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Radical Respect
Radical respect is about how to create an organization in which everyone respects each other. And this can be confusing because respect has two very different definitions. One definition is about respecting someone’s achievements. That’s something you have to earn. But the second definition is what I’m really talking about. The second definition is about the kind of unconditional regard that we owe each other for our traditions, our emotions, for who we really are as human beings. That is not something anyone has to earn. That is kind of a birthright and something that needs to be present in every organization in order for people to work well together.
You need two things to be radically respectful. You need to optimize for collaboration, not coerce people, and you need to respect everyone’s individuality rather than demanding conformity. And I think we all assume that this is going to happen. I don’t know any leader who said, “I want to create a coercive work environment,” and I don’t know any employee who said, “I want to work in a coercive work environment.” We know that collaboration is humanity’s superpower, and so we know that we should optimize for collaboration. Also, I’ve never met a leader who said, “What I really want to do is I want to create a dystopic 1984-style, everybody’s marching in lockstep kind of work environment.” We don’t intend usually to demand conformity. I mean, some people do, but nobody watching this wants to demand conformity. And yet sometimes this happens.
A Behavioral Compass
I love a good two-by-two, and here is your radical respect framework. On the vertical axis is you want to optimize for collaboration. You don’t want to coerce people. On the horizontal axis is honoring everyone’s individuality on the good end and demanding conformity on the bad end. In the upper right-hand quadrant, which is what we’re all shooting for, you get radical respect. That’s what’s happening when you’re optimizing for collaboration and honoring everyone’s individuality at the same time. However, sometimes we fail on one dimension or both. There are certainly times when we remember to honor everyone’s individuality, but we try to coerce others to doing the same thing. That is when you get self-righteous shaming. Shaming is tempting, and it’s also tempting to feel self-righteous in today’s environment. But the problem is that it just doesn’t work. Shaming another person is going to send them into deep denial, and being self-righteous is a terrible way to remain open to other perspectives.
Now there are other times when we do remember to optimize for collaboration, but we demand conformity at the same time. This is what I call oblivious exclusion. This is the kind of thing that happens all the time in companies. It happens in social situations where we sort of expect everyone to look and behave the way that we do. And that is a disaster for working together well. Now if we fail on both dimensions at the same time, we wind up in the dreaded bottom left-hand quadrant. And what happens there is what I call brutal incompetence. That, I’m pretty sure, is not what anyone is shooting for.
The way that I hope that people can use the radical respect framework is to be more aware of when you or the people around you are failing on one dimension or another. And I hope that you can use it like a compass to guide yourself and the people around you back to a better place. I hope that you don’t use this framework like another Myers-Briggs personality test because these are mistakes that all of us make all of the time. I don’t think anyone wakes up in the morning and says, “My goal today is to self-righteously shame all my colleagues.” And sometimes having a word for it, self-righteous shaming, can help you be more aware when you are making this mistake. But don’t use it as a label to judge yourself with or to judge others. Don’t write names in boxes. When we realize that we are capable of making that mistake, by giving the mistake a name, we can avoid making that mistake. And also by realizing that that’s a mistake that I’ve made, I’m less likely to judge others when I notice that they’re making it.