God created man in his own image.
— Genesis
Aretha Franklin’s great song “Respect” says it all. Just imagine her singing it now:
“R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Find out what it means to me.”
Those are more than mere words. They’re all about one of the most critical wellness commodities in the world today — respect for the individual person.
It’s the Law of Human Dignity.
When I say “human dignity” and “respect for the individual person,” I’m talking about our specific, day-to-day attitudes and behaviors. It is here that we actually practice respect, person to person, not in some abstract “love of mankind” that we hear about in church or civics class.
This active daily awareness of the dignity of the person, the constant awareness of the worth and value of every person regardless of race, color, age, gender, or economic situation, this awareness of high value and supreme worth is fundamental to individual and social wellness.
I believe every person in this world is a creation of God, and that he or she is worthy of my respect. This is the fundamental concept behind the Law of Human Dignity.
What keeps this great non-negotiable wellness law from becoming a daily reality around this intimate little planet is the fact that we constantly put people in “little boxes.” We label and categorize, pushing individuals and even nations into little slots. We become so obsessed with relating to people in those little boxes that we never get around to seeing them as unique individuals of great worth and destiny!
The boxes are everywhere. Religion: “He’s a Christian”; “Well, he’s Muslim”; “She’s Jewish.” And we categorize by those labels: “If he’s a Christian, he must be one of those anti-abortion protesters who are out shooting doctors”; “Muslim? Those terrorists!”; “She’s Jewish? You just know she’s driven by money and ego.”
Stereotypes are everywhere. We talk about a co-worker according to whether he went to this school or was in that graduate program. Has this degree or that honor. Works at this job or in that location. Drives a Mercedes or a Chevy. Has a home in this neighborhood or rents in that building. Is of Caucasian ancestry or comes from Asia. Speaks with a Spanish accent or in an Indian dialect.
The Law of Human Dignity won’t allow for such categorizing and judging. Respect is the key.
I’m a consultant to a large multicampus health care organization. The company’s mission is to provide assisted retirement living that fills a wide range of needs. This may involve something as simple as providing an apartment with weekly cleaning services or something as complex as arranging twenty-four-hour personal nursing care for an Alzheimer’s patient.
The company employs twelve hundred workers in jobs that cover every occupational, educational, social, and economic stratum. And in striving toward a democratic outlook, it tries its best to foster the idea that there are no distinctions between job classifications. But the lines of delineation on some campuses are very strong.
Job tides give it all away. Some jobs are classified as professional, and others are not. Some positions require extensive training, and others simply involve being shown how the dishwasher is unloaded. Those that require more education are better paying. It’s that simple.
Frankly, the single most effective person I’ve met in the organization, at least in terms of meeting residents’ needs, is a woman named Jeanne. She does not have a fancy title, an education, the pay, or the prestige. What she does have is everyone’s respect. She is admired by the residents, her peers, and most co-workers. Jeanne is constantly positive without being insincere. You receive a lift just by being around her.
Yet when I singled Jeanne out for praise to a group of supervisors, the first comment I heard, from one of the more highly educated supervising nurses, was “She hasn’t even graduated from community college.” Do you see the little box in which the supervisor had stuffed Jeanne?
Too bad. Things like higher education are viewed with a kind of mania in our society. A person like Jeanne, though obviously skilled in her work, is viewed as “less than” simply because she does not have a college degree. The supervisor might as well have said, “I don’t really want to know who you are, what you can do, what the condition of your heart is, what strengths you have, or what obstacles you have overcome. I just want to see your college degree.” That’s certainly what was embedded in the remark.
The Law of Human Dignity stands for exactly the opposite. The Law says we value individuals: we want to know who they are, what they can do, where their hearts are; we want to know about their life journeys, their hopes and dreams, and the compassion that lies in their souls.
There are many, many little boxes into which we slot people. One that crosses international boundaries is money. Material wealth is the most highly overregarded personal attribute in the world. Having lots of money does not automatically make you a model citizen. Plenty of fools have money. But around the world people without money or a college education are constantly deprived of the chance to show their real worth.
