Back to School? Be Respectful!
Every August when I was a kid, as I headed out each morning to start yet another year of school, my parents commanded me to “be respectful.” My teachers were to be respected, my coaches, the principal, the nurse, the school staff, and yes, even the crossing guard – all were to be treated with respect by me. Never mind the kids, my parents told me. The ones who taunted and bullied me at the bus...
Disrespectful Behavior at Work: When the Facts Offend
Recently, I gave a talk at a major HR conference where I referred to data demonstrating that, while the frequency of and sensitivity to disrespectful behavior at work has been steadily increasing over the last 20 years, there appears to have been an uptick following the election of Donald Trump. I concluded this segment of my talk by saying, “I think we can agree that from an HR perspective,...
Respect Your Elders
A good friend – a middle aged man – recently took a job at a local Starbucks to bring in some extra cash. He’s twice the age of everyone else who works there, which doesn’t seem to bother him or them at all. But, when a young colleague – someone most would consider a “millennial” – tried to coach him on using the point of sale system, she got frustrated with his slowness and...
Upset? Angry? Try Respect.
Right before Christmas, we discovered we had been lied to by a sales rep at our cell phone store and, furious, we went back in January to return some unwanted merchandise we’d been told we “had to buy.” But the “lead” customer service rep who was processing our return – despite knowing we’d been lied to – acted as if we were the liars and refused to treat us with respect. And when we got even...
Respect For Opponents?
Respect can surprise us in interesting ways. How many of us would have the courage to deliberately lose an important race to an opponent who’d made a mistake? In December of 2012, in an extraordinary show of respectful sportsmanship, Ivan Fernandez Anay – a long-distance runner from the Basque region of Spain who was running in second place in an important race – deliberately...
Hierarchy Plays A Role in Disrespect
The manager and subordinate I’d been working with as a mediator were both angry with each other. The subordinate felt disrespected by the manager and vice versa. But, while the manager shrugged it off as the employee being too sensitive (and disrespectful), the employee was stuck in a cycle of feeling disrespected and powerless, growing more and more enraged each time the manager failed...
When Does Public Disrespect Deserve A Response?
I’m disturbed by some publicly disrespectful behavior we observed in a department store recently. While checking out, we noticed a little girl – perhaps 2 years old – running around behind the checkout lines while her mother, her aunt and grandmother, paid the cashier. The child ran right behind a store Associate – a girl maybe 18 years old – who was assisting at...