Twelve Days of Respect

Ask anyone in your workplace what treatment they most want to experience at work and they will likely top their list with the desire to be valued and treated with respect.

When employees feel valued and respected in the workplace, productivity and employee engagement soars because employees have higher self-esteem around the work that they do.

Now, the interesting thing about respect is that you can’t control when or how others demonstrate respect.  You can only control whether or not you exercise it on a regular basis.  And, when you demonstrate respect you encourage it in others.

So, instead of the Twelve Days of Christmas, we are offering you the Twelve Days of Respect to cultivate respect in your workplace.

1. When you see it, say it. When you observe or experience respectful behaviors, verbalize your appreciation. Call out the specific behaviors that make a difference for you and your team.
2. Show a “can do” attitude. No matter what the situation, take the initiative and the lead, when appropriate.  Your attitude will affect others around you.
3. Be a good listener.  Everyone loves to be around a good listener. Listen to what others have to say. It shows that you care, and that you respect them and their opinions.
4. Respect other’s time. Recognize that everyone is busy, everyone has challenges, and everyone feels pressure.  When you respect other people’s time as much as our own, you earn respect.
5. Encourage fun and laughter. Laugh at yourself or about experiences that you have shared with your team. Laughter elicits good feelings, lightens the load, and bonds the team together.
6. Pay it forward. Be the first to demonstrate respect whether someone has earned it from you or not.  Respectful behaviors given often produce respectful behaviors in return.
7. Empathize. Ask questions out of curiosity to better understand someone else’s situation. Everyone benefits from stepping back and taking the time to walk in another person’s shoes.
8. Be considerate. Good manners make others feel comfortable and are a source of personal power and strength. Be polite. Say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. When you show consideration to others, you make them feel valued.
9. Be on time for meetings. Arrive to meetings a few minutes prior to its start time to send the message that you think the gathering is important. The individual leading the meeting will appreciate your promptness.
10. Speak up when you see behaviors of disrespect. Speak up about observations and experiences of disrespect.  Share the impact that the behavior has on you and your team.  Request the behaviors that you would like to experience and/or observe.  This may take courage and practice, yet speaking up about disrespectful behaviors in a respectful way will earn you respect.
11. Walk the talk of respect. Pay particular attention to the things that you criticize and take an inward look at your own behavior. Demonstrate the behaviors that you desire and admire in others.
12. Honor diversity. Focus on the good traits in everyone. Every personality, including your own, has its positive traits and its negative traits.

Happy Holidays!  Georgine

Honoring Diversity: A Lesson from the Elephant

I attended a meeting the other day where the organizational leader told the famous Indian legend of the six blind men and the elephant.  It goes like this.

Six blind men went to see an elephant to learn about what it was like.  The first man felt the broad side of the elephant and said it was like a wall.  The second man felt the tusk and said it was like a spear.  The third man felt the elephant’s tail and said it was like a rope.  The forth man felt the trunk and said an elephant is like a snake.  The fifth man felt the knee and said it was like a tree.  The sixth man felt the elephant’s ear and said it was like a fan.

The moral of story is that everyone was right – each man had an accurate perspective from his vantage point.

The leader that told the story used it to initiate a discussion about the importance of seeing the big picture in project planning, decision making and problem solving.  Every department in an organization, like each individual, has an important perspective to share that leads to goal accomplishment and organizational success.  It is only when we honor the collective and sometimes diverse perspectives that we can see clearly the best solution or plan.

Sometimes we forget to honor and celebrate our diversity.  Most of us are more comfortable working with people who are similar to us.  Our similarities make it easier for us to trust each other’s judgment because we understand it. At the same time, we could be prone to judge different ideas negatively and miss out on the benefits and contributions of honoring diverse perspectives.

In our flagship program, respectFULL teams™, we explore our individual and unique perspectives and how they came to be a part of us and how we view the world. We lead discussions around how to take full advantage of the rich backgrounds and abilities of everyone on the team and how to value differences, seek inclusiveness, and honor differing points of view.

Here are a few of the tips we offer for honoring diversity.

1.    Ask questions and develop a curiosity to seek out diverse ideas and opinions.  The more you learn about others’ perspectives, the broader your own perspective becomes.

2.   Share your perspective. The best way to find commonalities is to share your ideas with others and get their feedback. You may be surprised to find that you have more in common that you think.

3.   Honor the values and beliefs of others.  Everyone has a set of values and beliefs that guide the way they live and interact with others. Showing respect for others is the single most important thing we can do to build harmony amidst differences.

Uniquely yours, Georgine