Giving Respect

I will admit I oftentimes had a rocky relationship with one of the key alphas in my corporate life. That often happens when you throw two alphas together. But he was my boss so, in essence, despite all of my assertiveness and confidence in my own ideas, I had to defer to him and complete the tasks that he considered most important. In years past, I ignored his deadlines because I knew there wasn’t a penalty. He bark was bigger than his bite. I always thought that he really had no concept of my work load and if he’d been realistic he wouldn’t expect me to complete ten budgets in a six week time frame. So I wouldn’t get them done on time. I would get them done within the time frame I thought was doable.

But one year when I was thinking about my attitude and how it displayed a certain amount of disrespect I decided to get the budgets done on time. I worked weekends for four weeks, but I got them done. As an aside, I hated doing the budgets. It was quite a sacrifice, but it was important to me to show him I respected him and was on board, a team player. It did wonders for our relationship and respect flowed back to me from him. It was a tough time for me in regard to work load, but I learned a huge lesson, when you give respect you get respect.