavorativo. Diverse ricerche – ha concluso - ci dicono che una maggiore consistenza dei comportamenti in contesti diversi aumenta l’attenzione all’etica, ma anche l’autoefficacia e il benessere». La cura, questo l’assunto di Zezza, si eleva al rango di competenza trasversale imprescindibile nel bagaglio culturale di un leader moderno perché coinvolge doti e capacità diverse e al tempo stesso comporta una pr

Care Competence Training

The point is to find a way to 'train' this competence, by means of dedicated training to consolidate its principles within an organisation: 'Thanks to training,' Lifeed's founder points out, 'in ten years, the concept of care has gone from being a theory to becoming a factor measured with data on more than 70,000 workers. People immediately realise the validity of this vision, because it is already in their lives, and it is only a matter of widening their gaze to understand it. To root it, however, more is needed, and more precisely, what must change is the gaze of organisations so that they can see and measure its value in new places, where this asset is already present but is not seen and, consequently, is not activated.

Finally, there is another element that may in some way undermine the value of 'care' as a form of employee welfare, and that is the widespread advent of artificial intelligence. The risk, as Zezza observed, 'lies in the speed and reinforcement of stereotypes, in the reinforcement of partial and hyper-efficient narratives precisely because they are incomplete. We have to decide whether work for human beings is only a matter of input-output, and therefore sitting in front of a computer and producing data, or whether there is an unparalleled component in our work as sentient creatures who think according to what they feel'. Today, says the author of 'Care', it is more than ever a choice that has to be made and discussed explicitly.