One interesting question is whether all persons are worthy of respect at some level. What about in your workplace? Are all of your colleagues worthy of your respect? When does one become unworthy of your respect?

Mike Henry at the Lead Change Group wrote an article about respect that caught myattention. Here is a snippet: “No one wants to have their respect demanded, manipulated, coerced or cajoled. Respect is a push, not a pull. There is always room for more respect to be given, but not taken.  When I focus on myself, I won’t get any and I won’t give any.  We all lose.”

A common dynamic with respect is that when we are disrespected, we tend to withdraw our respect immediately, often acting in a disrespectful manner right back. This creates conflict that stems from a cycle of disrespect.

You can’t demand respect from others. You can’t get more respect (relatively speaking) from a relationship by withdrawing the respect you give. The only part of the respect equation that you can change is how much respect you give to others. And with consistency, perhaps, over the long-term, you may be able to earn respect.

What are your thoughts on respect?

This post was originally published on the Intuit QuickBase Team Leadership Blog.

1. The Botched Forward

Looks like: Sender meant to forward your conversation to another person, along with a slightly sarcastic comment, but instead they hit reply and sent it to you.

Human error: Putting negativity in writing. Hitting send before double-checking the recipients.

Look at it this way: Now you know what they really think! Also, this could be an opportunity to fix a strained relationship.

The fix: Reply back with a simple, nonemotional, nonconfrontational message. (i.e., “I think I received this by accident.”) Simply let them know you know. The ball is now in their court.

2. The Reply All

Looks like: A never ending conversation.

Human error: Involving everyone in the conversation because we don’t want anyone to feel left out.

Look at it this way: Overcommunication is almost always better than undercommunication.

The fix: Step away from the email. Don’t add to it if you can help it. In an hour (day?) or two when the communication has subsided, skim the most recent email in its entirety and delete all the others. If it is really excessive and is interfering with your productivity, set up a rule in Outlook to automatically move all messages with that subject title to a folder as they come in (bypassing your inbox!).

3. The Emotional Hijack

Looks like: Someone gets offended, and quickly fires of a sassy email full of attitude, scorn, and disrespect.

Human error: Making decisions and hitting send while the emotional portion of the brain has taken over. Something in the original email triggered this defensive response.

Look at it this way: Logical, rational thought was not the driver of this situation. The intent was likely self-protective rather than aggressive.

The fix: Hold the emails! The emotions must subside before reasoning will work.

4. The Misunderstanding

Looks like: All parties involved are not on the same page.

Human error: Recipient has inferred meaning (possibly using faulty reasoning) and is responding based on assumptions, as opposed to reacting to the information explicitly stated in the email. The sender may have written a sentence than can be interpreted two or more ways due to lack of facial cues and body language.

Look at it this way: This is a chance to get together and not only clarify this one miscommunication, but take action to prevent more in the future.

The fix: Talk it out or switch to a synchronous modality of communication, such as instant messaging.

5. The Unread Message

Looks like: You send a thought-out email but the response you receive has you wondering whether the recipient read past the first sentence.

Human error: The recipient did not take the time to read the message in its entirety. But the sender may have contributed if they lack conciseness and clarity in their writing.

Look at it this way: This is their way of asking for clarification.

The fix: Make your email shorter, word your message differently, and provide an overview or take-home point in the first sentence.

You may have noticed a trend here. Communication takes two and you’ll be playing it safe if you assume you are at fault first before blaming others.

This post was originally published on the Intuit QuickBase Team Leadership Blog.

Let’s face it – if you spend a lot of time at work, you spend a lot of time with your colleagues. Of course, you have some coworkers with whom you actually enjoy spending time, while others, shall we say, you’d prefer to see a little less frequently.

Maybe you find one of your colleagues a bit annoying or perhaps you have an office bully in your midst, always criticizing and taking credit for others’ great ideas. Is there an energy vampire in the office, often interrupting you and asking for your help? Or maybe a coworker simply reminds you of your overbearing Aunt Mildred. Whatever the circumstances of your challenging colleague, here are five simple strategies for learning to play nice in the sandbox.

