THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING RESPECT VERSUS BEING LIKED

For many of the earlier years in my leadership journey at work, in not-for-profit voluntary roles (including my wife and I being House Parents at a home for ‘At Risk Girls’) my decisions and my behaviours often reflected a desire (and possibly a need), to be liked.  

It’s fine to be liked as a team member, as it is when you take that first step up into leadership, however it can be highly unconstructive to filter decisions and behaviours through the lens of whether or not it will cause people to like you more or less. As a people leader your primary need is to be respected more than liked.  

As one of my leadership quote cards in my workshops states: “I cannot tell you the recipe for success but I can tell you the recipe for failure and that is to try and please all of the people all of the time”. If you are not aware of that fact, then let me tell you now- you will make some decisions that may not be popular with your entire team, but ultimately the question is whether or not it’s the right decision for the business (including external stakeholders such as customers and clients), and secondly, is the right decision for the team overall (within the context of it being beneficial for the business). Then, finally, you give consideration to the feelings of individual team members. 

I remember applying for my first primary school teaching job in my early 30’s. I considered teaching to be, first and foremostly, a leadership role, and then secondly a role of educating children. If you’re not able to lead and control the children effectively then there is little chance of you being effective as an educator. In fact, my covering letter applying for jobs stated in huge letters over 30 pt. font size  

“I DON’T WANT TO BE A TEACHER!!” 

And under that in much smaller writing stated: “I want to be an inspirer of children”. I knew that there would be times when I wasn’t educating the children in my class in the traditional sense, but I would be laying an inspirational foundation on which to educate them (cue the image of children involved in writing news stories immediately after we had closed off a local street in order to race their home-made trolleys which had been a term-long homework project).  

I remember being interviewed by one of the principles at one of the schools that I had targeted to work at- they were impressed by my covering letter, and even more impressed by my wooden CV which was 60mm thick and 400mm high with jigsawed pieces of timber artwork depicting my core skills such as sports coaching and music tutoring. The principal was so impressed by my unique application and my desire to check out his school before I accepted an offer from another school that he gathered board members for an emergency interview with me, offering me the job before the application process had closed (contrary to Ministry of Education policy). 

Many applicants for teaching positions are first-time teachers, and often in their early 20s, although the aforementioned primary school, one of the most notable in Auckland, attracted a lot of mature teachers who had trained and/or worked in other fields besides teaching.  

One of the board members posed a question in my interview which I felt was probably normally targeted at younger applicants: “How do you think you will get on in terms of being a teacher, and also being friends with the children?” I knew by this stage how unconstructive it can be to be friends with the people you’re leading (including having my car stolen and written off by one of my ‘at risk students’ that I befriended) and so I responded to the question by stating that I have no problem acting in a friendly manner towards the children, but I had no intention of being their friend.  

The answer seemed to entirely placate any concerns that the board member might have on the issue as it was met with generous smiles and vigorous approving nods.  

It was absolutely unnecessary for me to be liked by the children, but entirely appropriate and constructive for me to be respected by them- a simple and clear example of a leadership role where I thoroughly understood the need to be respected rather than liked.  

Although emerging leaders may be much closer in age to team members than I was to my class of primary school children, the principle of “professional distance” still holds, and in fact is harder to maintain when the team are of similar age, and social activities such as going out for a drink after work can blur the lines between the people leader and their direct reports.