Gregg Ward
Founder, Center for Respectful Leadership
The Respectful Leader
Episode Summary
RESPECT! This simple word was turned into an anthem by the legendary Aretha Franklin! We could use more “respect” in our world today. For this reason, on Episode 130 of the Keep Leading!® podcast, I discuss respectful leadership with Gregg Ward, the Center for Respectful Leadership founder.
Check out the “60-Second Preview” of this episode!
Bio
Gregg Ward is the Center for Respectful Leadership executive director and a best-selling, award-winning author, speaker, facilitator, and executive coach. Gregg is on a mission to transform lives and organizations by focusing on Respectful Leadership, Emotional, Social and Cultural Intelligence.
The Respectful Leader (Wiley, 2016), Gregg’s latest book, was awarded “Best Book of the Month” by Amazon and instantly became a best-seller. In 2018, the book won the Gold Medal in the prestigious Axiom Business Book Awards competition.
Gregg began his career in 1986 as a specialist trainer for The New York City Police Department. Since then, he has developed and delivered over 2,500 keynote presentations and talks, training programs, seminars, webinars, and workshops for global organizations such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Kaiser Permanente, Ford, Qualcomm, the US Navy, and Warner Bros Studios.
Gregg also served for five years as a freelance journalist on assignment throughout Europe for BBC Radio and other UK media. He is incredibly proud to have covered the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Gregg holds a BFA from Boston University, is a Board-Certified Coach (BCC), a Master Corporate Executive Coach (MCEC), and is an Executive Coach with The Center for Creative Leadership. He is based in San Diego, CA.
Website
https://centerforrespectfulleadership.org/
Other Website
https://greggwardgroup.com/
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/greggward/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/greggwardgroup
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/CenterForRespectfulLeadership
Leadership Quote
“You respect yourself, you respect other people, and you’ll do okay.” Muhammad Ali said this to me when he was visiting my home outside of NYC when I was five years old (my dad was a sportswriter who was interviewing him at the time).
Get Your Copy of Gregg’s Book!
https://greggwardgroup.com/bookstore/
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Transcript
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Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, The Leadership Excelerator®, Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the
Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact through the power of executive coaching, masterful facilitation, and professional speaking.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, respect. This simple word was turned into an anthem by the legendary Aretha Franklin. Frankly, we could use more respect in our world today. For this reason, I want to talk about Respectful Leadership. To do so, I’ve invited Greg Ward as my guest. Greg Ward is the author of the award-winning and bestselling book The Respectful Leader and he’s the founder and executive director of the Center for Respectful Leadership. Greg is on a mission to transform lives and organizations by focusing on respectful leadership, emotional, social, and cultural intelligence.
Greg, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Greg Ward:
Thank you so much. It is an honor to be here.
Eddie Turner:
It’s an honor to have you. I had the wonderful privilege of meeting you a few years ago at a coaching conference and I’ve been following your work and I’ve been a fan of your work ever since.
Greg Ward:
And I too of yours ever since. I so loved meeting you then and this is a privilege. And so, thank you so much.
Eddie Turner:
Now, Greg, I love what you’ve done with the face of leadership in terms of respect. What does respect mean to you?
Greg Ward:
Well, it’s funny. When I first started on this journey, I thought “Oh, everybody knows what respect is. Everybody defines it exactly as I do” which is essentially the golden rule, treating others the way you want to be treated and the platinum rule, treating others the way they want to be treated working in concert together. I thought that’s what everybody thought it was too but I came to find out there’s a whole bunch of stuff around respect that complicates it, makes that definition a little bit more complex and, if I dare say, emotionally loaded.
Eddie Turner:
You are correct. And that’s why I asked how you define it because all we need to do is look at the front pages of any newspaper and we see that people define it differently.
Greg Ward:
They sure do. They sure do. And we can also look culturally there are some differences in how respect is defined and displayed. I’ll give you a classic example. I know I was raised by parents who told me “You must respect your elders and that includes your grandmother” but here’s the problem. Eddie, my grandmother was a terror. My grandmother was not a respectful person in any way shape or form and yet as a child I was told “You must respect your grandmother.” So, I was conflicted. I didn’t understand. Here she was behaving in ways that no one would consider respectful and yet my parents insisted that I had to respect them. And I suspect that you were raised that way too, you must respect your elders. And there are whole cultures out there in the world who say “You must respect your elders no matter what or people in authority no matter what.” And what our research came to find out, Eddie, over the course of a number of years of looking at this from a neuroscience background is our brains really don’t ignore the contradiction. If you are being told to respect someone who you really don’t respect because of their behavior, you can pretend, you could put a face-on of respect but any person who’s even reasonably emotionally intelligent will pick up that you’re not being truthful, that you’re not being honest. So, you undermine your own attempt to portray yourself as respectful and you annoy other people too.
