Do You Treat Your People With Respect?

Do you treat your people with respect? I know you'll say "Yes" - everyone says "Yes". But do your actions really demonstrate respect? Would your people say "Yes" if asked the same question?

Without respect, both given and perceived, managing becomes infinitely more difficult.

Here are a dozen ways that managers disrespect their slobbering, unwashed, incompetent employees...(oops, did I say that out loud? make that thirteen ways)...

1. Do you hold people accountable for the results of the system? Deming said that 95% of results come from the system, yet we seem to direct 95% of our management efforts into fixing "bad" people.
2. Have improvements resulted in layoffs?
   Do you think anyone will help you make further improvements if their jobs, and their friends jobs, will be at risk?
3. Do you identify who causes each problem?
   Root cause analysis is not about finding culprits, it's about changing the system so problems can't recur.
4. Who designs the work?
   Engineers? Managers? Bosses? The people know how to do the work; the people know how to improve the work. Most of the details of the work are probably never known to those who don't actually do the work.
5. When asked a question do you typically respond with an answer?
   Decisions should be made as close to the work as possible. People need the information, the understanding, and the support to make their own decisions about their own work.

6. Do you use carrots and sticks?
   Performance management in all it's flavours implies "I'm OK, but you need to be motivated and controlled."
7. Do you “roll out” changes?
   When you assume that a success in one area can be rolled out to another area, it implies that people are interchangeable. They're not. They're all unique and every change must be adapted and adopted, not imposed.
8. Has there ever been a strike or a lockout? Have people had to work without a contract?
   Pretending that labour-management disputes somehow evaporate after the contract is signed is naive. Of course it damages trust, destroys respect.
9. Do you blame people for absenteism and sick leave?
   People miss work because they have to; they're trying to survive in the system.
10. Do you set targets and quotas?
    Systems have capacities. Imposing arbitrary targets with no idea how people will achieve them isn't management, it's wishing, it's abusive
11. Do you tell people that they're the problem?
    If you've ever put up a poster saying "Do it right the first time," your true thoughts are clear - people screw up because people aren't careful enough.
12. Do your people ever truly get to contribute to the improvement of their daily work?
    In most companies, only an elite few ever get to change the work. This is insane.

Respect is the core of Lean, of Continuous Improvement, of the Toyota Production System, of effective auditing, of teamwork, of communication. It's crucial. Yet so many of the things we managers do are deeply disrespectful. Belittling. Condescending. The damage is vast, as are the opportunities as you start to turn it around.