I have a video coming out on Thursday that talks about 3 easy leadership lessons that everyone should be able to learn that will make them better leaders. They won't make anyone a great leader, but they'll certainly improve them a lot.

learning easy leadership lesson

With that said, and in an attempt to write a shorter post than usual (following a 4-part series about succession planning), I decided to limit myself to talking about one of the habits, and it's the most effective one.

That habit: treat others like you want to be treated. That's it; that's all it takes. I can't leave it at that, so let me embellish it a little bit.

The one thing that seems to be universal in business, whether someone is in a leadership position or not, is that they want to be respected. The lines of respect change based on the job, but overall people want to be respected as humans, which in turn means they want to be treated in certain ways.

I don't know a single person who likes being yelled at, even athletes. I don't know a single person who likes being demeaned or put down all the time. I don't know a single person who likes being condescended to.

Yet I know a lot of people who do one or all of these things on a consistent basis. It's irksome enough to get us riled in our personal lives, and often we won't take it from people we don't know, and sometimes we don't want to take it from people we do know.

But what about having to take it from someone you report to, where retaliation could cost you your job or a chance for a promotion down the line? I wonder what managers think that treating someone bad by doing any of the 3 things I mentioned above is good leadership, good management, and inspiring to any employee who works with them.

Do you know any who you think believes this makes them effective? I bet you know some in leadership positions who do this, and you might believe they think these are good leadership tactics. What I bet you've never done is turn the tables on them to see how they respond to it.

I have. Because I subscribe to the theory that we all deserve to be treated right, along with the words of Dr. Phil who says "we need to teach people how to treat us", I have given back what I've gotten from people, either those who thought they could tell me what to do or weren't paying attention to their behavior.

Why did I do it? Because I adhered to the Dr. Phil theory first, which means I treated everyone the way I wanted to be treated, but some people couldn't learn the lesson. Luckily, it didn't happen all that often, but when it did I acted with intention, and each time I got my point across eventually. I tend to normally be very nice, but I can be a bit caustic when I feel I need to be.

Why did it work? Because I'd already established a baseline behavior, which I could change in a heartbeat. It's hard for someone to complain about another person's behavior towards them when almost everyone else is telling them how nice you are. lol

Don't be that person who needs to be slapped across the face by being shown that you're a jerk. Treat people how you want to be treated; really, can that be so hard?