Tag Archive for: respect

respect

5 Actions that Build Respect

The truth about becoming a good leader: you don’t need to be loved or feared. You need people to respect you.

You can tell whether you have someone’s respect by how they act around you. Think of your employees, colleagues, or even your friends:

respect

Do they hide the truth, slow-roll implementation of your decisions, whisper behind your back, say what you want to hear but do something

OR

Or do they do the opposite: provide candid assessments, give you bad news immediately, give you their discretionary effort, and let you know when they disagree?

Leaders can struggle to gain respect. People will do what you say because you are their boss, but no one admires you for your position in the hierarchy, your paycheck, or the credentials on your wall. Without respect, you are not a leader. You are simply a person putting on a management exhibition.

Here are five ways to earn respect:

1. Follow the Socrates principle. Socrates gave everyone he was speaking with his full attention. You communicate that you value the other person and what they are saying. Multi-tasking conveys the opposite: you are less important than the TikTok notification that just popped on my phone. What you hoped was saving time creates miscommunication, failure work, and disengagement.

2. Observe the Platinum Rule. Treat people as they wish to be treated. Doing so means that you need to get to know them and their interests, concerns, and expectations. You don’t want to be the creep who tries to hug everybody because you like hugs.

3. Be the Exemplar. People learn best from example. Model the behaviors you expect from everyone on your team. When you don’t do that, people see you as a hypocrite. If the rule’s not important enough for you to follow, get rid of it.

4. Use common-sense consistency. People believe the standards and rules are arbitrary when you are not consistent. You cannot have rules that apply to some people and not others or that you enforce sometimes but ignore the rest. At the same time, people expect you to account for extenuating circumstances with sound judgment.

5. Be worthy of trust. You gain trust through competence, character, and reciprocity. If you are not competent, you won’t be able to do what you are supposed to do. Without character, people won’t believe that you will do what you say you will do. When you take, take, take while your employees suffer poor pay and conditions, people see you as a bully or thief rather than a leader they want to follow.

Higher workplace respect leads to lower anxiety and stress, less time wasted in dispute resolution, fewer misunderstandings, and smaller amounts of failure work. What would change if you cut in half the time you waste dealing with these problems?

Do you want to improve how your subordinate leaders earn respect? Schedule a call. https://callSLA.as.me/Chris

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Working with Chris has helped me visualize and communicate more clearly, gain the buy-in that inspires greater performance, and put my subordinates in positions to succeed.
Andy Weins, CEO, Green Up Solutions





Want respect? Do this first

If you want people to respect you as a leader, give them your undivided attention.

Yes, you are busy and have a lot on the plate.

Get over it.

Take these five actions when you are communicating.

Listen to what they say. 

Not just the words, but the emotions and interests behind them.

Paraphrase.

Ask if you understood them correctly.

Look them in the eyes (not creepily or uncomfortably, though!).

See what their body language is telling you.

On a video call, make sure they have eye-level contact with you, too. 

Do not multi-task.

When you do, you are telling someone they are unimportant.

Take action.

Let people know with your deeds that you have heard them.

These five actions build the habit of giving people your full attention.

You earn respect by giving it, first.

Which of these five actions will you work on next?

6 Leadership habits that get immediate results

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal quoted a tech expert who predicted that technology would soon replace mid-level leaders. 

After all, he suggested, if technology can monitor employee productivity, what’s the point of middle management?

There are two matters to consider before you jump on the bandwagon.

First, your apps will have a hard time addressing one of the biggest productivity drains that companies face: presenteeism.

Presenteeism is the practice of being at work and doing things to look busy but are not boosting your mission and impact.

More importantly, productivity apps do not inspire people to contribute their best to your team’s success.

CEOs make a big mistake in believing that the role of mid-level leaders is to make sure people are doing their jobs. 

If that’s the case, then you’ve either hired the wrong people or failed to gain their buy-in.

The first line team leaders and mid-level managers make or break your culture, productivity, and performance.

This level is where people gain buy-in or not. 

This level is where people decide whether they will do only the minimum or contribute their best and most authentic selves to your mission.

Gallup reports that 67% of Americans report being unengaged at work — that’s 67% presenteeism.

Your top-quality first line and mid-level leaders turn that number around so that people are spending two-thirds of their time or more contributing their best selves.

You will inspire people to contribute their best, willingly, to your team’s success by practicing these six habits.

First, be authentic so that you lead as your best self, prune away average habits that hold you back, and build the right team around you. 

Second, follow the three core principles of trustworthinessrespect, and stewardship so that people believe in you, bring out the best in each other, and your team gets better each day.

Next, practice empathy so that you can see yourself and your team through the eyes of others and stay ahead of the competition, avoid blindsides, and bring out the best in each teammate.

Fourth, take responsibility so that you can promote innovation and sensible risk-taking and hold people accountable for results and values … without feeling like a jerk.

Fifth, connect the why so that everyone knows exactly how their work contributes to success. Once this happens, your team will do what’s right, the right way, without you having to watch.

Finally, multiply your experiences. Personal experience is the best teacher of leadership. It is also the school of hard knocks, and the tuition can be costly. Learning from others lets you gain many lifetimes of experience very quickly to make sound decisions and avoid expensive mistakes.