Episode 3 - Respect in Leadership

The hosts of the show discuss the importance of respect in leadership and how it can lead to self-motivation and a positive work environment. They highlight the need for leaders to earn respect and not just be liked by their followers. They also discuss the importance of transparency and communication in gaining respect. The hosts provide examples of how leaders can earn respect, such as implementing a mission statement and valuing the contributions of staff. They also discuss the negative consequences of not being respected as a leader, such as decreased engagement and productivity. Welcome to episode 3 of the Leave, Follow or Get Out of the Way show here with the hosts John and Chris. What are we talking about today Johnny? We're talking about respect. Respect. It's a good topic, respect. Respect for leaders. As an employee, do you respect the leader of the organisation? It's a concept that has been picked up in quite a few other different forums but I think it's one of the foundations of soliciting self-motivation from your staff. But there's a whole raft of goodness that comes out of having staff respect you as a leader and we're going to explore that today. So what do you reckon Johnny? Why do you think respect is important to have or to gain from your followers? I think respect is very important because it helps you drive the strategic direction of the company if they respect you and gives you an authority to make good decisions. It's basic information that you receive from the organisation. So that's why it's important for the respect because if they don't respect you, they're just going to lie to you and try to manipulate you to get their way. It's a pretty powerful thing because it underpins followers' decision making, right? If followers respect you as a leader, they're naturally going to be self-motivated to want to uphold your intentions because in the view of them, they're going to think you're a good bloke or you're a good leader overall, right? And coupled with that, if they respect you as a leader, they're going to be proud to be working with you. It's not a burdensome arrangement. I mean, let's think of the contrary, right? If they don't respect you, what good is that apart from the fact that they want their pay check, they're going to turn up and not particularly be keen or engaging or care necessarily about the workplace and the outcomes. What's a good point? I've seen this in a few examples, Johnny, where even through gaining respect from your followers as a leader, even if staff do not agree with you, with your views and direction, through respect of you as an individual, they'll still be willing to uphold and satisfy your direction and even entertain the idea. And I've seen that in a few workplaces. I think the reason why staff don't agree with their own decisions is because they don't understand the reason why that decision's been made and what it impacts because people will only see their side of the salary and don't see the full picture of the organization which the leader of the organization does. And so the leader doesn't explain why that decision was done. The people make their own assumptions of why it was done. And most of the time it's wrong because most of the time the leader's intention is to keep everybody happy and make a good working environment, right? For sure. So he's just trying to get rid of the gossip around the place because that's what we're trying to avoid, right? We'll explore how, or some concepts of how a leader can earn respect, and I'll use that word earn in particular. But I've been in previous workplaces where followers didn't necessarily have the same perspective of, say, the system of an organization like a leader or a middle manager would have and thus going back to disagreements of view, albeit having respect to uphold those directions of the leader, people were still willing to entertain the idea because they respected me as a leader. And one of those situations was through the introduction of a mission statement in a workplace. That doesn't sound like much. I know a lot of people would use mission statements as a, what would you call it, a signposting tool or a show-off piece as opposed to actually a strategic direction in some instances. And we're not here to talk about mission statements today, but in this particular situation, through introducing one and a staff member not necessarily agreeing that they actually value-add, I legitimately told this person, hey, just humour me. Let's go with it. He's like, no worries, Chris. No problem. Because we had, it was a mutual respect too, mind you. But there's one concept and one danger here about respect before we get into the how, Johnny, and that's in particular the difference between being respected and being liked. Now, what would you feel, the concept of being everyone's friend is not necessarily counter, sorry, not necessarily productive, right, in this instance? Yeah. I've read this lesson many times over the past. And, like, rule number one, don't employ your friends. It's as simple as that. Because, for one, how are you going to fire them? How are you going to terminate them? You know, it's simple. Let's just destroy that relationship right there and then. So, you just don't do it, right? And, like, employees may think that your administration won't go out and drink or whatever with them. But at the end of the day, you're the boss. At the end of the day, you pay their bills and you keep their family happy. And if you don't pay their bills, they're going to be crazy. They're not going to be happy, right? So, you know, that's the relationship it is, the force it is. And you just got to have to, when you're a leader, you just got to accept that sometimes you may have to be lonely. You might be, you know. It's a concept to get up front, right? Is that we're not here talking about being people's friends as a friendship between a follower and a leader. It makes for conversations to be more emotive and biased, right? Let alone cliques and... Oh, cliques and, yeah, yeah. Then you've got the group think and you've got the politics. It's kind of a disaster. So, let's talk about how. We've talked about how respect as a principle is important as a leader. What can you do? What are some