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How to Lose Respect

leadership Feb 18, 2019

The wacky thing about bending over backward to make others feel comfortable is that instead of them seeing you as uber polite....they mistake it for incompetence and weakness. Funny story...

I use to be that girl.

I use to explain away my statements before I made them. I would defer to the men in the room and let them speak before me.

I would give overdone "Yes, please! or Thank you's or "No, no it's okay!!", when I shouldn't have.

This has not only ALWAYS bitten me in the ass but made me resent the person I talked to this way. 

You can't expect someone to treat you with respect if every time you're given the chance to assert yourself by receiving reverence, compliments you brush them off or play the weaker part.

In a work environment, this is something that will get you 'killed'. Now, your smarter colleagues will see through this facade of yours and will still treat you with respect but less evolved senior...upper...management types (cough* men) may take you at surface level and start treating you like a child. Talking over you, brushing your ideas aside etc. 

Try to go into this week with the decision to leave these behaviors on the cutting room floor:

1. Saying sorry unless you are truly sorry. 

2. Explaining away praise. 

3. Telling someone "No, no, you're fine" when you should just say thank you and move on. 

4. Not looking others in the eye. 

5. Prefacing statements that you're making by saying this is just your opinion or some other language that takes the punch out of it.

Your ideas are valid. You deserve to be in the room giving them.

Take up space and stop apologizing or explaining yourself away. 

Because at some point (within 1 month actually...) you're going to lose the respect of your colleagues and your management and that would be a waste. 

Consider this your warning to not let it happen to you. 

A few easy ways you can do this are: 

1. Remembering they hired you for a reason.

2. You deserve to talk to your colleagues the way they talk to you, so if you see that they aren't formal or don't apologize before speaking then you make the decision to do that too.

3. In business or at work you don't need to be excessively apologetic in tone or polite. Just say what you have to say. 

 

 

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