I am going to give you some aspects of your life to think about both on a personal and organizational level. Take the time to really think about and answer these questions. Some may reveal parts of your life that you haven’t thought about recently and you need to readdress these issues.

Personal Level

  1. How much of your behavior is worth modeling?
  2. Where do you need to improve?
  3. Ask others to help you to see your blind spots.
  4. Start at home with your improvement.
  5. Apologize for any shortcomings.

Organizational Level

  1. Educate everyone in why treating people with dignity, respect, and honor is profitable for them and for your organization.
  2. Discover, from an individual perspective, what it means to be treated with dignity, respect and honor.
  3. List specific behaviors that exemplify dignity, respect, and honor. Explain that you expect to see these behaviors from every individual, team, and department in your organization.
  4. Reinforce exemplary, dignified, respectful, and honoring behaviors by habitually recognizing, celebrating, and rewarding them.
  5. Challenge and encourage everyone in your organization to outdo each other in showing honor to each other, so that you will ultimately “out-honor” your competition!
  6. Institute a zero-tolerance policy for undignified, disrespectful, and dishonoring behavior. Explain the consequences for incivility.

I am calling on business leaders to embrace this People First philosophy and return to the ideology of our nation’s founders: the self-evident truth that all men are created equal. I exhort you to teach everyone in your organization how to treat people in harmony with what it means to be human—with dignity, respect, and honor—and begin to reap the prosperous harvest of an outrageously profitable business, both socially and economically. The implications for sustainable success are staggering … personally, organizationally, and societally!