concepts, Julian, that you think one could instill in a workplace in order to earn respect? And again, I'm saying earn as a key worker. So, respect is about what you do with your feet. It's not much, but it's what you're coming up with. It's a really good concept. Yeah, it is. So, you can set up your mission statement. It's not about what they write on the board. It's what you actually do to implement that mission statement in the workplace. The same thing is about your feet. So, if you go and say 6.30 to 3.30 on a Friday, then you've got to be there 6.30 and leave at 3.30 on a Friday. If you expect everybody else to do it, you have to follow your own rules. So, if you make the rules, you live by your own rules. So, that's one way of getting respect. Well, it's a human construct, and without stating the obvious, one has to appreciate the fact that followers are humans. They've got thoughts. They've got feelings. And those thoughts and feelings create perceptions. And respect is a result of those perceptions, isn't it? Yeah. If people are dependent on you, how are you dealing with their respect of you? What and how you approach different issues and different topics with them? And, you know, that's just the way it is, unfortunately. I've found in order to gain respect as a leader, you have to be focused on ensuring that the staff are genuinely valued. And that doesn't mean buying them a hand every week or gifts or anything like that, right? It's about actually allowing them to contribute to the system of the workplace, allowing them to have a view, seeking their thoughts and contributions. And it doesn't necessarily mean letting them be in charge. No, you're the decision maker still, but you're consulting them. And the ironic thing about that is allowing them to feel valued by having a view that's actually taken on board is that they will have ownership of the workplace. And they will know that you fostered that ownership of the workplace. They've allowed to contribute to it, and there's a whole heap of dividends from that, right? Pride. And then that's one way I found stuff like that. All right, cool. So what happens, Chris, there, is the direction from up top is one thing, and the people from underneath you want to go another way. How do you deal with that? Now, this is interesting, and I've got an example a little later. But sometimes, or often, rather, as a leader, right, you have to sell a message that is contrary to the accepted opinions and status quo of the public. It's the hard news. Yep, hard news. And irrespective of it being hard news, transparency and being up front and being clear with your staff and the reasons why and selling the hard message and talking to the hard message to them is sometimes the best way to do it. The worst case, and this will probably make it more clear, the worst case is if you have a higher-up intent and you deliver it to your staff with no consultation, rationalisation or reason from a systems perspective on why we're going this way. If you start saying, that's it, too bad, so sad, without them being able to voice their spleen, their followers being able to voice their spleen, that is counterproductive. That will earn you disrespect. So what happens when higher-ups say, we have to get rid of 20% of the staff, Chris, that's happening next month, right? You're going to go and sell it, the reason why we're cutting the budget to 20% and the staff, and unfortunately they're going to be made redundancies, and someone's people are going to have to compensate, unfortunately, from the boss, and unfortunately we're going to have to make such and such calls. Is that how you sell it? Or will you just bring them in and say, mate, I'm sorry, mate, you're the bad guy, see the redundancy, see it out, and then not say anything, and then communicate. That's kind of the worst case, no? That is worse. Because people then go, what happened, sorry? Yeah? Well then, there comes the concept of transparency. The worst case is if you bring someone in and you say, you go on, see you later, and there happens to be a good work-out, but surely the organisation hasn't got the budget to support it. There'll be a rationale, right, as to why this bad news activity has to occur. There'll be some reason for it. You don't do these things willy-nilly. The worst case is if you go and sack somebody without putting the news up front and the transparency of, hey, the organisation has done a review of the budget. Truth be told, guys, we're not going to be able to afford all of you. We're going to have to reduce numbers. We don't want to, but our hands are tied because of X, Y, Z. We need to reduce costs, we need to increase margins, otherwise none of us will have a job. The organisation's going down. Now, you start with that message up front with clear transparency, with the forums and the opportunity for people to vent their spleen, argue, probably even curse at you. You will be better off in the long run than just simply slashing. And before you know it, you've got one worker who is still there going, hey, little Johnny just got the sack last week. Am I under hook? What's going on? What's happening? And then they speculate and there's a clear delineation between what's going on in the minds of the bosses, what's going on in the minds of the worker bees. That's the worst case. So you've got to be up front, you've got to be transparent. And people in the long run will respect you. Sure, the person who gets sacked won't be particularly happy at all and they'll have allegiances with other colleagues who will be upset. But you've proven that you're doing it because there's a reason for the higher grade of good of the organisation. Yeah, but as a leader, do you get more respect or do you get less respect? Because this topic is about respect, right? So you are, if you just can't kill him, not kill him, but I'm talking about determination, employment determination, do you get less respect or more respect? You get less respect because you are not communicating your reasons and actions. If you're not communicating. If you are communicating, then people will respect you and understand. This is what's going on. Unfortunately, we haven't met the budget. We have to let somebody go. But then the question is, why are you hiring in the first place? You