Loyalty and Respect

In a previous post, I wrote about Value-in-Action stories, inspired by Annette Simmons, author of Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate with Power and Impact. She says that when you tell a story about how you chose to do the right thing, even when that choice was a tough one, you send a powerful message about what you expect of yourself and others.

But storytelling is not the only way to demonstrate your values. I’ve shared that one of my values is loyalty. There are lots of levels of loyalty: I’ve been happily and faithfully married for over 45 years. (For me, that’s one of the most important pillars of loyalty.) I choose not to complain to friends or family about my husband; we don’t ever talk about our troubles or shortcomings to anyone outside the relationship.

I stay loyal to people who work for me until or unless it’s impossible not to. For me, that meant paying for weekly cleaning instead of biweekly during the pandemic. My cleaner shared that she’d lost a good number of customers who didn’t feel comfortable having people come into their homes during that scary time. She and I had agreed on what we considered safe practices (we were both vaccinated; she wore protective equipment in my home) and we were able to afford to increase the service.

In a different case, I finally had to find another lawn service when the individual we’d used for years started to become unreliable. We understood – he had health issues – but we needed to make sure we could count on him to show up. When we hired another company, we decided to offer him severance. We paid him the amount he would have earned from us over the summer to hold him over until he could replace our business. It felt like the right thing to do.

Demonstrating your values is more important than talking about them. But you know that.

The other value I wrote about was respect. There are many, many opportunities to demonstrate respect every day. Holding the door for someone. Giving up your seat in a busy waiting room or on the train. Letting someone go in front of you in the cashier line because they only have one item and are obviously on their lunch hour. Respect, in many ways, takes the form of kindness. It’s a way of saying “I see you, and I will make your day easier if it’s in my power.”

You show respect in the way you dress, the way you speak, and the way you manage your body language.  The pandemic lockdowns and remote work changed norms about business dress and interpersonal communication – mostly not for the better. Low unemployment rates often coincide with lower standards of customer service. (When the labor market is tight, retailers and service organizations hang on to mediocre employees way too long.)

There’s one way to immediately increase the respect you show to the people who matter in your life. Be present. Put down your device, make direct and open eye contact, and show them that you’re listening. Listening, and hearing. In my experience, discussions, small problems, even whole relationships go bad because someone feels disrespected.

We can fix that by putting our values into action.