Ep. 54 R-E-S-P-E-C-T- How to Get It AND What To Do If You Lose It!

Well, hello. Hello. Hello everyone. Hope everyone's having a great day today. Well, we'll be talking about respect, influence how to get respect. Let's dive into the content of the video and specifically how to gain respect. So we'll be covering things like how to get respect, sources of influence. So respect is one of five, or there's actually a few more,

but we're going to be talking about five and how do you get it and how do you lose it? And maybe even I can remember how to get it back if you've lost<inaudible>. So let's talk about respect and I'm here to tell you that in all of my facilitation and conversations and discussions and, and people ask them questions. One of the number one things that comes up is this notion of respect.

How do I get respect? Nobody respects me or any of those kinds of things. This word respect is so, so important. And rightfully so. And we're going to talk about where that fits in terms of the ability to influence other people. But I do want to start with this and the golden rule is wrong. And the golden rule in this context is treat others how you would want to be treated.

And that is, that is patently false. Oops. That is a, that's a slippery slope. And I would strongly suggest you do not follow the golden rule when it comes to leadership. We'll talk about what is the proper rule. It's still a little bit of a variation around that, and it, if you can master that, then folks you have nailed respect,

influence. We'll talk about that as we, as we go through this. All right, so let's talk about sources of influence. Now, why should anyone follow you? Right? Like there's a whole bunch of reasons for that. And this one of the sources of power, the very first, one's what we call position power. And the position power position influence is just merely that you're just going to have influence over another person,

just simply because of your position. You know, maybe you're a director, you're their manager or whatever it is. You've got a lot more stripes on your shoulders, whatever the context you are just given certain amount of authority or influence because you have more senior position in the organization. Now leadership at its very core is really social influence. It's asserting or exerting social influence to achieve an outcome.

And I like to say that it's applying positive social influence to achieve an outcome. So we have position. The next one is typically we have three here, but I'll talk about the other two other ones as well. So we have position. Then we have what could be is called discipline influence. So I have influence over you because I can discipline you.

I can hemolyze you essentially. So I have the ability to levy some sort of a penalty against you. So therefore I will have influence over you based on compliance and not commitment it's so we have position and then we have discipline power. The third one is reward power or reward influence. So I have an influence over you because I have the ability to reward you.

Whether it be monetarily, maybe it's an award, maybe it's Pat on the back. Maybe it's a private, Hey, good work, right? So people will follow you because you can reward them much like any other animal, frankly. And it's very, very basics. And then we get into expert power, expert power. There are a whole bunch of examples of this,

but one of the examples in a corporate environment would be it, for example. So it, if they're part of a project and I was project manager for many, many years, they have a lot of influence because of their expertise around a particular area. So regardless of where they fit on the spectrum or in the hierarchy, oftentimes if you are an expert,

you will have kind of an amplified influence over other people. So that's really, really important. And, and it's a very, very powerful source of influence as well. So just to reiterate, we have position, we have discipline, you have reward. Then we have expert power the last but not least. And that's the one that brings us here now is respect influence.

So respect influences exactly what we're going to be talking about is how do we get it now it's really, really important to achieve respect, influence, because that is the strongest one. That is one. If you have gained the respect of people, they will follow you far further. They will do a lot more. They will work harder for you. They will take care of you way,

way more than if they would on the other end of the spectrum, which is positioned. And that's exactly the point. There is this position is the weakest respect is by far and away the strongest. So wherever possible, we really want to make sure we end up in that respect influence a spectrum or that area. And one of the main reasons is because when we respect somebody,

if you think about it in your own experience, you can feel it, right. It's a respect. It's a deeper seated kind of falling now where position is typically just kind of in your head cognitively. But when you're starting to starting to talk about respect, that's when you really get some strong influence. And a lot of times it comes down to alignment of values and personalities,

which is a lot more deeper into our, into our consciousness than just, just our head. So those are the sources of influence, but faraway, respect influences is the one you want to get to. And the one that we're going to be talking about, it's, it's hard to get though. And sometimes it's actually kind of easy to, to,

to lose, unfortunately now, in terms of my journey with regard to this respect influence. I remember when I was just, my young leadership was all about me, frankly. Like I took over, see it took over. That's not even the right phrase, but I became president of a local search rescue group when I was 19 or 20, I think.