know what I mean? Or perhaps the circumstances are different. So we're six months to go and we're going up and unfortunately now we're going down into a recession. So we've got to make some changes in the organisation. If you facilitate a forum to allow that question and answers, to allow transparency, then that will give massive dividends for what is a hard situation. I've got an example, John. All right, this is helpful. It's close to home because it only happened about two weeks ago. We have contractors at my workplace and for those who have listened in previous episodes, I'm with the Royal Australian Air Force. And in my particular workforce, without going into too much detail, we had a contractor who was working with us. When I say with, they were part of the team, albeit a contractor. They were a fellow colleague. Anyway, overnight he was given a phone call, don't come in the next day. He was actually a really good worker. He actually tolerated a lot of the organisation's shortfalls and disorganisation. And in all our view of me and my colleagues, was a valued member of the team. And overnight he was given a sack. And still to this day it is not clear why. So my middle manager, for example, hasn't even had a deliberate conversation with the workers as to what's going on, what's happening, having a chat about it. The upper management seemed to just cull and cut him off. There was something about a risk being realised and some fluffy excuse without actually getting the opportunity to facilitate a Q&A. And what this has caused is because of the lack of comms, the middle manager that oversees this gentleman that got the sack, she appears to not even have his back or didn't even necessarily rationalise, hey, I fought for this bloke but we couldn't sustain him because of X, Y, Z, it's just a bad circumstance. None of that. So now all our contractors, whom are quite vulnerable for being slashed because of just the workplace rules compared to, say, full-time PIMS employees, they're all on eggshells. What's going on? No one knows what's going on. There's a disparity between what happens with the executives, what happens with the workers, who's next, why did he get the cull? He was actually perceived as a very good worker, a high worker, did overtime all the time. And then we have what appears to be an irrational firing from basically shooting at the hip executives. Now, the issue with that is that that's left a massive gap for us followers to speculate what the heck happened. And as a result, we don't have respect for our middle leaders or our executives because they don't appear to have our back, they don't appear to have a rationale behind it. It is so bizarre. Now, this is an example of worst case, right? I don't know if you've seen stuff like this. Yep, yeah. One of the jobs, I was on holiday actually, one of the jobs. What happened? I was working at a company and I was on holiday for two weeks in Fiji and like half way through, I got text messages on my phone saying, my boss said, John, you're right, you may have to cut, you're coming back to work. I'm like, yeah, no worries, cool. I come back and half my team is gone. What? Yeah, they, in 2008, GFC, they got rid of all the contractors and half the staff. So, and I came in and I was like, what happened? And they were like, they got everybody upstairs and they let everybody go at once. And I'm like, you're lucky you're here, John. I'm like, alright. That was the shut up and put up. That was the shut up and put up, yeah. So that's the thing, because I'm sure there's a lot of organisation leaders, if not owners, that are listening in. They'll think, you know what, bugger it. I don't care what staff think. I'm the bloody boss. They follow what I say. They do as I say. Otherwise, go see the door. Go get out of here. You're fired. That autocratic situation. And sure, hey, Johnny, you'll be able to make people work, right, but domineering, not taking into account people's wishes or opinions, not necessarily following their opinions or wishes, but at least allowing them to feel valued and gain that respect. Sure we have to counter for that. Yeah. It's really short-term thinking, right? You want your company to be not like a family environment, but like a, well, it's got to be, like, respectful and people are going to be happy and people are going to want to come to work, right? Being told, how long have you been on the toilet and stuff like that, is just, you know, you're not living in the 1700s anymore. So there's, like, the boss has got to respect you and you've got to respect the boss. And that's probably the best way to go forward in most companies, anyway. Well, let's face it. If you don't look after your workers and you lose them, high turnover... It's going to happen anyway. They're going to walk up, right? It's going to happen. Yeah, they're going to walk, guarantee. In the marketplaces today, they're walking because there's more jobs, more opportunities, more pay everywhere around you. It's the margins. So the labour shortage is very short. But if you can reduce that rate... If you can reduce that rate by engaging with them and knowing what's happening and keeping them aboard, it makes self-intention really good. And you reduce your losses. Losses and risks. Re-training. Re-training. That's a pretty good explanation there, I think, Johnny. And, yeah, what we talked about. So respect is a very valuable thing from a long-term perspective. We talked about allowing your staff to feel valued, have transparency in the workplace between the executives and leaders versus the followers to gain that respect. But I think we might wrap it there. Yeah, but next topic, what do you reckon, Johnny? Yeah, next topic is very good. Next topic is on how to set direction and how to steer an organisation to the way you want to go. We're going to talk about a practitioner's discussion of how a leader can steer an organisation. And change management is a whole big topic that we won't necessarily look into yet. We can pick that up in pieces. But if you've got a direction or a change to instil, let's actually walk through it and talk through it. That's what we'll talk about next time. All right. That's the end of our episode three of... Leave, follow or get out of the way. Thanks for listening, guys.