Showing aspirational respect

- In a prior video, we discussed the PMI mandatory standards for the respect ethical value. Now let's discuss the approaches you can take to demonstrate aspirational levels of respect on your project so you can elevate your ethical behavior. PMI's Aspirational Standards for Respect are, understand the norms and customs of others, listen to others' points of view, directly approach someone with whom you have a conflict, and conduct yourself in a professional manner. To bring these standards to life, I consider the following questions. Do you avoid behaviors that could be considered disrespectful? Do you listen to others and seek to understand their perspective? Do you act professionally even when someone else doesn't? Do you avoid engaging in gossip? And do you avoid making negative comments to undermine someone else? To achieve Aspirational Standards of Respect, all these questions need to be answered with a confident yes. Let's apply Chad's scenario to the Aspirational Standards for Respect. Remember, Chad is seeking to justify a project and has a report that could help. However, that report contains confidential personnel information, and Chad doubts whether the report should even have been shared with him. Let's apply the questions I just shared to Chad's situation. The first question asks if behaviors would be considered disrespectful. Certainly, if the report's personnel contents are shared, it would be disrespectful. Either the report should not be used to justify the project or the confidential information should be removed. Listening to others' perspective is the essence of the second question. It's impractical to seek the perspective of the personnel whose confidential information is in the report. Chad's being open and sharing the report with his manager is a valid approach. His manager could provide a perspective on whether or not to go forward and use the report to justify the project. In this scenario, the third question about acting professionally, the fourth question about not engaging in gossip, and the last question about not sharing negative comments are closely related. Under no circumstances should Chad ever share any personnel information from the report. To do so would be unprofessional, qualify as gossip, and compromise Chad's integrity. This type of scenario isn't uncommon. I recall one time I had access to salary bonus data for the whole company. I was shocked when I saw some of those bonuses. I quickly realized that I'd have to behave like I'd never seen the information, I wanted to ensure I didn't treat people differently based on what I'd seen. It's hard to do, but it's essential so we can do our jobs and respect others. As you can see, acting with respect can be challenging. Sometimes it may be easier to look the other way. However, to achieve the PMI Aspirational Standards for Respect, we need to do the right thing and act definitively when things don't seem quite right.