1. Right Turn – If your colleague says something hostile to you, release your resistance and say, “I can see how you would think that” or even, “I agree with you” or “yes, it’s true that I did that.” You completely diffuse a conflict when you don’t fight back. Look for a kernel of truth to agree with and then see if you can find a solution, if necessary, from a more grounded place.

2. Take 5 – A breathing exercise is one of the quickest, most effective ways to calm yourself down. If your colleague has pushed your button, excuse yourself to the bathroom and try this simple technique. Relax your shoulders and breath in for the count of five, hold your breath for the count of five, and then exhale through your mouth for the count of five. This will clear your head and calm your body so you can move on with your day.

3. Joy to the World – Try sending your colleague good wishes. Although you may not be feeling overly kind and generous towards them, try wishing them good health, peace, and happiness. Chances are that they’re struggling with their own insecurities and personal demons, so spend a moment in the morning thinking, “May you know peace” or “I wish you a happy day.” When you open your heart with compassion, you begin to feel more joyful.

4. Teacher’s Pet – Consider that this person has been sent to you as a teacher in your life. Could it be that you’re supposed to learn more patience, more tolerance? When you find yourself feeling frustrated with your colleague, ask yourself, “What could I learn from this experience?”

5. Remember This – When your colleague is really getting your goat, remember why you are working at this particular job. Maybe you’re putting in your time so you can climb the proverbial ladder. Maybe this is work that you actually feel is part of your life’s mission. Or maybe this job simply provides the important function of paying your bills. Try to keep the bigger picture in your mind’s eye so that you can have perspective on the lesser annoyances.

Try these simple strategies and notice how your relationships begin to improve. Remember that you cannot change the colleague, but you can change your own reactions and responses. And when one person starts to play differently, the whole sandbox dynamic begins to change.

For more wisdom and resources from Ashley Davis Bush, please visit her site www.ashleydavisbush.com.

So if you must multitask, rest assured that you can still improve your productivity by minimizing interruptions. Interruptions to your work flow have a similar draining effect as multitasking, but perhaps it is even more pronounced, since an interruption comes more suddenly and less voluntarily. Interruptions can also come from multiple sources and can be shockingly frequent. Some data suggests we might be interrupted as much as 56 times per day.

Gloria Mark, who researches multitasking in the workplace, studied two West Coast high-tech firms and found that employees spent just 11 minutes working on something before being interrupted. Each time a worker is distracted from a task, it takes 25 minutes to get back to it. That is if they return to the task at all. Mary Czerwinski , an expert in interruption science and researcher at Microsoft, found that 40 percent of the time employees end up being distracted away from the original project when the interruption ends.

While perhaps you cannot ignore all interruptions at the office, you can minimize them. And you can also quit interrupting yourself.

Practical ways you might minimize interruptions:

• Disable pop-up notifications for Outlook and other applications.
• Silence your ringer and allow unexpected incoming phone calls to go to voicemail.
• Check incoming messages, emails, tweets, and posts on an interval schedule of your choice.
• If you have an open door policy, close it for an hour a day or when working on a deadline.
• Experiment with a different working schedule; you may find you get more work done early in the morning.
• Experiment with a different work setting; try a library, conference room, coffee shop, or a park bench.
• Schedule weekly meetings with your team where you field questions, instead of answering them as they arise.
• Think ahead: brainstorm ways to quickly end an interruption made by the overly chatty coworker with too much personal news.
• Instead of leaving Gmail/TweetDeck/Facebook/news-site-of-choice open all day, limit it to mornings or late afternoons.

Know when to use these strategies. You don’t want to become the office recluse or unreachable, but when work needs to get done, be aware of what you need to do to allow that to happen.

If you have been a constant multitasker, this may take some time for your brain to get used to focusing. You may find that even when you close everything down, you still have urges to click somewhere or check something. But if you persist in practicing to focus, your ability to concentrate will come with time. Every time you give in to an interruption, you train your brain to remain on high alert and in shallow thinking mode. But every time you are able to resist, and keep your focus, you are training your brain engage with your work in a deeper way.

This post was originally posted on the Intuit QuickBase Team Leadership Blog.