Eddie Turner:
Interesting. And so, are you saying that if someone is not behaving in a way deserving of respect that we should not give it?
Greg Ward:
Well, that’s a great question. I have a series of what I call “respectful do’s and respectful don’ts”. And respectful don’t number one is don’t respond to disrespect with even more disrespect. It doesn’t work. So, let’s imagine for a moment that someone is treating you in a way that you consider disrespectful. You can still behave with a modicum of respect and civility even though they are misbehaving themselves. And that may be difficult for you to do but at the end of the day, when you walk away from that encounter, you can say to yourself “Well, I did my best. I took the high road. I didn’t get down in the gutter with that individual. Now, they lost their cool, they were disrespectful but I didn’t and, quite frankly, I’m the better person for this.” And if we learn to practice that and keep away from behaving disrespectfully towards others who we find behaving disrespectful themselves, we’re going to come out of that on the better side of our own nature.
Eddie Turner:
Well, that reminds me of a couple things my grandfather used to say. The first is “When two pigs get down into the mud, they both get dirty.”
Greg Ward:
That’s right. That’s a great way to put it.
Eddie Turner:
And the other was “Never argue with a fool because after a while, people can’t tell the difference.”
Greg Ward:
I like that one. I haven’t heard that one. I love it. May I appropriate that one.
Eddie Turner:
Yeah. So, you make a great point and it’s just a different way of saying what you’ve said that is so true. And I have seen this in my own experience, unfortunately, but then also in lives of others who I see in my coaching practice that, yeah, if you try to return disrespect for disrespect, you really put yourself in a bad place. You really want to stay elevated and at least you feel better at the end of the day.
Greg Ward:
As best you can. And I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always live by my own respectful do’s and respectful don’ts. I’m a human being like everyone else. And that’s why respectful do number seven is always apologize for disrespect because we’re all human beings and occasionally, we, I call it stepping in the disrespectful poop, we say something, we do something, it just pops out and then afterwards, sometimes immediately, we smack ourselves on the forehead and we go “Oh man! I shouldn’t have done that. That was disrespectful.” So, that’s called being human. We’ve got to have the decency to step up and apologize for it and not use weasel words like “If I disrespected you” or “I’m sorry you felt offended.” No. Got to love those weasel words.
Eddie Turner:
Oh, my goodness! Yes.
Greg Ward:
So, you got to own it, you got to own what you did, you got to say that you understand how it hurt the other person, that you’re truly sorry for it, you’re going to do your best to make amends for it and you’re going to do your best never to have it happen again. You make that kind of a genuine and honest apology, most people will accept it and actually, our research … Here’s what’s really cool from a leadership point of view, we have found that leaders of top corporations who made that mistake, stepped in the disrespect poop, and they came forward and they owned it and they apologize for it, our research tells us that the respect for them actually goes up.
Eddie Turner:
Yes, because to your point earlier, people could understand being human.
Eddie Turner:
But they can’t understand when you continue to make excuses for the behavior or continue the behavior. They can respect you if you authentically apologize with sincerity.
Greg Ward:
Exactly. You’ve got it. That’s exactly right.
Eddie Turner:
Now, you mentioned that your research focused on leaders. I’d love to hear a little bit more about what makes respect so important for leaders.
Greg Ward:
Well, that’s a great question. We have found that there’s actually in most organizations three types of respect that leaders should pay attention to. The first is, for lack of a better way of putting it, we call it informational respect. And basically, it means that you as a leader are willing to own and declare reality. You may remember that there’s an old saying that Jim Collins used to say it and the former CEO of Hermann Miller Chairs used to say it, “The first job of the leader is to declare reality.” It does no good if there are problems for a leader to get up there and say “Everything’s fine” to sugarcoat everything. So, part of what we say a leader needs to do, it’s respectful do number three is behave in a respect-worthy way is be honest, declare reality, what’s going on. The famous apocryphal story that I like to talk about is when Yahoo was being ready to be broken up and purchased by VERIZON and Alibaba, the CEO and the C-suite team got on an investor call and everybody knew that there were going to be reductions in forces, layoffs, but the CEO said instead “We’re going to do a remix here at Yahoo.” And there was this big pause on the line and everybody’s like “Remix? What do you mean?” – “Well, we’re going to remix the staff and we’re going to look at right-sizing,” all those polite euphemisms for layoffs. Well, every single person knew that layoffs were coming down the road. And so, the credibility of that C-suite team went in the toilet. Now, we know what they were trying to do we. They were trying to prevent the employees from thinking “Oh, my God, everybody’s going to get laid off in one fell swoop.” They were trying to prevent the employees for doing a run to the exits. Well, as soon as the employees heard that investor call and they used the term ‘remix’, well what did they do? They went running for the exits. So, it completely backfired. They tried to sugarcoat things. They were afraid to declare reality. So, informational respect is one of the most important things that employees count upon from their leadership.
