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Respect, Just a little Bit

Kevin Bailey • Oct 17, 2019

Everyone has different skills, learn to respect them

Aretha Franklin covered the song RESPECT as her challenge to get her man to respect the value that she bought to their relationship. In business we are seeing the growth of appreciation for the different and unique value that genders, individuals, and skills bring to organisations. That in the past may have been overlooked.

Individual's choose their career paths based on a number of intentional and unintended actions. Once on a career path, there are also many things that individuals will unfortunately encounter (culprit's) that restrict an individuals 'respect'. I suggest that  the term "occupationism" (John Krumboltz, Professor Stanford University), is one of the culprits.  Occupationism is a form of discrimination that Krumboltz claims is just as bad as sexism, racism, or ageism. "They are all forms of judging individuals on the basis of their membership in a group," he said.

"What's the harm of occupationism in regard to respect?" I believe that people are often dissuaded from challenging or being given a fair hearing from other specialist disciplines (with valid ideas and concerns) because the [challengers] have a belief, driven from past experience, that their discipline is not valued by others high enough in the prestige hierarchy of the organisation. The capability  and respect of an individuals worth should always be two fold; their own belief and also the belief of those they work with, either as peers or in management positions.

A carpenter who is good with their hands has equal value as does a surgeon; A police recogniser who can physically identify criminals is equal to a software engineer that builds facial recognition software; A salesman that crafts relationships with prospects is on par with a postman that delivers letters; A bank teller that deposits your cash adds the same value as a financial accountant balancing your books

All the above and 1,000’s of more examples show that everyone contributes value to an activity, should be respected for their contribution and without them the flow of efficiency would be broken.

Thinking about occupationism, how many times have you heard these type of comments?:
  • “marketing just do collaterals and the colouring in”
  • “finance department are always looking to cut our budgets”
  • “HR just do hire and fire”
  • “sales just sign contracts and go on jollies for doing their job"
  • “product team just build what they think is cool, not what the market needs”
  • “operations don't understand how people buy and use our products”
These comments will, in most cases, come from individuals in an organisation that are not directly responsible for the specialist disciplines being questioned. These are based on ignorance, almost always, naive ignorance from afar i.e. they do not understand the real work being undertaken by the individuals, only what they (the commentator) see's or believes (opinion). This is where respect doesn't appreciate the value and skills of other peers and peer groups.

What about these comments:
          • “why doesn’t anyone listen to my advice, I’m the one in with the customer”
          • “Its not the product, its our customer support they have issues with”
          • “They don’t want a drop in price, they want to know what value we give them”
          • “whats wrong with using partners to sell our products”
          • "how am I supposed to do my quota, the market isn't that big!"

Banging your head off the wall, will get you no where. Frustration from these comments, tends to come from a lack of communication and inclusion with individuals that are at the sharp end of your industry or customer engagements. Respect here comes in two forms: Communication - ensure that if a decision has been made, then convey that decision to all disciplines in a manner that the recipients can consume and acknowledge; Inclusion - create the opportunity for all stakeholders in the different specialist disciplines (opposite of occupationism) to provide guidance and advice before you execute, whilst executing and also in post evaluation analysis. 

Synergy Six Degrees vision is to "Drive Enterprise Collaboration", as part of your organisations Go-To-Market strategy planning. This requires all the specialist disciplines within an organisation to work closer together and utilise each other skills and knowledge to challenge outdated practices that will hinder strong and profitable growth in your chosen markets.


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