Kristie Rogers is an Assistant Professor of Management at Marquette University. Her research focuses on how people define themselves and experience respect at work. Kristie’s research has been published in top-tier management journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and Harvard Business Review. In episode 75 of the Voice of Influence podcast, I talked about an article Kristie wrote in the Harvard Business review and I’m delighted to have her on the show today so can take a deeper dive into her work. In this episode, Kristie talks about how she conducts her research in a qualitative way and what that means, why she’s passionate about sharing the work experiences of people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to do so, the personal reason for why she chose to focus her research on the topic of respect in the workplace, her thoughts the definitions of owed and earned respect, how an employee feeling both types of respects benefits the employer as well as the employee, the detrimental effects to violations of respect in the workplace, the connection between respect and the employee feeling their voice matters, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Voice of Influence Podcast | Episode 75: How to Navigate Two Side of Respect with Andrea Joy Wenburg
• Kristie Roger’s Harvard Business Review Article | Do Your Employees Feel Respected?

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Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me Kristie Rogers and she is an Assistant Professor of Management at Marquette University.  Her research focuses on how people define themselves and experience respect at work. Kristie’s research is published in top-tier management journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and Harvard Business Review, which is where I found Kristie.  She wrote the article last summer, Do Your Employees Feel Respected?  

Andrea:  So Kristie, I’m so thrilled to have you today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Kristie Mae Rogers:  Oh thank you, Andrea, I’m happy to be here.

Andrea:  This is going to be fun.  I already talked a little bit about your article in a podcast episode just a couple of weeks ago in episode #75.  So this is going to be a much deeper dive and we get to speak with the actual author of the article so that’s exciting. So, Kristie, first of all, can you tell us a little bit about what you do?  What is that mean to focus on and help people to find themselves and experience respect at work?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  Certainly.  I’m a professor and I teach, of course, in the college of business and do research and organization related to topics like respect, identity, how people connect with their organizations and positive organizational behavioral topics more broadly.  My research is primarily qualitative, meaning that I collect data largely through interviews and observation to see important phenomena through the eyes of the people living it. So, I love getting out into organizational settings into different companies and trying to walk beside and understands those experiences.  I’m especially passionate about sharing the work experiences of those who may not, otherwise, have a voice to do so and may have really unique experiences that we can learn a lot from.

Andrea:  OK, what do you mean by that, the last statement that you made about sharing the work experiences with people who have, otherwise, the voice to do so, what does that mean?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  Yeah, so as I said, I’m a management researcher, and business school research tends to be in very traditional context.  So 9 to 5 jobs professionals, occupations that are studied quite often and there’s a lot to learn from left conventional settings and from the people who maybe don’t have as much power in the organizations but tends not to be the focus of research.  So that’s somewhere that is particularly interesting to me to capture those experiences that may not, otherwise, be shared.

Andrea:   I’m really curious.  I mean, this all relates back to your article and the research that you did specifically on respects here, but why did you decide to research this topic of respect?  Why these people and why…do you have a personal stake on this or if you have a personal kind of connection to you at all?

Kristie Mae Rogers: I do.  So before I pursued my Ph.D., I worked as a stage manager on remote broadcast for sports productions, so ESPN, ABC Sports.  And I remember having experiences that should have been very similar, like games that were roughly the same time of day had about the same profile of the teams; the scores weren’t even that different. And the experience itself, the way it felt, and how the crew gelled was extremely different across these experiences.  And I asked the sideline reporter; I said “What is the difference here?”  And he said “Respect plays such a huge ball, and without it, you can see broadcast fell apart, you can see some of those mistakes on air.  But when it’s there, it’s completely different and a far more pleasant experience.” So then when I got into the Ph.D. program, I came across an interesting puzzle in management research that aligned with my firsthand experiences and others I’ve heard.  So Christine Porath has surveyed tens of thousands of employees around the world and finds that respect is the number one thing that employee’s desire from their leaders.  And Christine is an stability and instability expert. I’ve looked deeper into this research and found that although other service indicate this is so important, we also see that a vast majority of people do not feel adequately respected at work.  So I asked myself, how can this be?  This is free to give and it’s invaluable to those who receive it.  There has to be more going on here.