And pretty young, I suppose, looking back, man, no, man ignorance is bliss. Thankfully I didn't know any better, but it could be a lot of responsibility. But when I took over, I remember right taking over that, Oh man, good. Finally, people are going to listen to me, I'm going to do things right. I'm not going to be like everybody else.

And everybody will end up supporting my envision and you know, list goes on and on and on. And looking back, I see that as very much indicative of my maturity in terms of my life skills, right, where it was all about me just going through high school and all that stuff. And, and just trying to make enough money to, to drink a couple times a week and have a good stereo and a fast car.

And so very myopic view of life, very myopic view of leadership, for sure. I don't mind looking back and saying that, but my journey, thankfully I was self-aware and I was deliberate enough to be paying a lot of attention to what worked and what didn't. And as I became slightly older, my life changed, obviously my view on life, my view on other people changed and evolved and sort of my leadership by association.

So I realized that the model I was working on was this one originally. And it's the old model. It's the old paradigm of leadership where the leader is at the top and everybody supports that leader. And that was very much my mentality. Now, some people, quite frankly, don't grow out of that mentality. They're stuck using that model over and over and over again.

And that becomes just their default and that surface really well. And it serves us really well in certain environments. If it's, you know, public safety is often this model in that, especially if there's a high-risk environment with less time when there's not a lot of time to discuss and somebody does have to make decisions quickly and authoritatively for sure, but it's still grounded on respect hopefully,

but this model presupposes that everything feeds up to the leader, the leader makes all of the decisions with very little input in terms of what that decision looks like. But the team supports that leader and gives the leader what he or she needs. And that is a broken, broken, broken, broken model. Although sadly, we've used it for many, many decades and people continue to use it.

So ultimately, as a leader, what is your goal? Your goal is to create psychological safety or safe zone. There's a whole bunch of different ways you can do it, but it really comes out to effective communication, creating some trust and really making sure that people feel comfortable and safe psychologically to make decisions to come to work every day or go into their home office every day,

whatever it might be in for your remote workforce or something like that. But it's, it sounds very trite, you know, create psychological safety. And it sounds a little bit messy, but it's not, it's not psychologically. We will, we will perform much, much better if we have a sense of security and safety and, and, and a lot of the unknowns that we're afraid of become knowns.

So as a leader, that's really what you're trying to do. And I'm saying, I'm not saying it's easy, but it is simple. And that's a, that's what you're trying to do is just create that psychological safety. Now, one of the best ways you can do that is by treating people with respect and using respect influence. And I talk a lot about respect influence because for me,

the transformational leader, the, the, the kind of pinnacle of what a leader is is, is somebody that is compassionate. Somebody that's vulnerable, somebody that's empathetic. Somebody that's able to stay calm, people that are authentic, and they are able to communicate. They are excellent communicators and they are leaders that lead with respect. So that's, you know,

even my, my program that I teach in programs, it's all getting you towards that goal where respect influence is your default not fear or anything like that. As I said, it's, it's, it's simple, but it's not terribly easy to do, but it can be done. So the new model is this it's, it's actually having the leader on the bottom and supporting the team.

So we'll a little bit later, I'll talk about more specifically what that looks like for you as a leader, but really, if you want to leverage respect, influence, if you want to have respect influence, this is the model that you will adopt and, and, and you will, you will go towards, so this is the model and we're talking about it.

