Courageous Leader BLUEprint® – 18th edition
Welcome back leaders!
This is the eighteenth edition of our Courageous Leader BLUEprint® newsletter.
Every three weeks, you’ll get quick, thoughtful leadership insights without the fluff.
Read time: less than 5 minutes
Our topic today is respect.
Respect is the courage to honor others, even when it’s difficult.
People have a genuine need to feel seen, heard, and valued – in other words, respected.
We’re not necessarily talking about being nice.
Respect is more of an attitude, an approach.
It’s about communicating to other people that they have value through our words and behaviors – for who they are, not because of their title or perceived usefulness.
Respect takes courage because it requires:
Slowing down
Honoring others
Choosing people over convenience
Many well-intentioned leaders can get respect wrong.
Here are some common mistakes we see:
Interrupting because we’re busy
Talking about people, not to them
Rolling eyes or sighing while someone is speaking
Multitasking while someone is speaking
Responding before hearing the full story
Showing favoritism
Using inappropriate sarcasm or jokes
Disrespect typically isn’t loud or obvious, like verbal abuse.
Generally, it is subtle, and disguised as impatience, dismissiveness, or indifference.
Over time, the effects of this can be devastating to people.
“People will forget what you said.
People will forget what you did.
But people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou
How we make people feel often comes down to whether they feel respected.
One key point is that respect does NOT remove accountability, it simply informs how accountability is delivered.
Respect does not mean:
Everyone always agrees
Avoiding hard conversations
Allowing poor performance
Tolerating harmful or unhealthy behavior
Respect does mean:
I can disagree without attacking you
I can give feedback without shaming you
I can make decisions you won’t like and still honor you
I refuse to devalue you
Side note – if everyone always seems to agree with everything you do as a leader, there’s a strong possibility someone’s not telling you something.
Respect requires courage because:
It can be hard to slow down in a fast-paced world
We must face our own impatience and ego
It demands consistency, even when we’re not at our best
It requires treating everyone with dignity – not just our favorites
Disrespect is faster
Respect requires intentionality
You know respectful behaviors when you see it.
Here are some ones that consistently go a long way:
Listening to someone all the way through
Praising genuine effort, not just results
Explaining the big picture “why” behind decisions
Doing what you say you will do
Praise in public, correct in private
Calling people by their preferred name
Leading with curiosity, not criticism
Assuming positive intentions until proven otherwise
It’s easy to think of respect as some sort of feeling or attitude towards someone.
While that may be true, it’s important to remember that respect shows up in our behaviors.
This week’s courageous choice:
Be mindful of a conversation where you’re tempted to rush, interrupt, or dismiss.
Instead:
Slow down
Listen all the way through
Communicate value on purpose