0:00
Chris, welcome to episode 55 of the achieve workplace culture podcast, where we help you our listeners find actionable ways to strengthen your workplace culture. I'm joined by my two regular co hosts, Chris Downey and Wendy Loewen. Welcome to you both. Today we're going to be talking about the leader's role in creating a culture of wait for it, R, E, S, P, E, C, T, respect. Can you just hear Aretha Franklin singing that much better than I just sang it, belting out the lyrics in the background at the end of the podcast? We're going to summarize with some key takeaways that you can implement at the end of this podcast in your place of work. But we want to start with this topic of respect, R, E, S, P, E, C, T, and I want to start with a question to both of you. Have you ever this is a yes no question? Oh, I see, okay. Have you ever felt disrespect in the workplace?

0:57
Yes or no? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

1:00
Yes or No, perfect. So today, have you felt the opposite?

1:08
Yes, yes,

1:10
okay, disrespect, respect. We've all felt me too. I can answer the same as you both did. So we're going to talk about the leader's role today in creating an atmosphere in the workplace where people can sing, R, E, S, P, E, C, T, without feeling embarrassed about it, or feeling like it's disingenuous or rolling their eyes, but rather saying we got that, we can sing that here and here's why. So I'd like to get you both thinking about your own experience in the workplace when it comes to respect and disrespect? Is there anything in your own experiences of disrespect and respect that's actually in common by its opposite perhaps, like what was happening there, like how you were disrespected, you were respected. There's probably a key value, or a key thing that wasn't there in one place and was there in the other one. What is that?

2:03
I think this not to sort of go on with a song, but the the next line, find out what it means to me is really important, right? That respect means different things to different people. And so if you don't know what makes me feel respected and what's important to me, what I value, what I care about. I may feel you may disrespect me without knowing that you disrespect because

2:32
I don't know what is respect to you in the first place, right?

2:35
Okay, cool. So for me, part of it is, is knowing people on a certain level.

2:42
Yeah, I think when you you know highlighting, I think it builds on to find out what it means to me piece. But what was absent and what was present in those moments was honestly just being heard, being seen? Oh, yeah, exactly. That wasn't present when I was feeling disrespected, or at least the experience of it wasn't present. And when I was feeling respected, I was seen, I was heard, and I could say that I have been in situations of conflict and felt respected, and I have been in situations of conflict and felt disrespected, and I'm just using that as even a similar situation, and the missing piece was being seen and being heard.

3:23
Yeah, Chris, you've done a ton of work, but Wendy, you two, both of you have done a ton of work with workplaces where you've done lots of training on respect. You've worked with leaders around their role in creating a workplace where respect is not just a word or a policy but felt and experienced every day. What are some of the key things that you've noticed in that experience of working with workplaces where it becomes successful, we've created a culture of respect.

3:51
I think that when you have a culture where people feel appreciated, where they feel known, and where they feel valued, and there's an interest in who I am as a person, you feel respected. And when you have an idea that you you offer, you put out like you said, you can be in disagreement with somebody and still be respected if there's an appreciation and an understanding of my perspective. And I think when that's missing, then we open ourselves up to disrespecting people without meaning to it doesn't mean our intent was malicious, but we can disrespect people or make them feel like they don't have a voice, that they're not heard, they're not valued, and that's very It feels very disrespectful to be on the receiving end of that.

4:45
Sure. Yeah, I agree. I think part of the challenge with respect in the workplace has been a couple of things. One, respect is something that means so many different things to different people, but yet it's just this, assume, well, it's to each other's respect. What does that mean? So there's a lack of clarity around it. And often we try to write a policy which you need, you need a respectful workplace policy, and as if that policy is going to define how you're supposed to behave. So if you go and talk to people that have been in the workforce for last 20 years, there's times where people like, I don't know. Can I say something? Should I say something? I don't know? You almost create tension, right? By trying to create a script, I think, to your to your point. Wendy, it's not a matter of whether or not you will be offended at one point. You're going to be. It's gonna happen. And despite all your best intentions, you're going to leave someone feeling disrespected. Yeah, we need to start from that.