Andrea:  That’s great!  That’s so interesting!  I love hearing the background of why you decided to pursue this.  So alright, so you decided to pursue this, and would you share with us a little bit about your hypothesis and how you were approaching your research for this article, in particular, and kind of a general description of what you did?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  Uh-hmmm, sure.  I didn’t go in with a hypothesis because this was qualitative inductive research.  I was looking to build theory more than draw on what we already knew. So I was looking to fill some gaps by taking a really deep dive.  And my main research question going into this was, how do employees experience respect and why does it matter? So interestingly, as I got into this study which I’ll tell you more about certainly, I never directly ask about respect.  I was never the one to bring it up in the conversations.  I asked interview questions that I thought might lead there but I didn’t want to prime them with respect or shape their experience in any way.  So I think it really speaks to how important it was to the employees to think that I didn’t even ask directly about this and this is what I received back.

Andrea:  Hmmm, great.  Keep going, keep going.

Kristie Mae Rogers:  Alright.  I’ll tell you a little bit more just about the context why I chose it and how I ended up doing the research that I did.  So the setting for my research is a company called Televerde.  They do business to business marketing for high tech firms largely lead generation and those types of outbound calls. So I was working on my Ph.D. at Arizona State and the W.P. Carey School of Business had an awards luncheon where they recognized local businesses who were doing great things.  Honestly, I was unsure about whether or not I should attend this, “Was it the things I should be doing on that day?”  And I couldn’t be happier that I did because this was my initial exposure to Televerde. So this company won an award for the most innovative business model and they employ inmates inside the female state prison in Arizona.  And seeing of the accompanying video of the women working inside of call centers that are in the prison making very technical phone calls and doing sophisticated work, the women talked about how life-changing experience was on the video. The CEO accepted the award that day and he said, these women are just like any of the women in your lives that they’ve made a wrong turn and they deserve a chance to succeed.  And he was emotional and he was passionate and I was just in awe of what they’re doing. So I left telling my Ph.D. advisor, “This is exactly where I want to study, Respect, and pursue my dissertation research here.”  So there were many hurdles that came with that.  It’s quite difficult to do research in a prison but the company was receptive and so I’m so grateful for that.  Also, I got to be there and watch newcomers adjust to the job.  I followed those women through their program over the course of about 15 months, but I tracked quite closely the women starting the job and their experience over their first six to nine months working there.

Andrea:  What kind of things did you see that indicated that respect was such an important piece of their own success, their success as an agent and their success as just a developing person?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  So, I definitely saw both pieces, and many of the outcomes that I observed revolved around either individual or employee wellbeing or around their performance at work, and those two certainly tied together.  But I think it helps first to get into what respect is and that helps understand what drove those outcomes.

Andrea:  Sure!

Kristie Mae Rogers:  I think one of the reasons there is confusion around respect is that it’s used to mean different things.  So although the word respect is used often, when you dig into the literature on respect and the experiences that people have around it, there are really two types and they’re very different.  So, owed respect is a type of respect that’s given equally to every member of a group of an organization.  It isn’t based on anything unique to a person.  It can’t be earned, it can’t be lost.  This is important because an employee perceives their owed respect as signaling whether or not they belong in that company, in that organization and if they are included by others.

Andrea:  Can I ask real quick?  What is owed respect kind of look like?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  So owed respect is something you would see that is directed to everyone in the company or there would be norms around this that are not specific to the person.  So it might be policies that are very supportive and taken to account that these people are valuable and signals that in some way. So to give you an example at Televerde when I started observing the women, I watched them go through two weeks of intense classroom training where they earned community college business credits through the course of this.  And they were educated in business and organizational structure and technology, the things they certainly needed to know for the job. But there was also this granting of responsibility and were willing to invest in you and help you get going with your education.  It was an opportunity and a chance that the employee may not received before.  There is also can be something far more subtle that you see employees greet one another when they see each other in the hallway, just a general signaling of value and worth to others in the organization.

Andrea:  OK that makes sense.  So I’ve heard you say something along the lines of a regard and kind of honoring each other and that sort of thing.  That makes sense to me that people need that in order to feel that they belong and that they are a part of the group, that they’re a part of the company, really.

