Respect at work is a pre-condition for building trust, self-esteem, and motivation. It’s essential to creating the conditions high-performance teams.

Key Takeaways

  • Respect is the foundation of trust and motivation.
  • When people feel respected, they feel safe — and performance rises.
  • Respect builds connection, while authority and fear destroy it.
  • Listening and empathy are the clearest signals of respect.
  • Respect is mutual: you can’t earn it unless you give it.

I talk a lot about trust, and I probably need to talk more about respect at work. When I say respect is a pre-condition for trust, what I mean is that you can’t have trust without respect.

Respect is a subtle and deeply human feeling. As Karla McLaren has pointed out, emotions are neither good nor bad. Rather, they are information. Instinctively, we know when others respect us and when they don’t. As a result, we know what they think of us, and that is important information.

Your feelings are always valid. So, when you feel disrespected, you are disrespected. Perhaps another person didn’t mean to convey disrespect, but somehow, they managed to anyway. It may have been simply a clumsy or unthinking moment, or it may reveal a deeper sense of superiority they harbor towards you. In any case, if you feel it, it’s true. Once you acknowledge it, you can choose more wisely how to act from there.

Respect at Work Signals Safety

At its essence, respect at work signals safety. In fact, all emotions evolved to keep us safe. When people were evolving ten thousand years ago, humans were targets. By ourselves, we are neither the fastest nor the strongest predator out there. However, as humans learned to band together and use tools to tame the wilderness, we became apex predators and masters of the environment.

What holds us together are emotional bonds, which developed as an evolutionary advantage. People in groups were simply more likely to survive. Emotions are hard wired into us and activate our bodies—hormones, neurological systems, cardiovascular responses—to help us fight or flee in response to danger and to rest and digest when we’re safe. For example, studies show that loneliness can cause a stress response as damaging as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.  

So, knowing exactly who does and does not respect you is a survival skill. As such, the lack of it triggers a fight, flight, or freeze response. This is why in an office, people who don’t respect one another cause a lot of trouble. When people are stressed, they can’t think very clearly and tend to react in unpredictable ways.

On the other hand, developing respect at work helps people feel safe and focus on the work at hand, without getting distracted by petty squabbles. It takes intentionality to help everyone feel safe enough to get down to business, but it’s worth the effort. Studies show that psychological safety in a workplace is the strongest predictor for high-performance teams.

Respect at Work is Mutual

To earn respect, you need to demonstrate respect. When you take time to understand another person by listening to them and empathizing with them, you show respect. Basically, you send the message that they are worthy of your time and consideration.

In psychology, taking the time and effort to deeply understand another person is called validation. In particular, validation has been shown in many studies to help people relax, trust others, and become open to change. Without it, people tend to become defensive and resistant to change.

For human beings, there are few things more satisfying than feeling seen and heard. Respecting others, and earning their respect in return, is the essence of human bonding. You are both more likely to help each other out when asked or needed. This is exactly how we are wired.

Respect at Work is Not Authority

Some people confuse authority with respect at work, but this is never the case. It is true that authority and fear can drive behavior, but only for a short period of time. Fear and authority always create resentment and tend to lead to micromanaging. Workers who resent their workplace generally find ways to actively or passively decrease value or lower performance. They just don’t care enough to work hard.

In response to recent disruptions such as the pandemic, political upheavals, and financial and trade disruptions, some leaders have reverted to more authoritarian leadership styles. Korn Ferry has documented a global trend toward authoritarianism in recent years. And I get it. It’s tempting to try to assert control, especially in a world where a lot is out of your control.

However, the problem with authoritarian leadership is that it simply doesn’t work. Instead of driving performance, a strong approach to enforcing performance has been shown to actually make performance worse and does not inspire employees to improve.

This shift toward authority in the workplace is likely to lead to declining engagement. Indeed, Gallup’s most recent 2025 report on workplace engagement has shown a recent downward trend, after many years of rising engagement. Many advisory firms foresee that these trends will continue to lower overall results in the future.

What You Can Do If You Feel Disrespected

Try to be aware of shifts in your workplace and understand the causes. When workers feel disrespected, they generally respond with a lack of enthusiasm for their job. Performance tends to slip. This can end up spiraling into a cycle of mistrust, where both sides get distracted by workplace tension.

It’s a leader’s job to create and maintain company culture and performance. When the pressure is on, try to manage your own emotions and desire for control or authority. If you want better performance on your team, you are more likely to succeed with a team culture of trust, psychological safety, and respect. Put the team’s needs above your own as a servant leader to motivate your team.

If your boss tries to manage you with more authority, do your best to re-establish trust between yourself and your boss. Sometimes a little help from direct reports goes a long way to making everyone feel better and focus on work goals, not on work tension.