And now granted it doesn't replace the fact that the leader still has to make the decisions. The leader is still accountable, right? But this is now in terms of functionally outworks, the leader supports the, the rest of the team, Oh man. Leadership presence. If I, man, we could spend all day on this, ultimately leadership presence is the aura or the environment by which that,

that you're creating as a leader. So it's really the feeling that people have when they're around you. And it's also the feeling that people have when they're communicating with you, either via email or by phone or anything like that. And attitude is contagious. And so if you look at captain Kirk, he has a certain leadership presence. You look at captain or sorry,

Darth Vader. He has a certain leadership presence, and you can see the dichotomy between those two and think about yourself to yourself. If you are following captain Kirk, how are you feeling? What are you thinking? What are you doing? How courageous are you, right? You're making decisions. You're taking risks, Siri, or you're a swashbuckler you're confident,

capable, but now flip that around. And let's say that you're working for Darth Vader, you know, say more, right? You know, say more risk aversion. Lot of fear, stress list goes on and on and on. So when we talk about respect, that is something that will permeate your leadership presence. And if you can get it,

it's just part of your DNA. Just part of your default, setting your leadership presence, your people around you will be empowered. People will want to be around you. People will want to be part of your team because you treat people with respect. And there's this entire environment that is based on respect. All your communications are respectful. Your, your,

your mannerisms, your decisions, All of those things are now based on respect. And that will in turn really amplify your leadership presence. So if we don't want respect, influence, what do we not do? There are a couple of things. There's a lot, but I'm only going to highlight a couple of them here. One of them is micromanage,

Oh, do Not micromanage. And so what is micromanagement it's when you, as a leader or your managers or your leaders use words like I'm detail oriented, I'm involved, I'm hands on micromanagement is essentially telling somebody what to do and how to do it. And the reason that that is what not to do in terms of respect is because essentially what you're telling the person that you're micromanaging is I don't trust you really think about that.

Think about that. And you're like, no, no, that's not true. Yeah. It is true. It is true. Search your feelings, right. Just use a star Wars kind of analogy. So think about that. Micromanagement is absolutely the, the dichotomy. It is the antithesis of respect. And like, and I hear it all the time.

Like, no, Hey Darryl, no, I respect folks, but I just really like to make sure certain things get done a certain way. No. Okay. But that means that you're doing it yourself and you're telling the person that they're not capable of doing it as well. So very, very important. If you're finding yourself, micro-managing being very detailed oriented,

just know that that's actually subtracting from your, your respect influence. Yeah. Truth hurts. Sometimes. I know, I know. Now the other one is being angry and leading by fear and intimidation and bullying. We see this so much. And you know, a lot of people are like, well, people need to know that who's in charge. And,

and I have to be strong. I have to Be, you know, very assertive and powerful And blah, blah, blah, all this other bullshit. And it's not true. It's not true. Here's the problem is that behavior, that anger, that bullying creates Results it really, really does. I'm not going to lie. It creates results. People will do what you want them to do if you are leading with fear.

And so the problem now becomes that is a positive feedback loop for you as a leader. Like, Hey, you know what? That actually works. No drama around that. Awesome. Everyone's doing what I'm telling them to do. Everybody is an order, no drama. That's what the inner dialogue of the, of the, the leader. That's using fear to motivate people,

but everybody else around think about it, right? Darth Vader. I D I wouldn't want to be on the desktop couple reasons for that one in each movie. It, it explodes. Secondly, like it's a toxic work environment working for Darth Vader and the emperor and all that stuff, like, think about that. It's terrible, terrible. So leading by fear is definitely going to drive results,

but it will create a team that is compliant, but not committed, huge, huge difference. Like that. That's like a crazy difference between a team that that's compliant. Yeah. It will do everything that you need it to do, but a committed team will do everything you needed to do, but it will be done far easier, are less drama.

And in fact, that team will do even more if they're committed rather than compliant. So a couple of things that detract from that respect influence for sure. Micromanagement kick that to the curb. Second one is leading with fear, being angry and intimidating all the time, which frankly, if all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. And that's how I characterize people that lead by fear.

They're just not emotionally intelligent. They're just not able to control their emotions, or they're not able to really self-regulate. So, as I talked about self-mastery transformational leadership and in my program, it's all about self-regulation and self-control and controlling the inside. And then you can positively influence those on the outside. So if you're working with a leader, that's always angry all the time while they come by it,

honestly, because a lot of times that's the model that they were raised in. So here is the rule respect. How do you get it, man, man, it's so simple, but it's not easy. And I can't say it any more clearly than this. If you want respect, you have to give it. Yeah. That's it peace out.

