Earn my respect - Edition 173 by Rob Lambert
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A Cultivated Life Newsletter
Hi,
I hope you are safe and well and looking forward to the week ahead.
This week I published my first video (and blog post) in a long time. It's a video about wellbeing and how many companies are merely dealing with the symptoms. In one company they'd exhausted the well-intentioned HR initiatives and wellbeing was still a problem. So, they decided it was their employees fault - and that their employees simply needed to be more resilient. They'd passed the burden and blame. In this video I explore this topic.
You must earn my respect.
No, I don’t.
I worked with a leader once who annoyingly reminded people in meetings and interactions, that they should earn his respect. And some people pandered to this arrogance.
This leader was a typical hard-charging, assertive, demanding, aggressive kind of man. The kind of person who worked every hour possible and demanded others did too. The kind of man who judged everyone else in his own image. The kind of person who, in even his leisure time, was always “selling”. He was successful and he enjoyed the trappings of this success. Fast cars, fast boats, fast bikes, anything fast and dangerous.
He worked hard and played hard, always wanting more sales, more customers, more growth, more money. Growth at all costs. Money at all costs. Work at all costs. And he expected others to work this way also, otherwise you wouldn’t earn his respect.
He even once announced at the company all-hands that we should die trying to achieve that quarter’s targets. No thanks. I enjoy living too much for that.
We needed to earn his respect.
I disagreed.
I don’t need to earn anyone’s respect; it should be given by default. It should be given just for being me, in this place, in this society, in this company, by default.
People don’t need to earn my respect, it is given to them by default, no matter who they are. Sure, some people will behave in ways I don’t agree with, say mean things to me, act in a way I don’t think is right, but I can still respect them as a fellow human being.
I cannot control other people’s behaviours, but I can choose my own. I can forgive, ignore, distance myself, stand up for my rights and even choose to approach everyone with kindness. But they still deserve respect no matter what. I get to choose how I respond to people, and I get to choose respect by default.
There is no need to earn my respect, everyone already has it.
It’s incredibly arrogant to assume that I am somehow more important, more worthy, and more entitled than others, so much so that they must earn MY respect.
And my arrogant boss in this story is no better than anyone else, even if he did brandish the badge of CEO. He is still a person, and I gave him respect by default regardless of what he thought of me. I didn’t need to earn his respect, I expected it from day one.
Wouldn’t the world of work be better if people treated each other with respect by default? A place where people don’t have to “play the game” just to earn respect? Where people don’t lower themselves to be someone less than themselves, just so someone else would finally say “I respect you”?
Even if people hold opposing views, live their lives in ways we wouldn’t and conduct themselves in a fashion we don’t like at work, we can still respect them, right? I’m sure they believe their behaviours are right.
I’m living in dreamland I know, but life and work become easier when you treat people with respect from day one, by default. And you should expect respect in return.
Work hard, do what you think is right, keep learning, be effective and let other’s opinions be just that - their opinion. You can hold your head high knowing you’re doing a good job whether they respect you or not.
Trust me. I lost myself for a few years trying to garner the respect of people I didn’t really need respect from. And it hurt. It hurt when I realised who I had become in the pursuit of something I should have had by default. It hurt even more when I finally realised I didn’t even need or want their respect, not really. I respected their opinion more than I respected my own opinion of myself.
Treat people with respect and it will come back to you ten-fold. And try not to morph the very fabric of who you are because someone has told you they don’t respect you, or you must earn their respect. Sure, look at yourself and see how you could improve, but don’t take it personally. It’s on them to respect you.
Respect.
Interesting Articles
Fake it until you make it. I kind of like this idea of faking it until you make it, but also, it's not without risk. Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead didn't even play keyboards on early tracks.
Mental health is extremely important to prioritise in the workplace and not many managers are doing it. And as I explore in my video of this week, I'm not sure they know how to.
Digital first impressions count. Are you doing anything to "manage" yours?
Lead by example and protect and help those you can. North Macedonia President walks a girl to school when he found out she was being bullied. Nice story and heart warming - but what about all the other kids who get bullied?
Some people are trying to make careers guidance a legal requirement. Not a bad idea but let's face it, not all career advice is created equal. My career advisor was rubbish. I wanted to make films and music and they said I should be a dentist.
Firms will have to work harder to retain and attract staff now that unemployment is falling. Good.
Until next week
Rob
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Rob..