I recently attended a meeting on leadership and customer-service development held by and for the managers of one of America’s largest and most prestigious health care corporations. I sat through this all-day meeting with people who had medical degrees, doctorate degrees, and degrees in health care administration. Nearly eight hundred attended.
All day long 1 heard comments that conveyed a deep, though unintentional, disrespect for the “frontline” people of health care. Frontline was a reference, as best I could decipher it, to the nurses, the lab technicians, the radiation technologists, the social workers, and the office staff. In short, it was a reference to the people who spend the most time with the patients — the actual customers the organization is trying to serve.
What amazed me was the low esteem in which several of the speakers held the frontline workers. I listened to comments like: “With some training, we can make them better people.” One woman actually said, “My goal is to at least get our little nurses to smile.”
The administrative director of one of the company’s large medical centers got up and said, “I fired a person because she didn’t make eye contact when she spoke.” He concluded by saying, “She was just a receptionist.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I happened to be the evening’s main speaker. I changed my entire talk. In my opening remarks I said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, with all humility, and fully aware of my status as an outside guest who has no economic stake in this organization, I need to say something of singular importance to you and your task of leadership development in health care.
“Unless and until you develop a deep and sincere respect for the frontline people in your organization, you can forget the task of leadership development.
“Every frontline person in this organization is an immensely worthy human being no matter what position he or she holds, no matter what degree follows his or her name.”
I continued, with all the volume and vigor I could muster: “Immediately change your attitude about these people, to recognize and praise their human dignity. Then, and only then, will you show respect and, as a result, will you get the respect that will allow you to lead.”
Don’t misunderstand me or the Law of Human Dignity. I’m all for college education and very much in favor of people having material prosperity in their lives. I stand for every kind of advancement anyone can make. But if we want to make this world a better place, we cannot draw up some set of artificial criteria based on position, power, education, or wealth and dismiss anyone and everyone who doesn’t fit them. And the sad fact is, that’s what we’re doing. The Law of Human Dignity calls for a massive and wrenching change.
I recognize the value that education can bring. I scratched and clawed my way through college on my own. But if I’m better for anything, it is not for the college education. It is for the life education, the lessons I learned as I worked my way through school. They have served me well.
I’m not one bit better as a person because I have a degree or two. Nor is the woman who cleans my office any less worthy or important because she didn’t go beyond the third grade.
The practice of human dignity is in our attitudes and our words. Catch yourself saying “just” (as in “just a mechanic”), and eliminate it! The “professionals” in this world get told every day what a fine job they are doing. But people from all areas of life do their jobs with pride and contribute to the world with great competence. These workers are the framework of our organizations, our country, and the world. Esteem them. Praise them. Treat them with human dignity!
I did some consulting work with an organization whose chief operating officer, a bright and degreed professional, shows disdain for anyone who makes a mistake. When I interviewed the people who report to him, the first issue that came up was lack of trust. They feared him.
No wonder the organization can’t move ahead. It’s floundering because a giant redwood from the forest has fallen across the path — the fallen redwood of a manager violating the Law of Human Dignity.
A person is not a leader until his or her people accept him or her as their leader. She might be a boss, a manager, even a master, but still not a leader. He may gain control over people by various means, even attempt to impose control by making threats, but unless the Law of Human Dignity is at work, leadership is never conferred.
Great leadership is tied to human dignity. We are all required to be leaders, each in a different way. Some in politics, some in business, some in our places of worship, all of us in our homes and families. Without respect for the people we lead, it is impossible for us to be effective leaders.
But with the practice of human dignity, magic happens. When aspiring leaders practice daily respect, lives, organizations, and nations are changed. Followers return respect and affection in equal proportion to the respect and affection they’re shown. People know when another person respects them for what they are, and they will follow that kind of leader. This law should be self-evident.
Respect for one’s followers does not mean softness or a sacrifice of high standards and goals. It means that a genuine faith exists, a bond and covenant between those leading and those led. If people know that their leader has faith in them, they will usually do whatever is humanly possible to measure up.
The law of human dignity carries with it a mandate: to stop our pettiness and quit putting each other in little boxes that diminish the dignity and potential of all. In short, when you give me respect and I give you respect, we will both be better for it.
On such fundamentals turns a better world.