5:40
It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen, and I hate that, right for

5:43
sure, so let's not a respectful environment. Isn't one where that doesn't happen, because then that's just people not being genuine. Yeah, it's how you interact Once that occurs, that that's where respect lives and dies, right? And what? So Wendy, I think you actually authored this in one of our programs. It's, we got this, it's called the continuum of workplace interactions. And I think this really articulates it well, if you think about it as kind of arrows going in either direction, but tolerance right in the center. Now, I grew up at a time when I was taught, no, not everyone's like you, Chris. People think differently. You need to tolerate other perspectives. I was taught that that was respect, that's not respect, that's tolerance. And while that is the challenge with that, and there's room for tolerance, there's place for tolerance, but tolerance is a neutral state. Respect, I think, is what you were talking about. Wendy is an active state, interesting, and the only way you can get from tolerance to respect is through interaction, through learning, through understanding, because that would head to the kind of the one side. So I don't understand someone, or I don't agree, I'm interact with them, learn about it. We can move to respect, because if I tolerate and actually avoid someone, I don't talk to them, then I'm talking to others about them. Now I'm sliding down towards disrespect, because disrespect is active as is respect, and I think we need to be thinking about respective that active state, and that while we might be in conflict, you're still a human that has a perspective. You add value in this situation, and it's how we interact with each other where respect lives and dies.

7:20
Yeah, and you know, Chris, I'm thinking about our respectful workplace training, and one of the questions that we sometimes ask in a group setting is, and you got to follow it as a mental thought exercise, but if I had disrespected you, what would or you had disrespected me? If you had disrespected me, what would you not want me to do? And as soon as you start to think about that, well, I don't want you to assume the worst of me. I don't want you to talk about me to co workers, all of a sudden they start to see we start to think about the things that we actually are inclined to do, as opposed to, well, what would you want? I'd actually want to know so I have the ability to change my behavior, to apologize if needed, or even the knowledge of what disrespect to you is, right?

8:14
Yeah, well, that's that question. You take it probably a more deep way. I just say, if you offended someone or even irritated them. What do you want to know? Yeah, people unanimously always say, yes, okay, when you're offended, when you're irritated, do you let people know? Yeah, where story changes sometimes, maybe it all depends. Where it's like. The reality is, most issues of disrespect in the workplace, even that go to respect for workplace investigations, and I'm not talking about gross misconduct here, but like 98% of them started in that gray area where someone was offended and the person that was the offending party didn't even know about it, right, right? So one of the the most respectful things we can do in a situation where we actually feel disrespected is have a conversation about it, if it's safe to do so, that's the that's the caveat, share. And I think in so many cases, it's about, how can we create a workspace where people can have those conversations, learn from them? Now, this is important. I'll just use an example. I'm not responsible, Eric, for how you feel about what I say, until you tell me, once I know that, though I am responsible. So this is advice, if I speak in a certain way and he risks, you know, Chris doesn't really work for me, and, you know, maybe a little offended with that, like, okay, now I know. Now if I choose to continue that way, that's,

9:32
that's, I'm disrespecting, you know, how it impacts, right?

9:35
Yeah, and I think this is where we need to, that's a bit of a, you know, a deeper level, but that's throughout, once we understand each other's language. Now, if I choose to speak in a different way, that's when we can really get into that's where you generally don't see that. Generally people know how others want to be treated. They generally are open to that.

9:52
Yeah, we used to talk about, I used to do respectful workplace training too. And we used to talk about the golden rule, which is, do. Unto others as you would have done unto you. And then we said, but that's not actually really effective. When it comes to respectable workplace, you actually need the platinum rule, which is due unto others as they would have done unto them. What is it that they would like you talked about the individuality, or the individualness of respect. I need to know Wendy Loewen, so that I know what feels like respect to Wendy, or what feels like disrespect to Wendy, but you've also, the two of you both in other comments, highlighted the important collective nature of knowing how to deal with issues of respect in the workplace. So it seems to me like there's a balance here. This isn't all about individualness, but there's also a community or cultural aspect here. What is that? What do we need to do so we get our culture right, so that we can pay attention to the individual?

10:50
I think it starts with leadership to begin with. I think when you go back to what we're doing, how can a leader create a culture of respect? Right? Is one of the foundational pieces to creating a respectful environment is being curious, okay, even in the face of something that is confusing or even frustrating. So leaders demonstrating this behavior of interacting and leaning in on Curiosity is a starting point, right? And and I would say recognizing that behavior when it occurs and then addressing let's just just use the idea of curiosity, and maybe we observe someone not being curious, and maybe they're creating an assumption about someone, because that thing that was said, we could go, oh yeah, that's terrible to go talk to that person. Let me actually help me understand, you don't have getting at. So one of the things we often say in our respective workplace that which we permit, we promote. So if we permit someone to pass judgment on a co worker, right, we're kind of promoting that, right? So I think that starts with leadership. And what are we you have to talk about your culture is what you're prepared to tolerate. If we're seeing that, odds are we're actually tolerating some behavior, right?