Kristie Mae Rogers:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Alright, so take us into earned respect, what is this?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  So earned respect is based on behaviors or attributes of an individual.  So this acknowledges of someone’s uniqueness, their performance in positive ways and lets the person know that he or she is positively regarded by others speaking to their need for status essentially or to feel that others value your skill set. So this is the type of respect that you earned by performing well and by meeting or exceeding the standards of the organization has played out for you or for your role, but this can also be about attributes. So at Televerde during the training period, the women had done personality profiles to understand who they were in this sitting and when the trainers help them make sense of it, they would say, “You know, OK, you are very extroverted and you have really high attention to detail and here how’s that gonna serve you really in the role that you’re starting.”  So recognizing that they are unique individuals and there isn’t just one mold that they needed to fit was very powerful. But then also knowing that there was a very clear standard that they needed to meet and it was a high standards, and when they meet that they were recognized for doing so.  Their accomplishments were celebrated and they weren’t left wondering “What is my performance compared to the person next to me?  Is this good enough?”  There were very clear markings of what was expected and how you were doing relative to that.

Andrea:  By taking these assessments or doing this personality training, they’re understanding themselves more as an individual and yet, this is a job that in many cases or in many situations, companies work at their call centers as a situation where you’re supposed to fit into a mold or there is a sense of, “This is what we’re trying to accomplish.  There’s a common goal with every call,” or that sort of thing.  So how do you see these two things coming together?  I think that they do and I think it’s beautiful, but what’s your take on the idea that they are individuals and yet being able to be that individual even though the goal still the same for everybody?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  Yes and especially given this type of work, I think that’s a wonderful question.  All employees want to feel that they belong to something but also feel that they are unique within that setting as well, not just an interchangeable part of the whole.  And at Televerde, they’re very clear that they didn’t have scripts for the calls and they wanted these women to be incredibly knowledgeable and to have the agency to drive the conversation. And I think by empowering them to interject themselves into what could, otherwise, feel very robotic, it was humanizing for them and helped them see that “Oh OK, I can be me and I can be this professional.”  And putting those two things together, potentially for the first time, was very powerful to how they saw themselves and envision who they would be going forward with their careers.

Andrea:  OK, so it’s so clear to me how this is so good for the individual, for the employee, how is this good for the company?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  So there are a couple of ways that I think this is great news for all companies.  The first is, the better you understand respect, the better you can see that this isn’t just something that’s nice to have, it’s something you need to have if you want your employees to be performing at their very best.  But because they feel that they are valued and that they are in a situation where they can become the best version of themselves, they’re willing to engage and to invest more. When they could strike that great balance of owed respect, the sense that everyone here is valued and worthy of being here but then also receiving their earned respect for the things that they were doing really well, it created the perfect recipe for performance.  They felt safe enough to take chances and to try things out but they also knew that when they did things well, it was recognized and that reinforce those behaviors. I think it’s especially important if you want to retain employees to help them see that this is a place where you can continue to grow and that we value you for who you are.  And regardless of the setting, I think that’s incredibly beneficial to both the company and the employees.

Andrea:  I do too.  It’s great to hear it from a researcher.  I think you mentioned something about the Televerde employees connecting to the values of the company, at some point I think I heard you say something about that.  How did you see that happening and what difference do you think that that made in their sense of respect?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  Yeah.  So the values were something a source of pride for Televerde and something they shared with employees on day one.  Having someone come in to the training session and say, here is this value and here’s what this really means, and to even give examples of here’s how this come to life in my day-to-day work from several people who would they would see at high levels of the organization. But many of them who have jobs with any large organization in the past would say, “I’ve heard this before; our company have values, they have missions but I have to be skeptical.  I have to question whether or not this is real.”  So on day one, they heard about this and it was their initial exposure but this really came to life through interactions with leaders but then even more so through their peers. So they would say to me that something becomes real when we hear it from someone in ‘orange’ or who had been an ‘orange’ because they understand the position I’m in right now and I know that they’ll give me the real story.  So, Televerde did a great job of closing the loop on that, you know, bringing women back who had been released and were successful in their careers and talking about their transitions and the hard part and the great part, giving them mentors who had more experience than knowledge but were similar to them and that who they felt were credible source of information. Once they got to that point that they said “I’m getting the same story from several sources,” they seemed more willing to engage and to be vulnerable and that’s when they really felt that they could give their all to this job and see where it took them.  Many of the women has helped them developed professional skill set, a resume.  They had transition workshops that helped them gain all the skills both for life and for work that they would need upon release and it dramatically reduce recidivism rate. The recidivism rate is typically about 66% for this population, and at the time that I was doing the research with Televerde, it was s11% of the women who had gone through their programs and who had worked for their company.

