Repairing Work Relationships and Building Actively Respectful Cultures

Gregg Ward is the founder and executive director at the Center for Respectful Leadership

A new Georgetown University study reports that 70% of employees witness workplace incivility at least two to three times a month.

“It’s past time for leaders everywhere to acknowledge that respectful leadership — and fostering a respectful culture — are absolute business imperatives,” says Gregg Ward, the founder and executive director at the Center for Respectful Leadership and author of Restoring Respect.

As for why incivility occurs as frequently as the Georgetown study discovered is still a little mysterious.

“I wish I had a simple answer for you as to why we’re seeing so much more incivility now,” Ward says. “I can tell you that there’s a lot of research that indicates that since the Great Recession, work in general has become significantly more complicated and stressful and we’re all operating in what many organizational experts call VUCA — volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous— business environments all the time rather than just now and then.”

And to few people’s surprise, “The pandemic only made the situation much, much worse,” he says.

That stress has created a highly problematic byproduct.

“There’s an old saying, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” which may be true. But I would add that, ‘When the going gets tough, people get tough on each other,” Ward claims.

He explains his reasoning.

“When you’re stressed out about all sorts of things and you’re just trying to survive the latest business and marketplace craziness, your best intentions to be respectful tend to go by the wayside,” he begins. “It doesn’t help that our political leaders and our media stoke the fires of ‘other-ism,’ casting everything in black-and-white terms, making every issue an existential struggle and claiming we’re all part of immutable tribes and you’re either-with-us-or-against-us.”

Ward asserts that this creates a trickle-down affect.

“That kind of loaded talk seeps into the workplace in our social media and drives division,” he states. “This means if you already work in an environment that doesn’t value respect, then you’re likely experiencing behaviors that you may consider toxic.”

That produces a reaction.

“This causes you go into fight, flight or freeze mode and you may not be able to behave respectfully yourself. If you’re a leader, you’re setting the tone and your behavior demonstrates that it’s okay to be disrespectful,” Ward says.

That’s dangerous territory to enter and in which to settle, he warns.

“Two things we’ve learned after years of research and work in this field, disrespect is highly contagious and very expensive.”

The reality is understood so what now, what can put out the fires of unprofessionalism and inhumanity and become solutions for respectful workplaces?

“Business leaders have to start by acknowledging that disrespect is a real and serious problem,” Ward pointedly states. “Too many of them see respect as a nice-to-have rather than as a business imperative. Or they think that respect is a just a ‘warm-and-fuzzy.’ But the data is really clear: if you have a culture where people are treated with respect and are valued and appreciated for what they bring to the table, they will treat each other and your customers with respect too. That’s money in the bank.”

People are more inclined to do more than what is expected when they experience being treated professionally and gently as human beings.

“Employees who feel respected are also more likely to go the extra mile when asked and stick around when the going gets tough, which is good for retaining your best and brightest,” Ward says.

The process to achieve it however might be an unknown for many leaders.

“So how do we support organizational culture transformation around respect? We call it creating ARC’s — Actively Respectful Cultures,” Ward declares.

There are four phases, he says:

“The first phase is all about helping people understand that respect is good for business, morale and retention.

“Here you’re focusing on providing relevant, compelling data and information, which is out there. We use it all of the time and we’ll help you find data that is relevant to your industry.

“The next step is training everyone on the fundamentals of respect, like it’s a feeling, not a rational, cognitive thought — and simple, replicable tools and techniques which we call the Seven Respectful Do’s that everyone can use to create and support respectful work environments.

“At the same time, we’re coaching them on creating a higher level of Psychological Safety in their teams, where people feel comfortable respectfully taking an opposing view without being worried about being ridiculed or called out for not being a team player.

“The third phase focuses on accountability, ensuring that everyone is being held accountable for being respectful regardless of who they are.

“Anonymous employee surveys, with real metrics, are helpful here. We use them at the beginning of the process to create a baseline of understanding about where the organization is and then continue surveying as we roll out the ARC (Actively Respectful Culture) development process. But senior management needs to hold itself accountable for being respectful too.

“This means leadership needs to be willing to operate under what Stanford Professor Robert Sutton calls, The No Asshole Rule. If you’ve got someone deliberately being an a**hole in your organization — no matter how important or valuable they are — you have to get rid of them.

“If you don’t, they will undermine everything you’re saying about building a respectful culture.

“In the final phase of creating an ARC (Actively Respectful Culture), you have to celebrate respectful behavior, make sure that everyone knows about the folks who are behaving respectfully and how people and the company are tangibly benefitting from this.

“Actually, you’ll want to do this throughout all four phases, which all overlap each other. Then, of course, you rinse and repeat.”

Reliably determining what types of communication — expressed or unexpressed — and additional actions that build respect as an asset or tank morale are important tasks.

“Every time we run one of our Respectful Leader Workshops, we ask the participants to give us a list of workplace behaviors that they consider disrespectful,” Ward says.

He details what he and his team most often read and hear.

