You Can't Demand Respect - Respect is Reciprocal

You must give it to get it. Respect is something we all want to receive. And it's almost always reciprocal. We humans naturally feel obligated to return a good deed. Try this little experiment the next time you walk into a building (or the local mall) with a double set of entrance doors. Hold open the first set of doors for the people who are walking in behind you. I would be willing to bet money that someone will return the favour by holding open the other door for you. People instinctively want to reciprocate.

Think about how you can apply this theory to your workplace. An organization's success doesn't happen by chance. Great managers understand that it takes a concerted effort by all stakeholders to accomplish an overall objective or goal. Great managers understand that if their people don't perform to the best of their ability, the team will fail. Great managers understand that they should be enablers not executioners; that treating their employees with respect will reap organizational benefits.

Best-selling author Marcus Buckingham contends, in his latest book, The One Thing You Need to Know, that the chief responsibility of a great manager is not to enforce quality, or to ensure customer service, or to set standards, or to build high performance teams. Each of these is a valuable outcome. But these outcomes are the end result, not the starting point. The starting point is respecting each employee's talents. The challenge is to figure out the best way to transform these talents into performance.

It's X vs. Y Theory played out in real time. Over fifty years ago, Douglas McGregor, one of the forefathers of contemporary management thinking, began investigating the importance of people to business. He talked about two management styles. One style, which he referred to as the X Theory, was born in the 40's and 50's. X-style managers believed that workers where inherently lazy and didn't want to work. X-style managers felt that workers had to be browbeaten or coerced into doing the job. It was the classic "jump and I'll tell you how high" theory. It was the "do as I say and don't question authority" theory.

Then along came the 60's-the peace, love, dove and "down with the establishment" era. The youth of the day started asking questions. They wanted to know why everything had to be done a certain way. They didn't respond well to being told how to think and what to think and when to think. They were the Y Generation. As employees, they wanted to be included in the process. They wanted to have a say in how they were to go about meeting their organizations' goals and objectives. Bullying workers wasn't working so X-style managers needed to find a different way to manage. It was then that management started asking workers for their opinions and began incorporating some of their thoughts and ideas into organizational plans. And when they started to do that they soon discovered that this Y-style of managing got the same (or better) results but with far less frustration and confrontation. Y-style managers discovered that workers actually enjoyed coming to work and were self-motivated to perform well when they were dealt with respectfully.

“The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.” said Russian author and historian Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. People have a primal basic need to feel that they are appreciated, that their efforts count for something. People respond in kind. If you treat them with respect, then they will treat you the same way. Remember: You must give it to get it.

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