Leaders' Respect Dignity through Culture and Language

Leaders should foster respectful cultures, not toxic ones, and so ensure that human dignity is protected and acknowledged (Hartel 2008). Leaders have a responsibility to acquire and apply capabilities that include: provide vision and strategic direction, operate consistently with organizational values, communicate constantly and meaningfully; create an environment for success; function as team players, persist to achieve good outcomes (see APSC 2009, pp. 14—15).

Strategies can be enacted to help ensure that the dignity and the rights of people at work are being recognised (APSC 2009; Kramar 2014). Such strategies include: ensure open communication, manage workloads and priorities, develop policies on appropriate behaviour, employ objective selection criteria, reinforce desirable behaviour through induction, and raise awareness through training.

Leaders demonstrate dignity towards employees when they encourage a diverse culture (Strachan et al. 2010), especially when working against bullying and other forms of harassment (Caponecchia and Wyatt 2011). Workplace roles which produce meaningful work and engage employees in decision-making, for example, demonstrate dignity towards employees and foster fulfilling organizational cultures (Burke and Cooper 2013).

It is also recognised that high-performance work systems, such as flextime, home-based work, tele-working and a compressed working week, can actually produce employee harm (Mariappanadar and Kramar 2014). Leaders, including HRM directors, need to ensure that organisational outcomes are achieved, but not at the expense of employee well-being.

Beneath such managerial behaviour are their assumptions of human nature. A philosophy of the person is rarely explicit (Reichmann 1985) and is often only glimpsed and implied. Attitudes towards the person at work are perhaps best evidenced in the attitudes and language used by managers. There are assumptions about human nature embedded in one’s leadership style (Goleman 2000) and in one’s ethical perspective (Gardner 2007; Rosen 2004). These various assumptions are important, as they underpin professional practice (Fahrenberg and Cheetham 2008) and they have a significant effect upon the manifestation of dignity in the workplace towards others, or not. Do managers just tend to regard people in the workplace as merely ‘workers’, people who ‘do’? Where is human dignity in such an approach towards leadership?

Our approaches to human metrics at work (Fitz-Enz 2010) might themselves be betraying a calculating and instrumental approach to human value. For example, is the inherent worth of the person really understood and accepted in the workplace when people are being appraised and assessed? There is also an individualistic assumption in much management literature. Maybe individualism is a special characteristic of a Western approach to the person (Obioha-Olabishi 2014)? The assumptions of human nature behind ‘theory X versus theory Y’ management theory by Douglas McGregor (I960) seem to be one of the first efforts to relate management science to philosophy (Collins and Latemore 2002). Have we really progressed that much beyond this approach towards the person, and towards understanding and fostering human dignity in the workplace?

It is in their discourse that leaders’ attitudes are perhaps best known and experienced. Leaders are communicators, and if they do not communicate effectively, they cannot lead (Bennis and Nanus 1985). Rudeness and incivility in the workplace is costly and does not foster respect (Porath and Pearson 2013) . Conversing with others and not merely presenting to them is needed for influence in the workplace (Barry and Fulmer 2004; Brink and Costigan 2015). For example, effective leaders in an educational context employ the language of logos, ethos and pathos, that is, rational knowledge, moral legitimacy and emotional appeal (Lowenhaupt 2014). The appropriate use of humorous language is also an important tool for transformational leaders (Hughes and Avey 2009), especially when affiliative and non-aggressive humour is positively related to leader-member exchange (Pundt and Hermann 2015). Supportive leader behaviour fosters creativity (Amabile et al. 2004), while leaders who communicate with affect encourage both follower performance and leader-follower interaction (Tee 2015) Wang and Seibert 2015 Griffith et al. 2015). Authentic leaders know that helping employees find meaning can only occur in intersubjective space (Berkovich 2014). To communicate effectively between persons requires genuineness, empathetic understanding, unconditional positive regard, being present, a spirit of mutual equality, and a supportive psychological climate (Johannesen 1990). Indeed, words matter.

In public discourse, we note the dehumanisation of asylum seekers as ‘illegal immigrants’ or as a ‘swarm’. In a similar way, the words used by leaders for their employees similarly reflect their attitudes towards them. The language used by leaders for the people with whom they work ideally signals that people are equals as human beings (Hicks 2011) even if there is obviously a reporting relationship on the organizational chart. To the Internal Revenue Service, we are ‘taxpayers’, to a doctor, we are ‘patients’, to a taxi driver we are ‘fares’, and to an electricity provider, we are merely ‘consumers’. What do the words ‘direct reports’, or ‘staff, variously describe or imply about a dignified attitude to people in the workplace? To politicians, people are regarded as ‘voters’ or ‘constituents’, although it is interesting that the Honourable Gough Whitlam (1916—2014), a previous Australian Prime Minister, challenged these attributions, and instead, he was among the first political leader to address the voting public as ‘my fellow Australians’.

Like the Inuit who have many words for snow and ice, institutions which are people-oriented have many words to describe the way people ought to treat one another. ‘Crew member’ (McDonald’s) and ‘cast member’ (Disney) are words which ‘upgrade the status of the individual employee’ (Peters and Waterman 1982, p. 261). In sum, maybe we need a richer vocabulary to describe employees, words which signify and imply a more respectful attitude to the dignity of the person at work. In policies on bullying, for example, it is noted that it is often the tone and body language that some people find as offensive as the meaning of words (Strachan et al. 2010). Leaders, therefore, need to be careful what they say towards others, as well as how they express themselves in the workplace (APSC 2009; CCH Australia 2011).

Female managers are more likely to remove such status assumptions by using words like ‘colleagues’ or ‘associates’ instead of words like ‘direct reports’. Without succumbing to stereotypes on feminine leadership (Eicher-Catt 2005), there is evidence that female leaders transcend the language of power and precision (Henry 1987) and instead, display more variety and ambiguity in their language than do men. Women also lead and communicate in ways that are more participatory, non-hierarchical, flexible and group-oriented (Billing and Alvesson 2000). Women tend to connect, give superior attention to others and engage in real conversation (Stephens 2003). As interactional socio-linguistics shows, whether in meetings or in emails (Mullany 2011), women communicate differently from men and are, generally, more relational.

The problematic issue of managing diminished performance and of disciplining employees needs to be mentioned as well. This is of course part of a manager’s role; but, it must be conducted in ways that are still respectful. Current research on performance management (Atwater and Elkins 2009; Cokins 2009) asserts the importance of leaders’ tone and language in such situations. When coaching employees to high performance outcomes, managers and external coaches need to be particularly respectful, not manipulative (Latemore 2015a). Flaherty agrees (2005), p. 10), asserting, ‘techniques don’t work [as they] manipulate, undermine the dignity of people, and foster resistance and resentment’. Leaders should indeed attract and communicate well with talented employees (Cantrell and Smith 2010) but it is in dealing with diminished performance that managerial respect for the dignity of employees becomes crucial.