Respecting others

18th April 2013

I thought that this week in particular it would be appropriate to write about respect and being prepared to listen to other people’s points of view, as we have been seeing and hearing a lot of aggressive posturing ever since Margaret Thatcher’s death.

The thing is that having respect for other people’s beliefs and values is very important in all walks of life. Hopefully we all have our own strongly held beliefs, but just because they are things that we believe in doesn’t necessarily make them right (or wrong for that matter) they are simply a matter of opinion. I am all for people expressing their opinions, and for promoting lively debate, it is part of what makes life interesting, although I am unlikely to change my beliefs or values due to someone else arguing their case strongly against mine. However, it doesn’t matter that I don’t listen to their point of view, and quite often I can see that they have valid reasons for believing what they do, although again it doesn’t necessarily make them right or wrong either.

The sad thing is that it seems that more and more nowadays, we are unlikely to be able to have, and even less likely to be able to voice our opinion, as we will be accused of being bigoted, or being racist, sexist, ageist, or any number of other biases. However, they are just opinions, so why shouldn’t we be able to stand by what we believe in without the “thought police” telling us what we should be thinking and saying.

Lively debate is generally a good thing in most situations. If everyone in business simply goes along agreeing with the management’s opinions all the time, the chances are that the business will never be anything more than mediocre. Be prepared to voice your beliefs, and listen to others, because that is what achieves the best results when deciding on the way forward.

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