On respect

Firstly, an apology to my regular readers on the delay to this post.  I’ve had a very busy couple of weeks personally, squeezing out the time I have available to blog. Hopefully things will be back to normal next week.

As a coda to my 3 Dear… Blog posts, I wanted to discuss respect.

• Dear developer,
• Dear customers, and users,
• Dear manager

All of these talk about respect, but I realise that respect isn’t always understood. Respect doesn’t mean to tolerate, it doesn’t mean to accept someone’s position blindly, it doesn’t mean opinion is as valid as fact.

It means that I will try to tailor my message to talk about things meaningful to you, I will be technical with developers, I will talk deadlines and finances with managers, and I will talk to users about their business, not our architecture.

I will disagree with you, but I will be open to the possibility that I am wrong, if you can show me why.

If we can’t agree on something, we must respect each other and the team enough to come to a way forward that recognises without necessarily resolving that disagreement.

I will not respect your opinion. But I will respect your right to hold it. I will respect a hypothesis based on that opinion that can be tested and reasoned about. And I will respect the result of that test, if the methodology is sound. I expect that your first hypothesis will not be your last.

I will not respect you because of the title you hold, your seniority or your ability to bulldoze dissent. I will respect you if your actions demonstrate respect, if your words respect your actions, and your attitude respects your words. Power is not worthy of respect. You will be judged by how you wield that power. I will try and wield my power responsibly.

I am open to change, but not for the sake of change.

Respect yourself and the respect for others will follow.