The second is basic fairness in policies and what we call distributive respect. So, your policies are fair, your compensation, your benefits are fair. If there’s a disciplinary action that has to be taken, it’s fair across the board and everyone perceives it all to be very fair.
The third is perhaps the one that we most know about. It’s interpersonal respect where we treat each other with respect and civility and decency and I might add a little kindness as well.
Eddie Turner:
Good. So, give us the summary of those three again, please.
Greg Ward:
Okay. So, the first is going to be informational respect where you’re basically declaring reality, you’re being open and honest with your employees about what’s going on. Oddly enough, that is the one they care about the most. The second one is procedural or distributed respect where everything is fairly done, people perceive fairness across the board. And the last one is interpersonal respect where we treat each other, individuals or groups, with respect and decency and that’s the one that most of us talk about but informational respect seems to be the one that most employees care about.
Eddie Turner:
Yeah because that’s the one where you don’t take us to be a fool. You respect our intelligence.
Greg Ward:
Right. That’s right. You don’t pretend that we don’t need to know stuff. When all hell’s breaking loose, you’re not pretending that everything’s fine and we don’t need to know what’s going on.
Eddie Turner:
Yes. In some cases, the inappropriate informational respect is just as bad as interpersonal respect where you’ve just said something foul to my face.
Greg Ward:
Yes, that’s absolutely true. Now, I will add that the other thing we have learned about interpersonal respect is it is not a cognitive rational thing. When you, Eddie, feel disrespected, it occurs deep in your primitive reptilian brain, my friend. Your brain senses it as a threat. When people treat you in ways that you don’t believe are respectful, your brain senses it as a threat, your amygdala kicks in and it releases a number of very powerful hormones like cortisol, the stress hormone, adrenaline, we all know about that one, and another one which is completely unpronounceable, so we’ll forget about it but the point is you are filled up with hormones and that’s where the term ‘amygdala hijack’ comes from, you’re not being rational, you’re prepared to fight, flight or freeze and that stuff isn’t thinking. That’s just raw reaction. And disrespect can trigger raw reaction which can last for a very long time. A lot of our research indicates that if you felt disrespected at work by a colleague, you’re going to spend quite a bit of time ruminating about what happened, you’re going to spend time avoiding that individual, you might even lose some loyalty to your organization or be angry and frustrated that you have to work with this person, ask for a transfer. All of this has a cost. And that’s why respect, in our view, is so very, very important to driving collaboration and partnership and basically performance and profitability.
Eddie Turner:
I appreciate the psychological explanation there because that also explains why sometimes perfectly rational people will act irrational when they have been disrespected.
Greg Ward:
Yes, absolutely. Some people get into what I call an un-rightable wrong. And I’m often called in by HR or Legal and they say “Hey, we’ve got a senior manager who’s really annoyed a whole bunch of people” and “Can you fix them?” They always say “Can you fix them? We really value them.” – “Okay, okay, I’m not going to make any commitments and promises but I need to talk to this person first and I need to talk with the people that are really upset with them.” And I often find that the person, it’s almost always, they say “I never intended. I didn’t intend.” Well, it’s not that our workplaces are filled with psychopaths and sociopaths who intend to harm others although they’re always out there. A lot of people don’t intend to be disrespectful. They just go unconscious and they just do their normal behaviors that no one ever called them on but on the flipside are the people who are the targets of those behaviors. And some of those behaviors can be extraordinarily disrespectful by anyone’s measure. And I’ve met plenty of people who said “I don’t want to work with that person ever again. This is an un-rightable wrong. Nothing you say or do is going to change my attitude towards that person.” And I have to go back to HR and Legal and I have to say “I’m sorry. This relationship is not going to be repairable and I just suggest you head off in different directions and find another way to solve this because I can’t bring these two people back together.”
Eddie Turner:
Very, very intriguing. Thank you for sharing this information with us, Greg.
