Chief Master Nick French

Today I was dropping my daughter off at preschool and overhead another parent repeating a common statement that made me think about how backwards it is and how different the world would be if people just reversed that line of thinking. “Respect is earned, not given.” If a person follows Scripture on how to treat others and reverses that to treat respect like God’s grace, “respect is given not earned” how different would people interactions with others be? What does it hurt to just treat people with respect front the beginning? Does it take away from you or put you in a weaker position in your works political dynamics to treat people with respect from the start? How many workplace disagreements would never have happened if people treated each other with respect initially instead of a resentful “what have you done or can do for me” attitude? Even think about the managers and supervisors that you have enjoyed working for. When you first met them, how did they treat you? Did they come in with an attitude of treating you horrible until you proved yourself or did they treat you respectfully as a competent person and only change it if you proved to them you needed treated differently?

Much of the world would be better if people started interactions with respect for others on the simple grounds of them being another person. I realize you can’t force others to show respect from the beginning, but you can make changes to any dynamic by being the first one to put respect into the interactions, it just might change the way they start responding back to you.

Treat respect like God’s grace, give of it freely and without expectations and you just might be amazed how your world starts to change around you.