Good Guys and Bad Guys

When Frank Roche from KnowHR/iFractal found out I rode my bike in the city, I remember his first question was, "are you one of the good guys, or one of the bad guys?"

The beautiful, yet sad thing, about the question was I knew exactly what he meant, and said, "I'm one of the good guys." The beautiful part was the question was obtuse yet I understood its meaning. The sad part is that I understood what he meant by "bad guys."

The bad guys are the bicyclists who behave as if they have carte blanche to not obey any rules of proper bicycle riding. They show no regard for pedestrians, car drivers, or their fellow bicyclists. They go the wrong way down streets, they zoom around pedestrians on sidewalks, and they will flip you off or swear at you if you say one discouraging thing about their riding habits.

What is even sadder is over 90% of the bicyclists I see behave with a certain degree of "badness." I can't say that about car drivers or pedestrians. Yet if there is one group that complains on the internet and the press more than the others that they are not respected, it is bicyclists. They complain about lack of bike lanes (which they don't use anyway), cars not treating them like lawful vehicles on the road, and that car drivers and pedestrians complain about them. Again, you don't hear this type of howling from car drivers or pedestrians.

This boils down to one simple problem. How do you expect to garner respect, if you don't act respectable?

As many things do, this led me to think about HR and some of the respect issues in this field.

It seems HR is the component of the business world that complains the most about respect. If this is true, perhaps it is because HR doesn't act respectable enough.

If you're responsible for upholding EEO standards, but make derogatory remarks about the opposite gender ...
If you're responsible for strengthening relationships and building trust, but fabricate stories about co-workers in order to create adversarial relationships ...
If you're responsible for creating recognition programs that are designed to enhance employee engagement, but the standards for being recognized are unattainable ...
If any of these non respectable behaviors or their ilk is noticed, then....

Expect not to be respected.

I'm not sure how widespread bad behavior is in HR. But if you're not feeling respected, perhaps it is because you're one of "bad guys" and not one of the "good guys."