Leading With Respect

Why “giving people space” is the leadership capability most organizations are missing.
This week’s conversation, with Jovina Ang, Ph.D. , a global leader across tech, academia, and consulting, surfaced something deceptively simple and deeply urgent: Respect is giving people space to be heard. In a world defined by speed, noise, and constant change, that idea cuts through.
Not because it’s new. Because it’s rare. Respect is not a value. It’s a signal. Jovina framed respect as a response to what she called an “attention deficit world.”
People don’t just want to contribute. They want to know they exist. They want to know they matter.
And you can see it immediately in organizations: When respect is present → voices are heard, ideas flow, people feel they belong; when it’s absent → fear rises, silence spreads, decisions narrow.
This is where most leadership teams underestimate the cost. When people don’t speak up, decision quality drops.
Not slowly. Immediately.
Read the full article on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leading-respect-age-ai-bobby-bakshi-pjbxc

Why the "Super Hardcore" Workplace Is Missing the Point
 
I recently sat down with my friend, Newton Cheng, on the Leading With Respect podcast. Newton spent 17 years as Google's Director of Health and Performance, overseeing programs that supported Googlers' health and well-being. His reasons for leaving matter to every leader reading this. They matter to all human beings.
Newton opened with:
"When I came into Google, it was a much different, more aspirational place. That was a place where I really felt like I could flourish. By the end of the 17 years, it was a very different place."
Every company has seasons. And every leader has to ask themselves whether the season they're in still allows people — including themselves — to flourish. That question is more urgent than ever.
 
Read the newsletter article for a recap of our conversation.

There’s a moment in leadership where everything speeds up, and you can feel it in your body.
Your calendar compresses. Your inbox multiplies. Expectations rise. Your responsibilities expand — and the margin you used to have for patience, reflection, and humanity quietly disappears.
This week on the Leading With Respect podcast, I sat down with my longtime friend from our Microsoft days, Sabina Nawaz. Sabina coaches CEOs around the world, and she opened our conversation with a line that I resonate with:
“I get paid to raise people’s heart rates.”
Because leadership isn’t rocket science — but it does require courage. And courage isn’t a personality trait. It’s what you do when your heart is pounding, and you still choose to take the right action.
That’s where respect lives.
Not in softness. Not in politeness. In pressure — and the choices we make inside it.
Read the full article on LinkedIn.

March invites reflection. Not just celebration, but recalibration.
Women’s History Month is often framed in terms of achievement, progress, and recognition. All important. And yet, this conversation with Karen E Simpson, MBA (she/her) points to something deeper—something less visible, but far more foundational:
Have we misunderstood respect itself?
I had the privilege of sitting down with Karen—a longtime friend, former Microsoft colleague, and someone I describe exactly as she describes herself: a listener, a truth-teller, and a seer.
What unfolded wasn’t a typical conversation about workplace respect.
It was a reframing. I highly recommend watching/listening to the full podcast episode.
Read the full article on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7440426608823484416/?originTrackingId=YZd6CEMJ9WhpIftFaJHHKg%3D%3D

Every conversation in this series reminds me how many different paths lead people to the same realization: respect is not a “soft” concept in organizations. It is a performance driver.
In my latest conversation, I had the pleasure of speaking with Elizabeth Brady. Her story alone is a reminder of how far workplaces have come, and how far they still need to go.
Early in her career, she was the only woman in a male-dominated environment where colleagues avoided calling her Elizabeth because it sounded “too feminine.” So she took on "EB" to reduce their discomfort. Many years later, she has built an impressive and diverse portfolio. Today she teaches supply chain and ERP to biotech manufacturing students, consults with organizations to accelerate their progress, and serves on the boards of companies advancing fields such as spatial genomics and life-saving medical devices.
It was a fascinating conversation that stretched from biotechnology to leadership culture. But at its core was a simple and powerful question.
What does respect in the workplace actually look like?
 
Leading With Respect is available wherever you get your podcasts:
YouTube | Apple | Spotify | Audible
 
Respect begins with recognizing human worth
Elizabeth offered a definition that was both simple and profound.
Respect means approaching others with an open heart and mind, recognizing that every person has inherent worth simply by being on this earth.
That does not mean we must always agree with each other. It means we create space for people to express themselves without immediately trying to shape or mold them into what we want them to be.
This idea resonates deeply with me. In business environments, we tend to elevate the intellect above everything else. We praise logic, analysis, and speed of decision-making. Meanwhile, the heart is often dismissed as something “soft.”

When a leader says “we value people,” there’s a simple way to test if it’s true:
What happens when someone sets a boundary?
In my latest Leading With Respect podcast conversation, Brenda Herrera DeLeon (a former VP in the agency world) said respect at work is fundamentally this:
Dignity. Being seen. Being heard. Being valued. Being included.
And she offered the clearest cultural signal I’ve heard in a while:
If boundaries aren’t honored, respect isn’t present—no matter what’s on the wall.
One more line that stayed with me:
Burnout is often a systems signal, not an individual weakness.
 
As AI speeds up the pace of work, this matters even more.
 
The faster the work gets, the more leaders have to design for dignity.
 
Question for leaders/CHROs:
If I asked your people, “When you set a boundary here, what happens next?,
what would they say?

This week on Leading With Respect, I had the privilege of speaking with Stephen Bullock, President of Power Curbers Companies, a North Carolina–based manufacturer of concrete paving equipment operating in over 100 countries.
If most of my network lives in tech, Stephen represents something equally powerful: frontline leadership. Manufacturing floors. Safety risks. Heat. Heavy machinery. Generational employees. Acquisitions. Real people doing real work.
And what struck me most?
The fundamentals of respect don’t change — regardless of industry.

What a former Microsoft CVP taught me about respect, allyship, and the discipline of slowing down
There was a moment in my recent podcast conversation with a former Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Gavriella Schuster, that stopped me.
She said:
“Respect is really listening. Listening to understand where someone is coming from — and recognizing that everyone has value.”
Simple.
Obvious.
And yet, rare.
Because in most organizations today, leaders are not rewarded for listening.
They are rewarded for speed.
Speed of decisions. Speed of execution. Speed of response.
But respect operates on a different clock.
And when respect disappears, innovation quietly disappears.
Read the full LinkedIn article here.
Learn more about Gavriella here.

With Valentine’s Day approaching, love tends to get framed as something personal. Romantic. Private. Something that belongs outside the walls of work.
But what if love does belong in the workplace — just not in the way we usually think about it?
Not sentimentality. Not forced positivity. Not heart emojis or motivational posters.
In organizations, love shows up as respect. And when respect is present, happiness follows.
That’s why this week’s Leading With Respect conversation felt especially timely.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Brooklyn Dicent Chief Happiness Officer, Chief Happiness Officer at The Happiness Consulting Company. Brooklyn’s work focuses on bringing the science of happiness into organizations across the country and beyond. What immediately stood out to me was how closely her perspective on happiness aligns with my work on respect.
Early in our conversation, a powerful connection emerged:
Happiness and respect are not soft ideas. They are courageous practices.

This week on Leading With Respect, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Christina Rowe, a deeply thoughtful talent development and organizational effectiveness leader who truly embodies what human-centric leadership looks like in practice.
From the moment Christina began sharing her story, one theme stood out: She sees herself first and foremost as a problem solver — someone who brings the right people, insights, and perspectives together to create solutions that genuinely serve the business and the humans inside it.
That orientation matters more than ever in today’s VUCA world: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.