That's it. You have to give the respect, but here's the problem, folks. This is a huge problem that I come into when I consult or coach executives and leaders all over the world. For that matter, one of the big issues is they're like, well, hold on. They should just respect me as, as I'm their leader. I'm their boss.

No, that's old school. That's old school that went the way of the Flintstones. Okay. What has to happen is as a leader, you respect first. You're the one that shows vulnerability first. You're the one that shows empathy. First you show compassion first. That's just part of the gig of being a leader. You lead, you lean in.

So if you want respect, influence, you have to give it first. So, so important. So get over it, get over your ego, get over whatever paradigm of leadership you have in your head. Your job is not to impose yourself on other people. Your job is to lean in and show them what respect looks like. Because they're also looking at you all the time.

They're, they're judging you. They're monitoring your behavior. They're having some chats behind your back. That's human nature. A lot of times, and it's not even overt. Like it's not check, check, check, check. It's subconscious where there's a constant size of constantly evaluation. So if you're saying one thing, but doing something else, they're going to notice that absolutely they will.

And you'll start to lose respect. Or if you're saying, Hey, you know what? I demand respect, man. I've heard that before I demand your respect. No bullshit. No, you that's fine. If you're going to play that game. Sure. I'll pretend to respect you, but I'm not going to, and that's not the kind of team that you want.

Right? You want that team, that, that respect is mutual where I respect the team member and they will in turn, respect us. It's not their job to respect first. And hopefully I've made that point crystal clear. So in tangible terms, what does that look like? Daryl. So, okay. I get it. Well, remember when I opened up and said,

the golden rule is wrong, this is what I mean by that the golden rule is wrong because it says treat others how you would want to be treated okay. On the surface. That sounds like a lot of sense. Right? Makes sense. Sure. Here's the, the issue is that is ignoring the other party in this relationship. Who's your team member.

Oh, that's weird. Right? Remember it's it's it's about putting yourself, putting the team first. So here's the slight alteration to the rule. Treat others as they want to be treated, treat others as they want to be treated. It's not up to you to judge that, Oh man, they're so sensitive. Or man, they are hard to get through or whatever it is.

It's not up to you. Who gave you the right to, to impose your thoughts and your views on how they are. No, no. And as a leader, you have to find that out. How do they want to be treated? Some people really enjoy banter and sarcasm, right? And, and that's honestly, in some environments, that's exactly how you show respect.

Like if they're not bugging you, if you're not being heckled, people don't love you. That's the truth. That is the truth. But not everybody functions in that environment. Not everyone's happy with it being badgered with not everyone likes being the butt of a joke or self-deprecation, whatever that is. So your job as a leader is to treat others how they want to be,

be treated and find that out. Find that out. So to take that a little bit further in terms of tangibles, one of the surefire ways that you can show respect. And it's simple to do, it's simple to do is really comes down to these two questions of what I call the transformational leader. One is what are you working on? Okay.

What are you working on pretty straight forward, right? You walk, walk up to somebody at their desk or around the water cooler. Hey, what are you working on? The second one is what support can I give? There's a couple of things. Well, many reasons why this works really, really well. One it's super simple because remember if I'm teaching it,

it's simple. There's not, not a ton of there's. There's one hamster operating at any given time. And so I need stuff simple. Cause I need things I can execute on as a leader. So what are you working on? And then, so what that does is, is one, it shows people that, that you're paying attention, that they're not just offering the corner office,

not doing anything, but it updates you as well, right? Part of your job as leaders to be accountable and responsible for the workload and workflow and outcomes and all those things. So it gives you a little bit of a situation report, but then the, what support could I give? It does two things. One, it literally asks you're offering support.

You're not telling them what you're going to support them and remembered the vein of our existence. Let's micromanagement. Well, this forces you to back off and it allows the, the, the team members say, Hey, you know, I sure would love. If you could talk to that manager to talk to Betty in accounting, she's not getting back to me on anything.