“The most common mentions include interrupting, demeaning name-calling, abusive language, being distracted, failing to communicate and blaming and shaming.

“Leadership has to step in and nip-this-stuff-in-the-bud before it gets out of hand,” he advises. “There’s a way to do this respectfully but you have to pay attention and be intentional. But in the larger context, everyone in the organization must come to common agreement on what is considered respectful behavior, stick to it and hold everyone accountable for it as well.”

There will always be certain people in authority or power with little patience or time for people's emotions, feelings and basic human needs. Being expected to pay attention to concerns and get involved is looked as an aggravation.

“They’re the people we at the Center are frequently asked to ‘fix’ by HR and leadership,” Ward says. “What we’ve found is that most of them aren’t sociopaths — deliberately engaging in a**hole behavior. Instead, they’re what one of my colleagues calls a ‘workplace warrior,’ i.e. they’re hell bent on getting things done, achieving their goals and not necessarily worried about who they roll over on the way.”

He describes the approach that is taken to gain understanding and learn what can be done to inspire progress.

“We first try to determine if they’re willing to be coached on respect, and if they are, then we examine the impact of their disrespectful behavior on themselves and others and try to help them discover ways of behaving that meet or exceed accepted norms for respect within the organization,” Ward says.

He doesn’t claim that he and his organization will be able to assist every professional. The reality won’t allow it.

“Some leaders are coachable, others aren’t,” Ward states. “You’ll want to move those that aren’t out of leadership roles, because they’re going to undermine the culture no matter what else you do.”

Ward mentioned earlier that there are “proven ways to nip disrespect in the bud and on the spot.” He addresses how this can reliably work.

“I wrote about this recently in our newsletter. In summary, we teach managers to use a proven, time-tested technique originally developed by the Center for Creative Leadership where I served as an executive coach for nearly a decade.

“It follows the acronym S.B.I.-R.: Situation, Behavior, Impact and Request. You can do it on the spot provided no one else can hear you doing it. Otherwise, you’ll have to take that person aside when the time is right.

“Also, as you do it, you may notice them becoming defensive. You can handle this using the H.E.A.R. Techniques: Hear the Emotion in their voice and body, Acknowledge those emotions, then add in Respectful Remarks.

“Respectful Remarks let the person know that you respect them for the positive and productive things they bring to the table and that you give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t intend to disrespect others,” Ward says.

The approach and process have a high success rate.

“Nine times out of ten, the person will accept the feedback, stop engaging in the disrespectful behavior and occasionally even apologize,” Ward has found. “Managers have been using these techniques for nearly 20 years now and they consistently work. They will not, of course, work on someone who is deliberately being what professor Sutton at Sanford calls an a**hole.”

Ward believes and has stated that it's every employee's “inalienable right” to be treated with respect. Some leaders and critics may argue, “What is respect? How do you define it because we do treat all our employees with respect, unless they show they are not worthy of it.”

Ward has a reply. 

“Our definition of respect is simple: treating others with genuine courtesy, civility, and decency regardless of who they are,” he says.

“I’ll admit, it may not be easy to do sometimes, especially if the person in question is being disrespectful. But treating everyone with respect is a way of being that helps relationships and business in many ways. You also feel better about yourself when you operate from a place of respect for all,” Ward states.

“In regard to leaders who say they treat employees with respect unless they show they are not worthy of it, I would ask them simple questions,” he says. “If you behave in such a way that causes others to decide you’re unworthy of respect, even though you don’t think you did anything wrong, don’t you want them to give you a chance to explain yourself? Don’t you want others to hold off judging you as guilty of being disrespectful until you’ve had a chance to prove otherwise?”

In short, he hopes they remember they are no different than the people they lead, “We all want the benefit of the doubt.”

The rationalizations authority, power and anyone really makes have holes in them.

“What I’m trying to say here is no one wants to be treated disrespectfully just because they’ve made a made a mistake; they want a chance to either clear their name or apologize,” Ward says.

He doesn’t believe that leaders who who insist they already treat their people with professionalism, ethics and kindness are being honest with themselves. He contends that the evidence would support his viewpoint.

“I will bet my soul at the crossroads that those leaders' employees don't believe that they are always treated respectfully or that those leaders even know the definition of respect,” Ward says. “So how does leadership come to accept that this isn't a question up for debate?”

In reality, he states, “It's a reasonable expectation of a standard,” adding that “Leaders are not the ones who grade whether respect is being extended at an elite-level of practice. It's the employees who get a stronger say as to whether it is being practiced and successfully.”

Ward comes to ask what he knows is a critically valuable question.

“Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone and wouldn’t it be better for morale and retention if we started first with respect for all instead of having all of the drama that comes with an out-of-date requirement that employees have to earn respect?”

He ends our conversation with a claim he insists research proves factual.

“Respect is contagious,” he boldly says. “If you treat people with respect, in most cases they’ll reciprocate with respect and they’ll treat others — including your customers, with respect.”