Why Respect Matters

Many of the employees working under these kinds of managers told me about how these disrespectful working conditions negatively impacted their lives. It was not unusual for them to say that the stress impaired their health; they lost sleep, took extra sick time leave, and turned to anti-anxiety medications in order to cope. Others counted the days until their retirement, hoped to transfer to a different department, or searched for new employment, but most people just lived with an exhausting sense of hopelessness because they believed upper management wouldn’t take any action to change those leaders who treated them with such contempt.

“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”
Albert Einstein

My experience over the years of coaching executives inspired me to create The Institute of Respect, because of how important a role respect plays in all of our relationships. Within most organizations are managers who are respected for their knowledge, technical skills, and expertise, but who are also disrespectful to the people who work for them. This disrespect can spread throughout organizations and take many forms in the process, none of which are pleasant. They tend to begin by eating away at morale and performance and, if left unchecked, can cost companies their profits.
 
You may be surprised by the impact that a culture of respect, or disrespect, can make within an organization or department but I’ve spoken with hundreds of employees who spoke about how emotionally painful and intimidating it was to work under leaders who treated them with disrespect. I’ve heard stories of micro managers spying on employees, humiliating people instead of constructively criticizing them, and failing to appreciate hard work. These same managers played favorites, took the glory of their employee’s successes, bullied them, and rarely communicated.

Thankfully, in my 25 years of experience of working with managers, executives, partners, work groups, and teams, I have also heard positive stories of employees turning disrespect into respect, and of employees being treated with integrity and respect. 
Those stories demonstrate on both an intellectual and emotional level the power of respect—and the pitfalls when respect is absent. They capture the links between respect and morale and ultimately performance. When employees, partners or colleagues feel respected they will give their best and they push themselves to contribute more than they imagined they could.
For most of us, respect is difficult to categorize and measure. Yet the word is becoming increasingly common in our more complex and enriched multicultural world. In some ways, respect seems invisible. We know it’s there but we can’t actually see it, just as we don’t see the wiring, glue, mortar, wood frames and steel rods behind the walls and under the floors that keep our homes and buildings standing and safely anchored to the solid ground.
If we are going to build respectful relationships with employees, friends, colleagues, and even with our families, we need to know intimately the principles that underlie respectful relationships and understand the actions we can take to help create communities of respect.
Respect is guided and sustained by principles, behaviors, and actions. We demonstrate respect first by demonstrating a sincere interest in others and by our ability to show them through empathy that we understand them, their emotions, their aspirations, their ideas and their perspectives. We also show respect by using powerful and engaging forms of communication, by displaying a robust and compassionate spirit of collaboration, by having the competence to do what we say we will do, by showing accountability to those to whom we have made promises and by letting others know our appreciation for them and their contributions.
All people deserve to be treated with respect regardless of their politics, religious beliefs, disability, age or ethnic or cultural heritage. Respect does not have to be earned or negotiated or given with conditions. No matter how you may differ from me, I have a responsibility to treat you with respect.