7 Ways To Show The Respect Employees Crave

There’s one attainable way to get employees to do their best possible work, teams to hit goals and colleagues to support your ideas.

Show them all some respect.

Respect from the boss is a research-proven want to improve just about everything in the workplace.

Rudeness: The Enemy of Respect

And while respect is as important as ever, it seems more difficult than ever. U.S. employees experience 74,758,050 acts of incivility per day in the workplace, according to SHRM data. Even worse, long-standing research found that rudeness is about as contagious as the common cold.

That’s where respect — especially between managers and employees – comes in.

“Roughly one out of 25 colleagues … feel they are not respected, that they don’t belong, or perhaps even feel inferior. It’s hard to imagine that people who feel this way are able to do their best work or reach their potential,” said Joseph Folkman in an episode of the 90th Percentile Podcast. He’s the president of Zenger/Folkman and coauthor of The Trifecta of Trust: The Proven Formula for Building and Restoring Trust.

Folkman and his (dare we say, respected) colleague, the late Jack Zenger, did a multi-year study of almost 5,000 employees to find the state of respect. More importantly, they found seven behaviors that most likely make employees feel they’re respected.

Here’s what to do:

1. Keep a Finger on the Pulse

In the throes of managing projects, processes and people, many managers struggle to find time to take an interest in their employees’ personal lives. Some prefer to keep a distance, believing they can’t be friends with subordinates.

But the researchers say you don’t have to be friends to show concern, compassion and interest in employees’ lives. Ideally, you just want to let employees know you’re there if they want to talk about sensitive issues or deep concerns.

Make a point to reach out when you don’t need anything and ask questions such as, “Do you feel we are making it possible for you to balance your work and your personal life?” or “How is your family doing at this moment?”

2. Establish Trust

Here’s the bad news: If one person on your team doesn’t trust you, it lowers the level of trust from the rest of the team. Intentional or not, the non-truster can easily poison the well.

The good news: You can build trust by establishing positive relationships, sharing expertise and knowledge, and being consistent. The binding agent here is consistency. Being a positive realist and sharing with the intent to help, not brag, all the time helps employees understand what they can expect from you.

3. Make Peace

Conflict is usually part of healthy teams. Respectful conflict sparks creativity and improves problem-solving. But petty conflict can break down teams and build a culture of disrespect.

While managers want to let respectful conflict do its magic, they want to stop destructive conflict early. Ignoring issues — or just letting employees “work it out” — can cause significant damage. Use an even hand — the same level of involvement for all team members — to mend conflicts and maintain harmony.

4. Balance Results with Realities

Employees feel disrespected when the boss prioritizes results over all else — most especially, their well-being. For instance, a manager demands overtime when she knows an employee is struggling with childcare.

The best leaders balance results with the realities of the people who produce them. We refer to work/life balance so often these days, it’s practically cliché. But it’s real — and respected managers continually check that their employees are achieving it, recognizing that sometimes work gets more attention and sometimes life gets more attention.

5. Be Open to Differences

Just asking employees for their opinion is a sign of respect. But failing to listen to, accept different perspectives or implement their ideas is the exact opposite.

Leaders want to ask for, listen to and engage with employees‘ opinions. Even better, encourage them to bring perspectives that challenge yours to the table. It proves that you’re open to new ideas and interested in understanding more.

6. Give Honest Feedback

Honest feedback — even when it’s critical — given directly and in the right way builds a culture of respect.

Feedback should be a fair and balanced reflection of what’s going on. For instance, if someone makes mistakes 10% of the time, then you should give 10% negative feedback. The rest should be positive feedback.

Let employees know you see what they do well, not just where there’s room for improvement.

7. Embrace Diversity

In their research, Zenger and Folkman often heard employees who felt disrespected say, “I’m different” or “I don’t fit in.”

Many leaders unintentionally make employees feel that way through unconscious biases, personal blind spots and confirmation biases. Bottom line, many leaders tend to under- or overrate their ability to treat everyone equally.

Fixing this can be difficult because we’re usually blind to our biases. So ask trusted colleagues — with differing perspectives — to check your decisions and behaviors for bias.