Have you ever lost respect for a person in your organisation, a senior leader or a senior executive?
There might be someone on the executive team that you work with, someone that you report to, or someone in a global position, who has done something that has caused you to lose respect for them – potentially due to a conflict in values or lack of integrity.
Or have you ever felt as if someone has personally lost respect in you?
These are both common situations that we see with the executives that we work with, and often minor things can cause people to lose respect for you if you let them snowball. However, maintaining a culture of respect is absolutely vital if you want to encourage collaboration and communication.
In order to create a culture of respect among your wider team, there are three levels of respect you need to keep in mind:
- Respect for a person: This is the first and possibly most important level of respect as it involves how highly regarded another person is, or how highly they regard you. At this layer, three factors play an important role in building respect: integrity, personal behaviour and values.
- Respect for the role: While you may respect a person, sometimes a specific role itself may not hold a level of respect. It may not be considered as ‘important’ or as ‘significant’ as other roles within the organisation. Ultimately though, this role exists and it is important to give the person holding it the respect they need to succeed.
- Respect for the person in the role: Regardless of your personal feelings towards someone, the fact is that they’ve been recruited into a senior position by someone in the organisation who believes they are the right person for the role. For that fact alone, this person needs to have respect whilst they carry that title.
We dive more into using these three levels to create a culture of respect in this short three minute video below. Check it out and let us know in the comments below any challenges you’ve issued when it comes to respect in the workplace.
