THIS week, the newly-inaugurated President of the United States, Joe Biden, made it clear to his staff that they would be fired on the spot if they showed disrespect to colleagues. Why is this a significant declaration?

How do we show respect for others? What does respect look like? How do we know it when we see it? How do we recognise when it’s absent? Here are just six examples of ways to show respect, and hopefully you can put them into practice.

1. Listen

Listening to what another person has to say is a basic way to respect them. Everyone wants to have their say. Everyone wants to feel that they’re being listened to. Whether they have something profound to say is not the point. People want to be heard … period.

When you give a person your time, your focus and your ear, you validate them and this conveys respect. Until you listen to another person’s concerns, you will not know who they are and what’s important to them. Respect begins with listening.

2. Affirm

When you affirm someone, you’re showing that they matter, they have value, they’re important and they’re worthy of respect. Simply affirming someone almost certainly guarantees that you respect them. To affirm someone you just have to notice something positive about them and verbalize this.

Examples might be: “You were incredibly patient and understanding when dealing with that difficult situation,” or “You make me smile every time I see you.” You may not respect every aspect of who they are and what they do, but you can give them appropriate respect at the level that affirms them. Affirmation is a key way of showing respect to others.

3. Serve

Poet W.H. Auden said: “We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don’t know.” Life is about serving others. Our professions, careers and jobs should revolve around a desire to serve others, give back to others and to use our talents and abilities to make life better for others.

Serving shows that we care, and caring shows that we respect.

4. Be kind

Though kindness and service are first cousins, they are not identical. We can serve without being kind, but it’s very difficult to be kind without serving. When you’re kind to someone, you are giving of yourself, something they can use and maybe something they need.

Kindness is an expression of respect for the fact that someone else is simply in need. We have all been in need and what a relief it was when someone showed us kindness. Kindness is a tangible way of showing respect.

5. Be polite

It’s appalling to witness the decline of politeness in the modern world, and in every way of life and on social media. Yet, it’s so easy to be polite and it costs nothing. An act of politeness can literally change a person’s day, and it can even change a person’s life.

It can lift their spirits instantly and help them press on through a difficulty. Some cultures are known for their politeness, others for their rudeness. If you want to show respect for someone, start by being polite.

6. Be thankful

If human beings crave appreciation, then thankfulness is the way we affirm it. When someone does something for you that’s beneficial, or they do something that’s helpful in some way, or affirm you in some way that’s important to you, you should thank them.

Again, thankfulness is becoming increasingly rare in our world. Have you ever held the door for someone and they walked right past without even seeming to notice? Did you ever let someone into traffic so they’ll save time and they looked at you as if it was their solemn birth right?

It’s not so much that we need to be thanked; rather, that we want to feel that what we’ve done has made a difference. When there is no thankfulness for something we’ve done, or even for who we are, we feel a lack of respect. Respect doesn’t always require thankfulness, but it often does. It’s just another way we show respect and that we feel respected.

Why respect is important in life

WHAT’S so great about respect anyway? Why does it matter in the grand scheme of things?

One of the characteristics of a civil society is the showing of respect to fellow citizens. The conviction that other members of a family, a town, a city, a nation, or a region of the world are worthy of respect.

The goal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, was to grant status worthy of respect to all human beings everywhere. No human being is exempt. Showing respect for human life and human beings is fundamental to a civil society and world.

When we respect others, it affirms their right to respect and their worthiness of respect. On the other hand, when we withhold respect from others, we imply they are unworthy of it. This can trigger a decline that is exceedingly difficult to end. Once it is generally believed that a certain race, ethnic group, nationality, colour, gender, sexuality or age is unworthy of respect, the floodgates are open for abuse.

The natural and logical outcome of the removal of respect from particular classes is first rejection, then discrimination, abuse, and ultimately genocide. It all starts with a lack of respect. It’s another reason why respect should be common among all peoples, and why it is so important.

Solid relationships

There should be serious reluctance to maintain a relationship that does not offer respect. People don’t like to be treated badly, be demeaned, devalued, dishonoured or disrespected. If a relationship lacks respect, it is almost certainly an unhealthy one.

Toxic relationships nearly always have a lack of respect as a common element. Meaningful, healthy and mutually-beneficial relationships show mutual respect. It’s fundamental.

Respect is so basic to human wellbeing that, in its absence, people don’t thrive. They don’t need to have respect from everyone, but there are certain people from whom respect is virtually mandatory.

The father of modern psychiatry, William James, said: “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” Those who are not appreciated do not feel respected and are disheartened.

We’ve seen what respect is, how to show respect in practical ways and why respect is important. Hopefully you see why it’s important to show it consistently.

Everyone is due respect by virtue of being a human being.

Everyone wants respect and should show respect.