One surefire way to create respect among people is to look for common ground. Too often we let our differences divide us instead of looking for our similarities. I bet we’d be surprised by how much we all have in common. A great example of this revolves around values. I know the word has gotten some bad press lately, but what I am talking about are the core values that each and every one of us hold dear. These types of values are personal but help shape the way we [...]

The main theme of my book Road to Respect: Path to Profit is that everyone succeeds when workplace practices are aligned with values, and in particular the ethical value of respect. The reason is simple; values are the glue that unite us in our humanity. I share a story in Road to Respect about an experience I had as a participant in a values exercise at a bullying symposium. In this exercise each individual was given a paper that listed 14 ethical values. The facilitator then divided us into groups. [...]

I was watching CNN briefly this morning and saw a feature about the latest trend in campaign politics. It seems that the way to win votes these days is by catching your opponent doing or saying something potentially damaging or embarrassing, and then using the video as the basis for your own campaign ad. Kind of like political candid camera. Now I get the fact that this is politics and it is all about winning votes. However, my mind jumped almost immediately to the recent suicide of 18 year old [...]

In November 2008, my book Road to Respect: Path to Profit was in the final design stages. I had chosen five Employers of Choice to illustrate the main theme of the book – that a strategically built values-based culture with respect as a core value was simply a business imperative for success in today’s marketplace. It never occurred to me, as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, to start looking for my heart’s desire, in this case those Employers of Choice, in my own backyard. However, when I heard [...]

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the “unretired” – seniors who are returning to the workforce in droves for economic or personal reasons. I call this formidable group “Gen U™” because they represent an astounding number of people who have a completely different mindset from that of prior retired generations. Thankfully, smart companies are beginning to embrace their value, wisdom and experience. In fact, even those who had plans to retire will not. A recent study by the AARP revealed that eight out of 10 of the [...]

As featured, Wednesday, January 28, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The Consequences of a High-Powered Job By Terri Mrosko Finding a work-life balance, especially for those people in high-powered jobs, is becoming more of a challenge as we move into economically-uncertain times. “There’s a lot of fear that people have about their relative security at their jobs, and I think one of the ways we respond is that we throw ourselves into our work,” said Paul Meshanko, managing partner at Edge Learning of Ohio. “We try to out-hustle everybody around [...]

Last month, I helped facilitate a workshop on respect in the workplace, leading a discussion on personal values and how they affect our professional behavior. Since our values significantly impact the decisions we make, it was important to have our participants spend some time reflecting on their own and the behaviors that would ideally correspond with them. In that discussion, our participants defined a value both as something of importance and as a compass that guides us. They also discussed and came up with a brief list of possible universal [...]