I’m talking to Greg Ward. Greg is the author of the award-winning book The Respectful Leader and he’s on a mission to change organizations and people by focusing on respectful leadership. He’s also the founder of the Center for Respectful Leadership. We’ll have more with Greg right after this.
This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the Power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.
Hi. This is Haben Girma. I’m a disability rights lawyer, author, and speaker and you’re listening to the Keep Leading!® Podcast with Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
We’re back. I’m talking to Greg Ward. Greg ward is the author of the award-winning bestselling book The Respectful Leader and he’s the founder and executive director of the Center for Respectful Leadership. He’s on a mission to change people and organizations by focusing on respectful leadership.
Greg, as I look at our world and we’re in a post-COVID world, post meaning not that we’re out of the woods yet when it comes to COVID but post meaning now that it’s entered our world, can you tell us how respectful leadership is even more important in a post-COVID world?
Greg Ward:
Thank you for that question. It’s an excellent question and it’s one that I’ve been addressing for a number of months now with my clients and when I speak. A lot of folks are looking at how the world has fundamentally changed. The world of work without question has been changed by COVID. Did you know that recently the Department of Labor released some data that shows that more people quit their jobs in 2021 than ever before in history? It’s been called the great resignation. And the challenge we see now is those who didn’t quit their jobs, many of them upwards of 25% of us, worked from home almost full time and a lot of us don’t want to go back into the office and understandably so. We were productive. We got our work done. Our managers and supervisors gave us the thumbs up that we were doing a good job. So, we wondered “Why do we want to get back on that treadmill and commute into work and deal with all the challenges of being in an office and so on and so forth?” And we also have to recognize that human beings like to get together from time to time. And when two employees put themselves together in the same place to worry over an issue or a challenge, they often feed off of each other. So, as leaders, how do we balance that? How do we work and move forward in a hybrid environment which is for certain going to be the future of work for the foreseeable future?
So, one of the things that we’ve uncovered in our research is that employees feel respected when they are given flexibility. A lot of folks are saying “I don’t want to go back into work if I’m being forced to go back to work just because the leadership believes that somehow we’re going to work even harder or better because we’re all located in the same space.” Now, I can see how that might apply for the service industry such as hospitality but in the consulting industry, the contracting industry, there’s all sorts of … banking and finance and publishing, you name it, there’s all sorts of technology industries that could easily be very successful as many of the big tech firms were during COVID when everybody was on lockdown working from home. So, if you give employees flexibility, if you give them options, they will feel respected. If you command them to come into work or you say “You must work on this schedule and so on and so forth,” they will feel disrespected. And the research is borne out by the data. What some employers are now doing because we all know we’re all hurting for really good talent is they used to put out on their job postings a notification of some kind that said “Right now this job this role is remote but will eventually come back into the office.” No one’s applying for those jobs. So, they are changing their tune and the employers are saying “Okay, this could be a permanent remote position” and they’re getting more qualified applicants. So, you’ve got to respect people’s choices for where they want to work and how they want to work. And the pandemic proved that many of us can be very, very productive right from our little home offices and do very, very well.
Eddie Turner:
It sounds like what I hear you saying is what you told us before the break – when employers treat employees this way, they feel disrespected. And so, the amygdala hijack kicks in and flight phase.
Greg Ward:
Exactly. You are exactly right. And I would argue that the complaint that nobody wants to come to work anymore is merely a complaint founded on an illogical idea that somehow people just want to sit home with their feet up and play video games. No, there are many, many people who really do want to work but they want to be treated with respect. Why would you want to go back into the restaurant industry if your boss never gave you your schedule more than a day or two in advance, called you in to do double shifts every weekend, berated you if you showed up late, withheld your tips or if you shattered the crockery, took it out of your wages. And by the way, you’re putting up with the customers who are abusive to you. Why would anybody want to go back to work in that kind of environment? So, we as leaders need to stop blaming our employees for not wanting to work and instead look at ourselves, look at our organizations, what are we doing to tell our employees that we genuinely value and respect them. Are we giving them flexibility? Are we giving them choices? Are we giving them the information they need? And are we being fair with our practices across the board and are we treating them with civility and decency? I guarantee you if you have an organization that has a culture of respect in the informational side, the procedural side, and the interpersonal side, you will have loyal employees who will go the extra mile when the going gets tough.
Eddie Turner:
Very nice. Now, Greg, people may be listening to our conversation and saying “Listen, this is pretty basic. Just treat people right and that’s all that’s all you have to do.”
