I once witnessed the leader of a company telling all of the assembled employees that they needed to buy into the motto “customer first, company second, individuals last”. The message, presumably, was meant to be one of self-sacrifice for a common aim: put aside your own individual agendas and goals to do what’s best for the whole. And, as a group, we will set the needs and experience of our customers as our North Star. Putting the customer first will bring the company success, and this will trickle down to the individuals that make up the group: everyone wins. An admirable aim.

But does that work? Telling a group of individuals to prioritize the customer first, the company second, and themselves last communicates to everyone in that room that their leaders see them as the last priority. To get any sense of whether people will do something you ask of them, you need to ask “why should they?” A leader shouldn’t just ask their employees to take on the objectives of the company and expect it to happen. They should ask themselves what will truly incentivize, motivate and inspire people on their team to pursue a collective goal over a personal one.

What motivates people to invest themselves in their company’s goals? Most employees are understandably suspicious about the degree to which companies are committed to sharing the spoils of success equitably. Will they be compensated based on how much they impacted that success, or just enough to retain them? For most companies, employees are a means to an end, and any attempts to make their team feel valued are insincere and in service to that end. To truly earn their trust, you need to genuinely care about the welfare, goals, and outcomes of the people in your organization even more than you do about the success of your organization.

When people know -- and they can tell a lot more than most leaders think they can -- that you actually care about them and their goals, rather than just caring as a means to an end, they want to give: come through for you, be conscientious for you, be proactive for you. All the things that companies wish that their employees would do for them. The potential to contribute in this way is within so many people, but it’s not often offered, because it’s so rarely earned. When you look around your organization and don’t see people who are engaged, that means you have not earned their buy-in. That is a problem with you and the environment you’ve created, not with them.

Leaders fear what they see as the downside risk associated with caring about their people over their company. Sometimes you may over-invest in someone who turns out not to help your organization as much as you hoped. Other times you may lose someone valuable because you help them find an opportunity outside of your organization that you know will be better for them. Why is it not just kind and generous, but “worth it” to do something for an employee that is good for them, but not, directly, for your organization? Why encourage them to take a different job, or take time off, or risk paying them more than they are worth instead of less, or anything else that most companies try very hard to avoid?

Those “losses” are part of a more holistic win, and should be framed not as losses, but as “loss leaders.” Costco offers hot dogs and rotisserie chickens at startlingly low prices because they know how powerful these loss leaders are for their overall success, despite being individually unprofitable. Treating everyone well, even if they don’t end up directly contributing to the organization as much as you hope, creates an environment that attracts true difference makers to your organization, and helps retain the most pivotal contributors by deserving them.

Prioritizing the needs of your people also directly impacts your organization by pushing it to be better and for leaders to hold their own behavior to a higher standard. People don’t just want perks. Within a business environment, people want support, respect, equitable compensation, opportunities for professional growth, and structure. Caring for your team means providing these things. Ensuring that people have the support they need means understanding how departments work together and how managers interact with their reports. Enforcing respect means rooting out toxicity and dysfunctional communication. Committing to compensating everyone in proportion to their impact means developing systems that allow for accurate evaluation of outputs. Providing paths for growth forces the organization to project future needs within the company, and evaluate not just how each employee is contributing, but how else they might be able to contribute. Providing structure is as essential for scaling the company as it is for the experience of your employees.

A leader adopting the approach “customer first, company second, individuals last” seems like it should result in a great experience for the company’s customers. But it puts the cart before the horse. Whether a team of individuals finds ways to create the exceptional customer experience that drives company success depends on whether those individuals choose to do so. To bring about the best outcomes for the company and the customer, you need to put “individuals first”. A company “putting our people first” doesn’t deprioritize the customer and the company. By prioritizing the people in the organization you give those people a reason to care about the company, and the goals of the company.

When leaders urge their team to prioritize the organization over themselves, they are often doing so because their true priorities are “me first, everyone else second”. They are incentivized to drive company success because they usually benefit most from that success. When they are urging everyone contributing to the pie to make it as big and delicious as possible, it’s because they are getting the biggest slice themselves. They need their customers and employees to think they care about them because both are necessary means to the end that is their own success. But you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Leaders often talk about creating the right culture, because many understand that employees’ effort and performance is a function of the environment they’re in. To change how members of a team respond to an environment, you don’t just have to change the environment -- you need to change your perspective and priorities. If caring is a means to an end, it’s not caring. True caring is doing something because it’s consistent with your sincerely held values, not because you want something back. If you’ve earned it, you’ll get a lot back. If you don’t, it shouldn’t change whether you think it was the right thing to do. Only with this perspective can leaders earn the depth of commitment from their team necessary for an organization to reach its full potential.