In June, we hosted our first ever certification program for HR leaders, senior managers, and executive coaches who wanted to learn how to run our Coaching for Respect™ (CfR) Process and become Certified as CfR Expert Coach | Facilitators. We had 16 people in the training cohort for two and half days at a georgous little hotel overlooking San Diego Bay, and it went really well. It was also really hard to do.
Why? Partly due to human nature. When two people “fall out of respect” for each other in the workplace, they aren’t necessarily itching to come back together and work it out. There’s a lot of emotion that comes from feeling disrespected or being accused of being disrespectful, and it needs to be unpacked and processed with the help of an expert before people can even begin thinking about reconciling.
The point is, you can’t just tell your employees who’ve lost respect for each other to apologize, shake hands, and get back to work. There’s much more work to be done before that can happen and result in an effective working relationship. So, being “that coach” who helps them come together and restore respect to their relationship isn’t easy.
Nevertheless, people always ask me for a short list of what they have to do to get two employees to respect each other again. So if I had to boil it down to a few key techniques and “must do’s”, then here’s what I’d say…
You’ll need to…
- Determine If They Still Want to Work Together. Both employees must want to continue working together. In other words, they haven’t experienced an “unrightable wrong,” that results in them feeling like they are totally fed up and done working with the person who disrespected them. The same goes for the person who’s being accused of being disrespectful. They can’t be dismissive of the other’s feelings; they have to acknowledge that something happened, and want to try to repair the relationship. So, if both are genuinely willing to work together then you have a shot at helping them restore mutual respect.
- Ensure They Have Some Respect for Each Other. All our research over the past 20 years makes it abundantly clear: it’s very difficult to work effectively with someone who you don’t respect. Now, you don’t have to like someone to work with them (we’ve all heard this before), but you do have to have some level of respect for them. Usually, it’s in these three areas: knowledge and experience (or position attained as a result); talents and skills; and the way they treat us and others. If you, as their coach/facilitator can get them focused on what they genuinely respect in each other, then getting them to take the next step to work together effectively is more likely to happen.
- Ensure They Own Their Behavior and Its Impact. Most people are not deliberately trying to be “assholes.” Instead, they’re just unconscious of themselves and to others’ reactions. It’s also likely no one has called them on their disrespectful behavior before. As the coach/facilitator you’ve got to help them (including the folks who feel disrespected and may be retaliating) understand how what they’re doing and saying is negatively impacting others and making it difficult to work with them.
- Coax A Genuine Apology. Interestingly, in most cases, when people genuinely apologize for their disrespectful behavior, we find that respect for them by their coworkers increases. So, if you can coax someone who’s being disrespectful into making what we at CRL call, a “Full Apology” to the person who feels disrespected – which includes owning what they did, acknowledging how it hurt the other person, and making no excuses – then you’ve increased the chances they’re going to restore respect to their relationship.
- Ensure They’re Willing to Change. If the people you’re coaching are unwilling to change their behavior, then restoring respect to the relationship will be nearly impossible. Sure, the person feeling disrespected could simply try to ignore the behavior and soldier on. But sooner or later they’ll decide the effort and emotional annoyance isn’t worth it, their performance will slip, mistakes will be made, and they’ll shut down and become a flight risk.
As you can imagine, none of these things is easy to do. They take solid coaching, de-escalation and facilitation skills, and a whole lot of patience. But if you’re able to complete each of these five requirements fully and with integrity, then the chances that your two employees will be able to work effectively and respectfully with each other again go up, way up.
Would you like to become Certified in the Coaching for Respect™ Process and help employees restore respect to their working relationships? Then reach out to us at Collective@RespectfulLeadership.org and we’ll help you sign up for the next certification program!
