respectful behavior

How can you tell if someone really respects you, or not?

Research literature on “respect” is interesting but relatively sparse on concrete detail, especially if you’re trying to learn about respect across cultures. How does someone know how to convey or recognize respect if they haven’t grown up in the culture? You can of course pick up cues from observing, reading, and talking to people. Many people talk easily about respect involving “listening, valuing others’ opinions, appreciating differences,” etc. But what do those things look like, feel like, or sound like, on the ground? How exactly can you tell through behavior if someone is valuing your opinion or not?

The behavioral signals of respect clearly vary across cultures, even across personalities, and it’s not that easy to learn them unless you’ve grown up with them. For most of us, we know respect or disrespect when we see it or feel it in our gut; but when we try to describe it out loud we only achieve a skim of the surface – for example, talking about how we address people or how much direct eye contact we use. Those types of things can be learned from reading the many global business books available. Successful global leaders and networkers, however, have some additional ability or quality, something more than book knowledge. Respect is such a nuanced concept: there’s much more to it than memorizing rules about when to shake hands or kiss a cheek, where to sit or how to hold a business card. Most people, I suspect, just learn these deeper things (whatever they are) over time and experience. Is there any way to capture and then teach what they know? Can we bottle it?

Another complication is that respect is a two-way street, so to speak. You can try to be respectful til you’re blue in the face but respect won’t be conveyed until the other person recognizes it as respect. How many times have we all seen someone making the “right” behaviors and statements but they come across as phony or even disrespectful?

How do you know respect or disrespect when you experience it? Please comment (on this blog or just send me an email).