How to Gain Respect in the Workplace?

You are religiously coming to the workplace every day and accomplishing the assigned targets by putting in an insane amount of work. By the end of the workday you seem to have taken care of everything for the day and leave on a positive note of inbox zero. It seems that you are the best thing that has happened to the organization in a long time.

The Complete Picture

Well is this the whole picture, are you satisfied with the amount of respect you earn in lieu of the efforts you put across day in and day out. When you take stock, it appears that neither your coworkers, nor your boss or even the interns treat you with the degree of respect befitting your contribution and stature. However on closer examination it appears that the problem may not lie outside you but possibly you could be the reason for the relative lesser than normal degree of respect displayed.

Commonplace Things

Now if you have identified yourself as the culprit, you need to go ahead and find out the reasons for the same. It is entirely possible that you run late for the meetings or something as commonplace as being seen on phone most of the time. Something as unsettling as using cuss words at the workplace. You do not pay the desired attention to your workplace attire most of the time. The emails that you send across are replete with typos and are only partially complete.

Workplace Faux Passes

People are always trying to reach you on your desk but you are hardly found there, does not send the right signal. Many times you are seen sharing borderline NSFW stories. Now the good news, these are tiny and easily addressable workplace faux passes. All it takes is a few minor adjustments to get you back on track and come across as the most successful and respected person in the entire workplace.

At the Receiving End

Let us see how easily you can tweak small things for larger ramifications. In the event you find yourself overshooting your projects and meeting more often than not, other people, especially your colleagues get stuck and angry are with you for they are on the receiving end. Fret not for it is nobody’s fault, in your quest to accommodate more you are overshooting your deadlines.

Buffer Time

The solution to this is really plain and simple, just allocate a decent amount of buffer time to your activities and you would be able to easily manage them, in the event of overshooting any scheduled task you would not put others into jeopardy and the buffer time would keep you safe as well. To counter the insipid image of always being seen on the phone try leaving the phone on your desk, mails and messages can wait till the end of the meeting & ditch the laptop in a similar vein.

Final Words

Now you have the undivided attention of people and they are all the more happy with you, for you are not only spending your valuable time with them and communicating effectively and when they see you taking handwritten notes on a notebook instead of being glued to the ubiquitous phone or the workhorse of a laptop they can’t afford to miss the transformation and appreciate your efforts to gel with the team as an integral component, respect from peers and subordinates is a natural corollary of behavior modification by tweaking things to appeal to the team as a whole.