“The key to building a great culture is to recognize that ordinary people want to do extraordinary things. Your job as a leader is to create an environment that supports this to happen,” Sean Durfy, former president and CEO, WestJet once said.

Building a respectful workplace is one of the best things we can do to create a welcoming workplace — one where people feel valued, able to be their true selves, and want to perform.

Valuing respect involves demonstrating it. It is about putting words into action.

So how can we, as leaders, action respect?

According to trusted leadership expert and author David Irvine, respect must be modelled, especially by those in positions of leadership.

Trucking HR Canada has partnered with Irvine to deliver a three-part webinar series this fall that is tailored to our sector. The goal of these cost-effective customized sessions is to deliver practical insights and tools that can help us all build better workplaces — and creating a culture of respect is a great place to start.

Irvine tells a story about working with an organization to define their core values. When the process was complete, respect was at the top of the list.

Accountability

“Now, how are we going to be accountable to ensure that everyone in this organization behaves respectfully?” he asked the leadership team.

At that point all the heads went down, and no one made eye contact.

“What about Frank? He’s one of our senior leaders, and we all know he is one of the most disrespectful people in the company,” one executive said.

“What are you going to do about it?” Irvine asked.

“We can’t fire him,” the CEO explained. “As the director of sales, he single-handedly brings in more money than the entire sales team combined.”

“You don’t have to fire him,” Irvine said. “But if you keep him, you need to put a line through the value of respect and replace it with ‘profit.’ Because that is what you show you value. Values are the actions that are supported in an organization.”

After much deliberation, they decided to fire Frank. After that, the entire sales team stepped up and started to create results as they never had before. They finally felt the executive team was actually going to start getting real.

Here are five ways Irvine says you can make respect real on your team:

• 1. Decide that respect is important enough to make it a priority. Be sure everyone understands what you mean by respect and why it matters in the workplace.
• 2. Be able to describe what respect means to each person in their roles — with meaningful, practical, behavioral details.
• 3. Define the expectations of each person regarding respect; explicitly negotiate and agree to behave respectfully to each other.
• 4. Define a violation process. If anyone knowingly or unknowingly dishonors or violates an agreement, be specific about how it will be dealt with. Help everyone in your organization feel safe to discuss with anyone, at any time, any of the details when they don’t feel respected.
• 5. Include discussions of personal responsibility so that “disrespect” does not turn into a weapon to prevent the ability to have tough conversations.

Becoming better leaders

Join our growing list of employers for our three-part leadership webinar series led by Irvine this fall. You can bring your team together for three one-hour sessions, plus 30 minutes of questions and answers, for one group participation fee.

Making our industry better starts with us all being the best leaders we can be. And, because the event is virtual — there is no participation limit.

When you register before Sept. 30 for all three sessions, you receive the early bird price and get access to a bonus session. Find out more/register: here