Everyone deserves respect as a baseline, not something to earn. The speaker calls the "earn respect" mentality a massive fail that creates harmful power dynamics and conditional worthiness based on gender, identity, or appearance. Organizations need to shift from transactional respect to making it an unconditional right for all members.
Here's a wild one. I want you to fill in the blank, because a lot of us were taught this as we grew up. It's a belief about respect. Here it is, ready? Respect is not giving. Oh no. Respect is— Earned. Massive fail. See, if I have to earn your respect, I'm not good enough to be me. This is a power game now. I have to do something to be worthy of you. And then when I get in that role, I'm going to do that to everybody else because that's the system you taught me. How about this one instead? Respect is given to every human being, and every means all genders, identities, sexual orientations, body shape, size, age. Every means every. That's the conversations. How do we build that in our organizations?