Greg Ward:
Yes, I agree. Yes, it’s stuff we learned when we were children and there is some truth to that. It’s just that I think in in our very busy world, we get incredibly stressed out, we get incredibly focused on performing and meeting our numbers and so on and so forth and we tend to shunt respect to one side because we don’t think it matters all that much. And Dr. Christine Porath at Georgetown University will tell you that all of her research over the past 25 years makes it really crystal clear that respect is a key driver of performance and partnership and profitability.
Eddie Turner:
If a leader wants to become a respectful leader, what steps should they take?
Greg Ward:
Well, thank you for asking. If I do say so myself, they should read my book. It’s actually a business fable. I found that people don’t have time to read big how-to manuals anymore. So, I created a fable based on all of my clients over the past 25 years and it’s set in a fictional company which is very realistic and with very realistic characters who are experiencing normal disrespect and how it’s impeding their ability to be successful. And through a series of trials and errors, the brand-new CEO in this company who was told to fix it or else comes to find out that respect actually is much more effective than command and control leadership or carrot and stick leadership. Essentially, you treat people with the golden rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and the platinum rule “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them” together. That’s what seems to work the magic in every organization.
Eddie Turner:
All right, very good. Greg, what’s the most important message that you want people listening to this episode to walk away with?
Greg Ward:
Thank you for asking. If you don’t mind, I’m going to tell you about somebody I met when I was a little boy. My dad was a very famous sports writer. He wrote for the New York Daily News for 47 years. And one day when I was a little boy he said “Look out the window. There’s going to be a big limousine coming to the house with a pretty important person in the back seat.” And sure enough, in a little while a limousine shows up and a man gets out of the back seat, he sees me in the window, he smiles and waves at me and I smile and wave back. And then my father opens the front door and invites him in and takes him all the way upstairs to the top floor of our house where my dad had his study and conducted his interviews. And I was intrigued. So, I followed them up the stairs and I listened in through the door as my dad interviewed this man who was talking a mile a minute and had all of these ideas which I had no clue what he was talking about but he was so filled with energy and I was just riveted. And then at one point, the interview suddenly stopped and I heard my dad cursing. Now, he was a former marine and still my dad didn’t curse very much but he did at this point because he was having trouble making the machine he was using to record the interview work. You may recall, Eddie, real-to-real tape recorders. That’s what my dad was using all the way back then. He finally got it to work, finished the interview and the door opened and there’s this guy looking down at me and he says “Hello, little man. What’s your name?” And I said “Greg” and I remember shaking a very big hand and he said “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Greg. My name is Cassius Clay and pretty soon people like your daddy are going to call me Muhammad Ali.” I’m a little kid. What do I know? And he said “What do you want to be when you grow up?” You know how adults ask children that. He asked me that. And I knew my dad was a writer. I didn’t quite know what it meant but I said “I want to be a writer like my daddy.” And he goes “Good for you. Do you like people?” And I said “Yeah, I like people.” And he said “Ah but are you curious about people like curious George the monkey?” Well, I knew curious George the monkey and I’m like “Yes, yes, I’m curious about people like curious George the monkey.” He said “Well, good for you then. I think you’ll be a good writer like your daddy. So, let me give you one piece of advice.” And my father never tired of reminding me that Muhammad Ali when I was a little boy. He leaned over and he said “You respect yourself, little man, and you respect other people and you’ll do okay.” You respect yourself, you respect other people and you’ll do okay.
Eddie Turner:
Wow! That’s priceless.
Greg Ward:
Isn’t that? I’ve tried to live my life by what he taught me when I was five years old. It hasn’t always been easy but I think it’s the best way to talk about respect.
Eddie Turner:
I can’t top that. That’s a gem. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Greg Ward:
Thank you. Thank you for asking.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you for sharing there with us indeed.
Greg, where can are my listeners learn more about you?
Greg Ward:
Well, they can get my book at RespectfulLeader.com, that’s really easy, or on Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com. Any of the sites sell it. And if they’d like to get in touch with me, if they go to www.RespectfulLeadership.org, they’ll get in touch with me through the Center for Respectful Leadership.
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. Well, we’ll make it easy by putting all of that in the show notes so folks can just click on it while they’re listening to the episode and go right there.
Greg Ward:
Excellent. Thank you.
Eddie Turner:
Greg, thank you for being a guest on the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Greg Ward:
It has been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Eddie Turner:
And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I am Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.
Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on the Keep Leading!® Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to the Keep Leading!® Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work, please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.
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The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.
