Can One Be Too Respectful?

Some time ago, during our weekly Lean Coffee at Lunar Logic, which is the only all hands meeting at the company, I made a disrespectful comment. It was a topic which I have a strong opinion about. A particular example that was brought to support one argument triggered a visceral reaction on my side. I said more, and more emotionally, than I should have.

A day after I asked people for feedback to understand better what had happened and how I could avoid crossing the line in future. The recurring theme was that the way I expressed myself, both the words and the form of my remark, was disrespectful to some.

That triggered another discussion some time later, and in a smaller group. It was about the meaning of being respectful and its implication of our behaviors in all sorts of situations.

We started with an assumption that being respectful means acting in a way that doesn’t hurt others intentionally. But hey, there’s the whole unintentional spectrum of effects. Luckily, we are pretty good at sharing feedback and being transparent in front of each other. This means that when someone unintentionally crosses the line it is likely that they will hear a comment referring to that behavior being disrespectful.

Going forward, with such stuff a natural desire is to be on a safe side. In other words, if I have doubts whether saying something would be disrespectful to someone I should not say that. It’s a safe choice.

And that’s exactly where we started questioning ourselves. Doesn’t our aspiration to be respectful affect how we act in less obvious situations? Doesn’t it mean that we restrain critique, harsh words, or confrontation even when we believe that they would otherwise be justified? Doesn’t we restrain ourselves from being authentic?

As a matter of fact, there can be two different sources of such a restraint. First, someone may be worried that criticism or confrontation itself would be received as disrespectful. After all, we are subjective; we may have opposite points of view and we can only control how we express our thoughts, not how they are received by the other party. We may do as much as we can to talk and behave in a respectful way but ultimately we can’t control how our attitude and behavior will be interpreted.

Second, and more importantly, most of us has neither enough skill nor practice to be able to react in such a respectful way contextually. Even if we could succeed given that we prepare, e.g. when sharing difficult feedback, we would fail to act similarly when caught off guard, e.g. in an unexpected discussion about a topic we have a strong opinion about. And I don’t use it as an excuse. I make a simple observation in the spirit of starting with what we have.

Now, if being respectful is our guiding principle we may choose not to speak up, rather than risk hurting someone. That would mean that we suppress conflict, feedback and idea cross-pollination. That would mean that we suppress our development both as individuals and as an organization.

The question we were staring at was: can we be too respectful?

Can we bring respect to the level when it is not justifiable anymore? Can being respectful yield unwanted outcome?

Intuitively my answer was negative. And yet I couldn’t discard the argument as a whole since I’ve experienced the dilemma myself.

The thing is that respect is a nuanced thing. The same behavior may be perceived as respectful by one person and as disrespectful by someone else. The same behavior may be perceived either as respectful or as disrespectful by the same person depending on whose behavior we put under scrutiny. The context matters. The group setup matters. The mood matters. And the list goes on and on.

In a way, we can’t design a set of behavior that would be universally respectful. Well, not unless we are really,really far on the safe side. This, as we already established, would have some unwanted outcomes.

And yet one of these catchy phrases I picked from Stephen Parry kept my mind working.

Showing respect for people does not mean you have to like them, agree with their views, or fail to challenge any half-baked reasoning they may have.

My thoughts were that we might have been using “respect” in overly broad way, like a wall shield rather than a buckler. However, I couldn’t wrap my head around something that would provide some guidance where the line should be. After all, Stephen’s remark focuses on what respect is not and not on what it is.

Then I came across the following passage from Ray Dalio:

Make sure people give more consideration to others than they demand for themselves.

It is more inconsiderate to prevent people from exercising their rights because you are offended by them than it is for them to do whatever it is what offends you. That said, it is inconsiderate not to weigh the impact of one’s actions on others, so we expect people to use sensible judgment and not doing obviously offensive things.

This principle, in a neat way, connects the dots in both directions and through that it addresses the risk of being “overly respectful” through suppressing oneself. It creates responsibility on each party involved in an interaction.

A party that is about to do something that may potentially be disrespectful is bound to use sensible judgement and assess whether such a behavior can be commonly perceived as offensive.

The other party, on the other hand, takes responsibility of using “the respect shield” sparingly, as if it was a buckler protecting the most sensitive areas and not a wall shield covering from literally everything.

This way we create some sort of a middle ground when it comes to respect. We don’t call out all behaviors that can potentially be perceived as disrespectful. We don’t even call out some that touch us personally, assuming good intentions and acknowledging that people have different standards. What we gain thanks to that is an environment where there is a space for more contributions from everyone.

There’s another consequence. Such a notion of respect, which accepts more behaviors, means that when someone calls “disrespectful” it is a strong signal that the line has been crossed. After all we may assume that such a call was considerate and took into account that suppressing someone else without a good reason is disrespectful too.

Of course, maintaining the balance doesn’t come for free. It requires consideration. On one hand there’s a risk of extending that middle ground of consent too far. It would happen when we start accepting behaviors that are hurtful. On the other hand there’s a risk of shrinking that space too much. It would happen when we give less and less slack to others when they act out.

The principle, however, provides us with a pretty good reference point: give others more consideration that you expect for yourself. That’s how we can avoid being both disrespectful as well as suppressing ourselves in a fear of being overly respectful.

Should I know this principle I wouldn’t have said as much in the situation that kicked off this whole thinking process. Yet still I would still make my point strongly, even at the risk of other party feeling attacked by the strong statement. And that would probably have been the best possible outcome.