The difference between earned and owed respect
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Earned Respect is a valid concept, but so is Owed Respect. Teams that give each other Owed Respect will perform better.
Should you respect someone who hasn’t earned it? It’s a good question. The answer is yes. And the answer is also no.
Respect is a big deal to me. Lots of my interpersonal conflict and frustration can be traced back to feeling disrespected. It’s one of my main “love languages”.
In recent years I’ve added two new words to my vocabulary that help me understand the language of respect better:
Owed Respect & Earned Respect
When we say someone has earned our respect, we are talking about the latter. This is a real thing and I have no problem with that. But there is more to respect than that.
We can show respect to someone we’ve just met even though they haven’t earned anything yet. This is Owed Respect. It’s the baseline. It’s what you get for being a fellow human being no matter what.
When my daughters were little I would teach them to greet people back. It was non-negotiable. Why? Because of Owed Respect.
When they treat each other worse than they would treat me, we have a conversation. I’ve often asked them “would you speak to me that way?” That’s Owed Respect.
At work I care more about how my teams treat everyone else than how they treat me. Owed Respect in teams reflect the old Italian proverb: “Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.”