And it's a big problem for our project. So that will now give you something to do. And you're not just walking in and barging in on somebody and, you know, imposing your will on them. And so those two questions are, are very, very simple and easy to do. And if that just becomes part of your day to day operating system,

when you're dealing with, with people then all the better. So we've given, you know, one, you know, the, the, the two questions and, and further to micromanagement and why it's so important not to micromanage relative to, to respect influences is I can't stress this enough. You're you're telling them you, you don't, you don't trust them.

And so we talked about those two questions. Now, the second technique to show respect on the ground is to delegate, right? So delegate. Now I know there's a lot of reluctance to delegate out these days, bunch of reasons for that. It's usually fear-based. And so if I'm a leader and I don't delegate, it's one, I don't trust other people to do it.

Or maybe I'm under a lot of stress and stress under stress. We tend to control or want to control a lot more stuff. So delegation is such a great technique provided it's done in, in, in the right context. So to delegate effectively, one of the most important things you need to do is give what we call intent or leader's intent. And there's different elements of intent.

But one of the most important parts of it is is you delegate, but you give the people that you're delegating to, or the person the end state tell them what right looks like. And then let them go and achieve that on their own. And you support them. Remember, what are you working on? How can I support? So by delegating,

you're, you're telling them that you trust them. And they're empowered. Think about that. They're they feel like empowered. That's a lot more flexible. And as a leader, you don't have to micromanage them after that. You're just checking in for statuses and you're them where you need. But if you have five people on your team and you delegate effectively,

those are five people that are now out doing tasks that you don't have to do. And your job is to monitor and support and then start thinking ahead of what's happening. So those are the main techniques, very simple techniques that you can start using tomorrow, the two questions. So what are you working on and how can I help? And, or what support can I give you?

And the second one is delegate, delegate off and give them the end state. One, watch out with delegation though, is you want to make sure that who you're delegating the task to is capable of doing it. Like maybe they need to be equipped both from a training perspective and resource perspective, because otherwise you're actually just setting them up for failure. All right.

So let's do a very quick review. Respect influence is by far and away, the most powerful leadership influence you can have. So he's act opposite of position influence, which a lot of people leverage. And so for us to, to get the respect influence, we have to treat others with respect first. Okay. We act first, not them. We use the two questions.

What are you working on? What support can I give you? And then the second part is you delegate and I'll close this off with a question. I actually, literally, literally today I was asked this question, well, what do you do if you lose, if someone loses respect for you, maybe you ha you blew up at them and you,

you know, you just lost your, lost, your poop. It happens where human beings, right? Maybe because you haven't used the five step defeat, the beast message method. I get it. Well, it's not all doom and gloom because like anything else you can recover provided you recover in the right way. So one of the yes, ways that that we see in,

in the real world is if you, if you maybe upset somebody or, or, you know, you, you erode your, your respect influence over a particular episode or something, first thing is own it own it apologize. Right? Apologize. Don't well, defend, do not defend, do not justify, do not rationalize, do not do any of that own.

It, own it like a good leader would from there, you apologize to, Hey, you know what? Sorry, that that was not in a, you know, in alignment with my values or the corporate values or whatever that is. And moving forward, I will be better. I will not behave the way I just did again. And then act,

act, that's all you can do. So don't expect that you're going to be getting that respect back right away, but you will get it back. And a lot of times my experience, you even get more because we're all human, nobody expects leaders to be inhuman. Nobody expects them to be data from star Trek or a robot. In fact, the human experience,

the human condition means that we're all in this together and we want other people to be human. I respect people that aren't perfect. I respect people that aren't invincible. I respect people that are courageous, but not fearless, right? There's a difference there. Courage, courage is acting, you know, feeling the fear, but acting in spite of it.

So I want a human being as a leader. I want somebody that that's fallible that makes mistakes, not because I'm encouraging it, but it means that they're human. And I'll take that all day long. I'll take that to the bank all day long. And I'll hitch my wagon to a leader that respects me, and that is accountable and responsible. And when the mistake is made,

they own, it absolutely count me in I'll work for that leader all day long. So hopefully this was helpful. And, and it, it really talks to the crux of one of the main issues I come across day in and day out around leadership. And that is this whole notion of respect.<inaudible>.