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Transcript
If your team doesn’t respect you, well, that’s kind of a problem. And if you want to fix that problem, you need to figure out why they don’t respect you. And if you want to figure out why, the first person you need to look at is yourself.
Let’s look at some reasons why they may not be respecting you as a leader.
1. They don’t see you as competent
First, they don’t see you as competent. They don’t see you as someone who can accomplish things. Yes, it’s great that you build relationships with people, and it’s good to do that.
You can have the greatest relationships, but if you aren’t able to get things done, then that’s going to hurt the respect and influence you have with your people. You have to have good relationships and build that trust, but you also need to be competent. And if you aren’t, you need to look at why and learn those skills or things you need to do so that you can become competent and get things done.
2. You’re bad at making decisions
Second, you may be bad at making decisions. Now this can take different forms.
It could be that you try to control all the decisions. You make all decisions come through you and you are the bottleneck. And if you’re that way, then people may not respect you because of that.
It could also be that you take forever to make decisions. Sometimes leaders fear being wrong, or they fear making mistakes. So they are hesitant to decide. They waffle, they go back and forth and they never decide.
Or they trying to get consensus and wait till everyone agrees and it takes forever. And if you do that, well, it could hurt your respect and influence with your team.
3. You don’t show trust to your team
It could be that you don’t show trust towards your team. If you don’t trust your team and your people know that, then that will hurt their trust and respect and influence with you. This can take different forms.
It could be that you try to control everything they do. It’s sometimes called micromanaging. You don’t trust that they can do it right, so you watch over them to make sure they do it right. Or you create all these rules and bureaucracy to control them to make sure they do what they’re supposed to do. That lack of trust can hurt their respect toward you.
It could be kind of like we talked about before, that you make all decisions go through you. You don’t trust them to be able to make decisions on their own, so you make all the decisions for them, and that then hurts their respect.
4. You communicate poorly
It could also be that you communicate poorly. And this too can take different forms.
It could be that you just don’t know how to communicate. And if that’s the case, you need to learn and practice those skills so that you can communicate better. Sometimes leaders hide information. They don’t want to share information because they don’t trust their people, or they think it’s a form of power, or they just don’t see that it’s important.
But as a leader, you want to share information with your team. You want to let them know what’s going on. How can they make the best decisions? How can they do the best job if they don’t have all the information to make the best decisions and know what to do?
And if you communicate poorly, or you withhold information, or you wait too long to share that information with people, that can build distrust.
Think about it this way, if there’s something going on in the company and you don’t share information with them, what do you think is going on in their mind? They think the worst. And if you don’t share information and it seems like you’re hiding information, that hurts their respect and trust in you.
Part of communication, too, is the expectations you give. If you are vague about your instructions and what you want them to do, if you don’t give clear expectations, then how are they going to do their job well?
And when you don’t give those clear expectations, and especially if you get onto them because they didn’t do what you didn’t explain very well, that’s definitely going to hurt their respect toward you. You always want to make sure that expectations are clear and that information is free flowing.
5. You don’t deal with problems promptly or hold people to expectations
It could be too that you don’t deal with problems promptly. You may be a pushover. If you say this is the expectation, everyone must arrive on time, or this is the level of work that we do, but then you don’t hold people to that.
You let people slide because you’re afraid of confronting people, because you’re afraid of how people might react, then how does that make everybody else feel? You say this is the expectation, but you’re okay with this. Don’t you think that would hurt your respect or somebody else if they were that way?
What if someone is constantly not living up to expectations? Or they have negative behaviors that’s affecting the team and you don’t do anything about it? What’s that saying about you as a leader and how do you think that will impact their trust with you?
6. You have the wrong motive
It could also be your motive. Your motive might be about you and what you can get out of your leadership or management or boss position, versus you being about the mission and serving your team to accomplish the mission.
Your people will know, they will recognize what your motive is because of your actions. And when they see that you’re about yourself versus them or the mission that you’re self-seeking, that of course is going to hurt and impact their respect towards you and your influence with them.
7. People feel they must walk on eggshells around you
It could also be that people feel like they have to walk on eggshells around you. And what that means is that they don’t know how you will react on the moment-by-moment or a day-to-day basis.
They’re constantly being careful how they approach you or how they talk or what they do because they don’t know if it will be a day that you explode on them or whatever it may be.
You don’t want to be that kind of leader. And if you are, then that will hurt your respect with them.
8. You’re focus is on catching mistakes versus supporting
It could be that you’re about catching them doing wrong or making a mistake versus being about helping them and supporting them. When you walk around the office, or you see your people online or whatever format you’re in, do they react in fear that you’re coming around?
Or are they happy to see you because you know you’re there to support and help them? If you’re about catching them doing wrong, then they will feel your presence and that will impact their respect towards you.
9. You’re bad at receiving bad news and feedback
It could be that you’re bad about accepting feedback or bad news. If every time someone brings you bad news or says a problem and you explode and attack the messenger, well guess what?
First of all, they’re not going to want to share information with you again, which is not good. But second of all, what do you think their opinion of you will be when you do that? Not so good.
If every time someone tries to give you feedback, and you get defensive and argue or yell or get angry, how do you think they’re going to react to that? Probably the same way. They probably won’t give you feedback and they’ll probably respect you less.
10. You are about your idea versus the best idea
It could be that you’re about your idea, not the best idea. You see sometimes leaders, when they’re in a meeting and they’re proposing an idea, they don’t really want a discussion. They just want to push what they want. It’s about what they want.
They may push aside disagreement and try to avoid people disagreeing. They may shut people down or get angry when people bring up a problem with what they propose. They’re not about the best idea or doing what’s best. They’re about what they want.
And if you are like that and you’re about just pushing your idea and what you want and cutting everybody else out and just about you, how do you think that’s going to impact their opinion of you? Not so good.
11. They don’t trust you
And lastly, it could be that they don’t trust you. If they don’t trust you, then they’re not going to respect you. They’re not going to want to follow you.
And trust can be a number of things. First, it comes from trusting them, like we mentioned before, but even more than that, it’s being truthful. It’s being honest. It’s them knowing that when you say something, you’re telling them the truth.
It’s you when you make a commitment to do something that you followed through. And if something happens and then you admit to it and admit your mistakes and admit when you don’t know. It’s that when someone shares something with you in confidence, they know you’ll keep confidence. It’s them knowing that you will do the right thing even when it’s hard, even when no one’s looking. You don’t cut corners. You are someone trustworthy.
And if you’re someone trustworthy, that builds influence with people, and people respect you for that. But if you’re not, you hurt that., and the marketing department helped us this much and all this stuff,” that builds goodwill when you pass the credit.ot lowering things to meet you. one of service.
