Respect - The Golden Rule

This is a familiar scene for many of us who visit a roadside cycle or motorcycle repair shop:

There will be this 'experienced' mechanic and his, usually, underage assistant.  Within the 15-20 minutes that we are there, we may observe this experienced mechanic abuse his underage assistant multiple times, both physically and verbally.

If we ask the mechanic why is he treating his assistant so badly, he'll usually reply that this is how he was treated when he started off as an underage assistant.

I have observed similar abuses even in well-established organizations across all levels.

In a typical sales driven organizations, the daily huddle is such a dreadful experience:

The sales team assemble at a predetermined time either in person or through a conference call; the supervisor uses the opportunity to verbally abuse the teammate who had not delivered on commitments - free flow of expletives.  This is not just in Indian corporates but even in Multinational corporations - they just replace desi cuss words with English ones.  

I have heard of instances wherein teammates were asked to put down their papers in such huddles.  Can you imagine how the person will feel, when so humiliated in front of people who the person works with, day in and day out?

Some of the supervisors believe that they can wash away these verbal abuses by taking the team out for cocktail dinner once in a while.

And the sad part is that some of the team members also believe that this is the right way to drive their team and perpetuate a similar culture when they become supervisors.

Higher up the corporate ladder where managers are wary of using expletives find alternate ways of expressing their displeasure - raising their voice, public dressing down, rapid fire questioning, power talk and so on.  I have often heard the supervisor say, "I don't know how you do it; just do it."  Whenever I hear this, I wonder, "If you yourself don't know how to do it, then how do you expect your teammate to know?"

Other managers, who apparently believe that they are more refined than those who are obviously abusive, use subtler forms of disrespect - sarcasm, humor and so on.  Here, I must confess that I am guilty of using this approach.

Apart from physical and emotional disrespect, people resort to intellectual disrespect too.  I have observed, in many brainstorming sessions, when someone proposes a radically new idea or solution which does not resonate with the rest of the participants, they are either ridiculed or completely ignored.

And then, being disrespectful of one's values.  Early on in my career, in a cocktail party during an overseas conference, the CEO became so intoxicated that he decided to make the teetotalers taste liquor.  He compelled few of them to drink for the very first time.  Then he realized that I and another colleague of mine were missing.  He called out our names and came looking for us.  We literally had to run and hide in another floor till he gave up searching for us.  I felt quite bad that I had to hide like a kid to escape compromising my personal value.

So, what do we do about all this?

First and foremost, is to respect oneself - not in a psyched up superficial way but truly.  This is possible when we start becoming sensitive to ourselves.

Click here to read Sensitivity - just listen

Then, respect others - The Golden Rule.

In some of my workshops, I ask the managers to list down, on a chart, their expectations from their teammates.  They come out with a long list of things like be sincere, hardworking, honest, performance-driven, demonstrate team spirit and so on.  Then I ask them to list down their expectations from their managers on the reverse of the chart.  Again, they come out with a long list of things like understand the ground realities, respect, care, guide, demonstrate, resolve challenges, recognize and so on.

At the end of this exercise, I tell them to flip the chart: whatever you expect from your manager, be that kind of manager for your teammates; whatever you expect from your teammates, be that kind of teammate for your manager.

The Golden rule is the principle of treating others as you want to be treated.

And do not allow others to disrespect you - in any form.

I am reminded of an incident wherein, in a weekly review meeting, I appreciated a specific work done by a teammate of my direct report which had an implicit message of pointing out to her that she hasn't done her part of the work.  After the meeting, she came to my cabin, calm and composed, and pointed out to me, in a really nice way, how what I said in the review meeting hurt her.  I realized my mistake and apologized to her immediately.  She handled it so very well that I didn't feel any resentment towards her.

To quote Mahatma Gandhi,

"They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them."

I wish to sign off by narrating a very profound experience: in one of the organizations that I was part of, the CEO decided that one of my senior colleague has to be eased out of the organization.  He travelled from the headquarters to our location and invested the whole morning with him and couple of us.  We even went out for an elaborate lunch.  After coming back from the lunch outing, the CEO requested us to excuse him for sometime and sat alone in the conference room.  After an hour or so, he invited my senior colleague for a discussion.  At the end of that session, my senior colleague came out and declared that he is planning to resign.  I was not able to sense any kind of resentment in his voice or his body language.

Later, when we were alone, we were curious to know what he did in the conference room for an hour before inviting my senior colleague in.  He said that he meditated!  He said that he wanted to remove any traces of anger or any other emotion in his system before speaking to my senior colleague; He wanted to be absolutely objective.

Now, that is truly respect!