“R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB, oh”
I trust you’re familiar with this song from Otis Redding, revisited and made famous by Aretha Franklin in 1967.
Aretha brilliantly flipped the original script to turn it into both a civil-rights and feminist anthem. She turned a tired, hardworking man seeking respect for being the breadwinner into a woman demanding the recognition she deserves from her man.
She was right to pay attention to it.
Years in the corporate world taught me that things quickly go south when people start to feel disrespected. Fear turns into anger, yelling and threats take over, and no conversation is safe anymore.
So, mutual respect is the foundation for any meaningful collaboration at work.
When it’s established and mutual, respect feels like second nature. You don’t even think about it.
But what should you do when it doesn’t seem to stick? Should you demand respect, as Aretha did?
It rarely works.
How can you even respect coworkers who sometimes behave in ways you don’t understand, seem self-centered in their interests, and let you down occasionally?
The good news is that you don’t have to 100% align with someone else to gain enough mutual respect.
But you need to shift your mindset to one critical notion and ask yourself:
What do we share in common?
To illustrate the power of understanding common grounds, let me share a 180-turn that happened once between two teams in our organization:
We were experiencing growing tensions over roles and responsibilities, and I could see an increasing sentiment of mutual anger and broken dialog from both teams. We decided to take on the problem and created a mini-summit that would be the opportunity to clarify matters.
But before diving into the details, we met with both groups in two separate rooms. We asked them to do one thing: articulate what they wanted for the company’s future and write down their goals.
Once they had listed and organized their key points, we asked each group to swap rooms. They discovered what the other group had come up with and were stunned. It was all nearly identical.
What an eye-opener for everyone! Each group now realized how similar their thinking was. The politics and inner fights they had been through now looked very embarrassing.
With this exercise, we established common ground, and each team now understood how closely aligned they were to each other.
The rest of the summit was a breeze, and the outcome was successful.
Moral of the story?
When struggling with a lack of mutual respect, I don’t focus much on our differences anymore. Instead, I step back and look for common ground with the other party: which values, aspirations, or goals are we sharing?
It goes a long way in building enough respect and working well together.