Ca n You Respect People You Don’t Respect?
Some people fear they’ll never be able to maintain Mutual
Purpose or Mutual Respect with certain individuals or in certain
circumstances. How, they wonder, can they share the same pur
pose with people who come from completely different back
grounds or whose morals or values differ from theirs? What do
you do, for example, if you’re upset because another person has
let you down? And if this has repeatedly happened, how can you
respect a person who is so poorly motivated and selfish?
Yvonne is struggling with this exact point. There are times
when she doesn’t even like Jotham. She sees him as whiny and self
centered. How can you speak respectfully with someone like that?
Dialogue truly would be doomed if we had to share every
objective or respect every element of another person’s character
before we could talk. If this were the case, we’d all be mute. We
can, however, stay in dialogue by finding a way to honor and
regard another person’s basic humanity. In essence, feelings of
disrespect often come when we dwell on how others are differ
ent from ourselves. We can counteract these feelings by looking
for ways we are similar. Without excusing their behavior, we try
to sympathize, even empathize, with them.
A rather clever person once hinted how to do this in the form
of a prayer-“Lord, help me forgive those who sin differently
than I.” When we recognize that we all have weaknesses, it’s eas
ier to find a way to respect others. When we do this, we feel a
kinship, a sense of mutuality between ourselves and even the
thorniest of people. It is this sense of kinship and connection to
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others that motivates us to enter tough conversations, and it
eventually enables us to stay in dialogue with virtually anyone.
Consider the following example. A manufacturing company has
been out on strike for over six months. Finally, the union agrees to
return to work, but the represented employees have to sign a con
tract that is actually worse than what they were originally demand
ing. The first day back it’s clear that although people will work,
they won’t do so with a smile and a spring in their step. Everyone
is furious. How are people ever going to move ahead?
Concerned that although the strike is over, the battle isn’t, a
manager asks one of the authors to lend a hand. So he meets with
the two groups of leaders (both managers and union heads) and
asks them to do one thing. Each group is to go into a separate
room and write out its goals for the company on flip-chart-sized
paper. For two hours each group feverishly lays out what it wants
in the future and then tapes the lists to the wall. When they fin
ish their assignment, the groups then swap places with the goal of
finding anything-maybe just a morsel-but anything they might
have in common.
After a few minutes the two groups return to the training
room. They’re positively stunned. It was as if they had written
the exact same lists. They didn’t merely share the shadow of an
idea or two. Their aspirations were nearly identical. All wanted
a profitable company, stable and rewarding jobs, high-quality
products, and a positive impact on the community. Given a
chance to speak freely and without fear of attack, each group
laid out not simply what it wanted, but what virtually every per
son wanted.
This experience caused each group to seriously question how
i t had seen the other side. The groups began to see others as
morc similar to themselves. They realized the petty and political
tactics thc others had used were embarrassingly similar to the
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ones they themselves had employed. The “sins” of others were
different from their own more because of the role they played
than because of a fundamental blight on their character. They
restored Mutual Respect, and dialogue replaced silence and vio
lence for the first time in decades .
WHAT TO DO ONCE YOU STEP OUT
When you see that either Mutual Respect or Purpose is at risk,
we’ve suggested that you shouldn’t ignore it. We’ve also argued
that you should be able to find a way to both find Mutual
Purpose and enjoy Mutual Respect-even with people who are
enormously different.
But how? What are you supposed to actually do? We’ve
shared a few modest ideas (mostly things to avoid) , so let’s get
into three hard-hitting skills that the best at dialogue use:
• Apologize
• Contrast
• CRIB