How to Build Respectful Relationships

Here are the most important behaviors demonstrating respect at work.

Listening Attentively

Listening is the most important sign of respect at work. When you actively listen to what others have to say, even if you disagree with them, you show that they are worthy of your time and attention. Active listening involves more than simply hearing someone. It means:

  • Using body language like leaning in and making eye contact
  • Putting away distractions like electronic devices
  • Asking questions for clarification
  • Offering a summary of what you heard to be sure you got it right
  • Responding empathetically, for example giving a heartfelt grunt along with something like, “well, that sucks.”

All of these listening behaviors validate other people’s emotions and are inherently respectful.

To be clear, respecting someone doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. There are plenty of respectful ways to disagree. However, it does mean that you have to listen to them and try to understand their views.

Avoiding Judgment

What usually gets in the way of true respect is judgment, which is criticizing others based on differences. However subtle, taking a stance of superiority damages respect. And there are plenty of subtle ways to convey superiority, including using the word “should,” body language (literally looking down or askance at someone), or ignoring ideas or comments. Any time you judge or criticize, you demonstrate an inherent lack of respect.

Conversely, any time you recognize another person’s inherent equal worth as a human being, you signal respect. Just because someone does something that you wouldn’t do, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. When you feel like judging someone, try curiosity instead. Taking the time to learn why they are doing what they are doing will help you build trust and understanding.

Valuing Others

Respect requires that we acknowledge the value of another person’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences. In this way, it is closely related to empathy, which is the ability to understand and feel what someone else feels. When you understand someone deeply by empathizing with them, you are inherently respectful. When you see the value of someone’s efforts, and the ways they are doing their best under their circumstances, you demonstrate appreciation for them as a person. In return, they are far more likely to have your back when you need them.

Fairness and Equality

Fairness is a key part of respect. Inherently, unfairness implies favoritism. At its worst, unfairness manifests as nepotism or similar favoring of people based on friendship and not merit. When the workplace is unfair, it’s perceived as a rigged system. Employees know when people are promoted despite a lack of results, and when those whose results are superior get inferior treatment. There are few things more damaging to motivation and employee effort than favoritism.

Fairness does not mean treating everyone the same. You certainly want to have work standards and don’t want to tolerate poor behavior or poor results. As leaders, the best approach is to be tough on issues and soft on people. It’s important to maintain work standards and drive for results, and at the same time, be supportive of how your team can help you get the outcomes you want.

Accepting Others

Respect involves accepting others for who they are, regardless of differences in appearance, beliefs, identity, or even social status. Actually, it’s a powerful move to adopt the stance that people who are different from you are inherently valuable and worthy of your consideration. That is a kind of grace that engenders a lot of support and goodwill.

Respect also helps you be graceful and accept others even when they make mistakes or are not at their best. Let’s face it, we all make mistakes, and we all have off days. When you respect and accept others even at their worst, you inspire their efforts to be their best self next time.

Remember, too, that innovation and progress often come from people who do things differently. So it’s in your best interest to be open to differences and demonstrate curiosity rather than judgment.

Kindness and Courtesy

People show respect through genuine courtesy and kindness. When you’re generous, people generally respond with generosity. Similarly, when you’re polite, people tend to respond with politeness. This is the principle of reciprocity and the mutuality of respect.

It’s important to distinguish between inauthentic politeness and genuine kindness. People can say something polite and yet, their tone may indicate insincerity or disdain. This can be subtle. If you doubt their sincerity, that doubt itself is worthy of notice and investigation. Our emotional barometers are very sensitive to inauthenticity and deceit. So, trust yourself if you feel that someone’s politeness is just masking some kind of selfishness. Again, act accordingly.

Creating the Conditions for High-Performance Teams

So again, respect is a pre-condition for trust. It is where you start if you want your team to be at their best every day. It will help you develop the other essential leadership skills necessary for high performance: trust, confidence, self-awareness, negotiating alignment, and good decision-making. When you master all these skills, you will know what your team needs from you to be at their best every day.

Keep Learning

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Learn more about building respect live in my FREE leadership workshop, One-on-Ones that Motivate.

FAQs for Building Respect at Work

Q: Why is respect important in leadership?

A: Respect builds psychological safety and trust. Without it, teams protect themselves instead of collaborating or innovating.

Q: How can managers show respect to employees?

A: Listen actively, validate their input, treat them fairly, and recognize their efforts publicly.

Q: What should I do if I feel disrespected at work?

A: Acknowledge the feeling, stay calm, and seek a respectful conversation to restore trust and clarity.

Q: Does respect really improve performance?

A: Yes. Studies show that teams with high psychological safety and mutual respect consistently outperform peers.

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