Shortly after the death of George Floyd in May of 2020, corporate statements and earnings call mentions of support for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) jumped through the roof. At that time and for at least two years afterward, it seemed that everyone was talking about the importance of DEI, ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) […]
Recently, I gave a talk at a major HR conference where I referred to data demonstrating that, while the frequency of and sensitivity to disrespectful behavior at work has been steadily increasing over the last 20 years, there appears to have been an uptick following the election of Donald Trump. I concluded this segment of […]
I have a personal habit that drives some people nuts: I’m always early for meetings. It doesn’t matter if I’m going to a business meeting, a training presentation, or even a dinner date; typically, I show up at least 15-20 minutes before I’m expected. As you can imagine, this can be problematic, because often as […]
Hearing about Donald Trump’s recent meeting in which he made disrespectful comments about immigrants and other countries reminded me of an incident I witnessed over 20 years ago, while facilitating a corporate leadership strategy session. I watched – paralyzed – as the CEO of a global company literally screamed obscenities and personal abuse at his […]
It was 1958, and a young Virginia couple named Richard and Mildred Loving – she was black and Native American; he was white – were arrested and charged with violating the state’s law banning interracial marriages, one of many such laws found across the country. To avoid a prison sentence, they moved to Washington DC […]
Almost every day someone says “respect our veterans.” That’s a noble sentiment and a good idea; to which I’d like to add, “…and don’t forget, our veterans are a very diverse group.” Apparently someone in Wilmington, North Carolina assumes that all veterans are male because when Mary Clare Caine – an Air Force vet who […]
Right before Christmas, we discovered we had been lied to by a sales rep at our cell phone store and, furious, we went back in January to return some unwanted merchandise we’d been told we “had to buy.” But the “lead” customer service rep who was processing our return – despite knowing we’d been lied […]
Respect can surprise us in interesting ways. How many of us would have the courage to deliberately lose an important race to an opponent who’d made a mistake? In December of 2012, in an extraordinary show of respectful sportsmanship, Ivan Fernandez Anay – a long-distance runner from the Basque region of Spain who was running […]
The manager and subordinate I’d been working with as a mediator were both angry with each other. The subordinate felt disrespected by the manager and vice versa. But, while the manager shrugged it off as the employee being too sensitive (and disrespectful), the employee was stuck in a cycle of feeling disrespected and powerless, growing […]
My good friend, who manages gift shops, was livid: “The next customer who comes in and tries to buy something while they’re talking on their cell phone, isn’t going to get served.” She says people do this to her all of the time and it drives her off the deep end, adding “It’s incredibly disrespectful […]