12:05
That? Landon, yeah. And I think when we're talking about respect, we know what we tolerate what we don't, our values should guide that. We should be circling back to that. And I think when we're talking about respect, we're also talking about celebrating differences, whether that's age, ethnicities, backgrounds, perspectives, ideas that respect lives in the diversity that we have within our culture. Yeah, I'll share a story with

12:32
you that just made me think about this. When you talked about those shared values. And I was working for an organization a number of years ago, I wouldn't say we understood the values, but there were definitely values that were driving our work. And I remember there was a real issue that had gone on, mistakes had been made, millions of dollars had been lost, and one of our directors had kind of dysregulated in a meeting, and he was basically pushing the executive to say, who's getting fired for this, right? And I remember I was pretty, pretty new. And I was it was a tense moment in the boardroom, and I remember the VP of ops just he lowered his glasses. I looked at that director and said, That's not how we do things around here. And I just remember in that moment, I was like, Okay, let's figure this one out. You know what I'm getting at. But the point I make is he actually called out that's not what we do. We don't blame and fire. We this. It wasn't the most eloquent exchange, yeah, but that director knew there what

13:29
was acceptable and guarded a value. Guarded

13:31
it, and as someone that was relatively new to the leadership team, I was not a senior leader at all. Boy, was that comforting to see that the DevOps say that which what he was doing was demonstrating the values of what was tolerated what wasn't.

13:45
And that's that's such a great example of respecting the cultural values and not allowing one person to disrespect, actually the team or that group meeting or that setting. And as a leader, you've got to play that dual role of you respect the individual, but you also have to safeguard and respect the larger team.

14:07
Yeah, it is that. It is that balance, right? So it is that very individual. It's our interactions with each other, and what's our what are we collectively doing? So I really think a lot of that the leader is the curator of that right, creating those conditions and setting the standard.

14:26
So the people that listen to this podcast, many of them are leaders. They lead small teams, they lead large teams, and they are thinking about respecting the workplace, probably pretty often, even if they're not necessarily framing out that way, but they're thinking about how people are interacting. We want them to have listened to this podcast and walk away with one or two or three actionable questions or insights they can take with them on the issue of respect and creating a respectful workplace. I'm wondering if one of you could give us just a quick summary of one, two or three things that you heard in this podcast. Us today that you think bears focus on for any of our listeners as they walk back into the workplace, the first thing I want

15:07
to highlight is almost every situation of disrespect in the workplace occurs out of the awareness of the offending party, right? So we need to have conversations, but conversations that are rooted in curiosity and not judgment. I think that's something we haven't really talked about here. We always people that listen to the podcast will know we talk about shifting judgment to curiosity in these tense moments. We definitely need to default to curiosity and make sure we approach that behavior with curiosity so we can understand it, even if the behavior isn't acceptable. We want to make sure we understand the behavior so we can then say, okay, I hear that Here is what it looks like here, or in some cases, it might be, Oh, I hear that that's actually not disrespectful at all. That's fine. So address the behavior, but address it with either the offending party or they potentially offended, not anyone else. Let's start with those two. That's my that would be my first piece. Wendy, do you want to tag

16:08
one in here? Yeah, and I would say, lean into the differences. You know, get to know the people you're working with. Celebrate the differences and provide the opportunity for people to share who they are with their teammates.

16:20
One more thing to add to that, though, I want to highlight in the like I said, most issues of disrespect fall into that gray area, but to that point about that which we permit, we promote, we need to take action when we see potentially disrespectful behavior to make sure we understand it so it doesn't get carried away, because we don't, if we don't address it, it can get carried away and all of a sudden norms and practices. So not doing anything isn't an option.

16:53
That's right, because it promotes the behavior that you didn't do anything about. So if you're a leader, listening to this episode on respect, remember to take action when you see something that might be questionable, but start your action with a question that's curious. Don't make the assumption that somebody might have done something on purpose. Start with they probably didn't do it on purpose. Let's figure out what that is, and remember that respect is both individual and it's cultural with that. We're going to end this episode of the podcast, and we'll see you next time.