Andrea:  Oh that’s fantastic!  This is what it means to have a real cultural, you know, to be integrated into the culture and to really have it make a difference.  It doesn’t really just to say something to say you value something or to say that these things matter.  It doesn’t make as much difference until it envelops you.  That’s the picture I was having when you were describing women coming back and saying “Now, this is how it changed me.” And it just sounded like you know like when you’re really enveloped into a culture that truly believes on these things and does these things that you’d say they value, it’s just so significant in terms of what you can really believe and putting forth all that effort in making that change.  That’s fantastic! So how do you see this really applying to other kind of business situations across other call centers, but also other customer service or other situations where maybe the executive or the managers don’t even realize that they’re not being respectful or that they’re not communicating that respect?  How can they do a better job?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  Yeah and this was a large motivation for me in writing the Harvard Business Review article.  I wanted to get this idea out there for people who could really use them, and especially speaking to managers, and those on leadership roles to help them see that they might be buffered from this need.  So if you are in a leadership position, if you’re in a managerial role and people likely treat you quite well day to day.  And if that need is meet for you, you’re unlikely to be sensitive to that need in others. So my hope is that this would be eye-opening for many people that this is what others are grappling with when they’re at work, “Am I really valued here?  Where those cues coming from?”  And certainly the sense that avoiding at all cost, the no news is good news that people need to hear that they are valued and that the work they’re doing is meeting or exceeding expectations and that recognition goes along way. Now, violations of respect on the other hand, can have really detrimental effects.  The experiments show when people feel disrespected, they can’t be as attentive to the work they’re doing and either intentionally or unintentionally decreased their effort and their performance. So understanding the flipside of this is also very important as well.  But my hope is that this balance between owed and earned is on the radar for more leaders because of this research.  And this is a tricky balance, owed respect is all about treating everyone equally and earned respect is about equity, giving people what they’ve earned. And keeping both of those in play in ways that they don’t undermine one another is critical and may not be an explicit task for a leader or a manager but something they should be attentive to in an ongoing way.

Andrea:  OK, so one more question for you and I’d like your take on how respect plays into whether or not somebody has a voice and whether or not they feel like they matter.  So do you see these two things as being equal or what is the relationship between having a voice and respect?

Kristie Mae Rogers:  So, when someone feels respected, when they feel that they are valued that’s when they mostly to utilize their voice thinking that what they have to say will be valued as well.  If the power distance status differences are really clear in the organization and there’s not the sense that everyone here is valued from the lowest to the highest level of the organization, in a basic, way that everyone is treated with worth, why would you take the risk of exercising your voice if you don’t believe you’ll be heard.  So I see respect as something that leads in a positive way to utilizing voice constructively.

Andrea:  I would certainly agree.  Alright, Kristie this has been great.  I really appreciate you taking time to share your research and your perspective on this with our audience because it’s such an important thing for us to take into consideration.  I think just like we talked about privilege and being you know not realizing how it’s difficult for somebody else to go through their lives or experience the things that they experienced because we’d haven’t had to experience them herself we’re just totally ignorant to that. It sounds like it’s very similar to what you’re describing here about respect and the varying levels of hierarchy in an organization.  And so we all need to be more empathetic to everybody else’s perception and their need.  I think that that’s what influences about as well, is like really having that sense or what is the perception not just what am I saying, “How am I being proceed.  Do they really feel respected?”  So this is fantastic.  I appreciate also the difference between owed and earned respect and having that framework to think through this in the future.  So thank you so much, Kristy.  I appreciate you being here on the Voice of Influence podcast

Kristie Mae Rogers:  Yes absolutely, and thank you for doing this.