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Respect matters in leadership because it tells people they have basic worth, that they belong on the team, and that their contributions are noticed. In daily work, that signal affects how freely people speak up, how well they collaborate, and how willing they are to raise problems early. Respect is not a soft extra layered on top of management. It is part of how work actually gets done.
Two kinds of respect a leader has to show
The most useful framework for this question comes from Kristie Rogers, professor of management at Marquette University, who distinguishes between owed respect and earned respect in a 2018 HBR IdeaCast interview on the two types of respect leaders must show. Separating the two makes it clear why respect is important and where leaders tend to go wrong.
Owed respect: the baseline everyone receives
Owed respect is the level of civility and professional regard every person should get, regardless of title, seniority or current performance. Rogers describes it as the way people are treated with a basic, professional, decent regard. Its job is to establish belonging. When people are greeted, addressed consistently and treated as legitimate members of the group, they can take part without first proving they deserve a place.
Because owed respect is universal, it is the part a leader cannot skip. Ignoring it does not produce a neutral result; it produces people who feel excluded and who learn that speaking up carries a social cost.
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Earned respect: recognition for specific contributions
Earned respect is positive recognition for valued achievements or attributes. Rogers’s point is that it gives a person a chance to stand out in a positive way. It is tied to real contributions, which means it should be calibrated to the work. Where individual output matters most, individual recognition fits. Where a team’s results depend on collaboration, recognizing the team’s joint work is usually the more accurate signal.
Why the balance between them matters
Rogers warns that the two can fall out of proportion. A workplace with a strong civility baseline but little recognition can blunt people’s motivation to stand out. A workplace with intense competition for recognition and a weak civility baseline can erode peer helpfulness and collaboration. Clear performance standards help here: when people can measure their work against stated expectations, they spend less energy comparing themselves with colleagues. These are expert explanations, not universal laws, and a given team may show the pattern differently.
Why respect supports communication and collaboration
Gallup’s 2025 report on workplace respect frames the issue in practical terms: people come to work expecting to receive respect, and it is a requirement for collaboration. Mutual respect is what makes open and constructive communication possible. People share an unfinished idea, ask a question that might sound naive, or admit a mistake only when they expect the response to be fair rather than dismissive or punitive.
Respect also helps leaders hear problems sooner. A team that trusts its leader to respond calmly tends to surface risks while they are still cheap to fix. A team that does not may keep quiet until the problem is visible to everyone, by which point the cost is higher.
Respect does not replace the other elements of good management. Gallup and HBR both treat it as one condition among several. Clear goals, fair decisions and safe working conditions still have to be in place. A leader who is warm but unclear about priorities will not get the collaboration that respect is supposed to enable.
What the published figures show, and what they do not
Several widely cited numbers come from HBR and Gallup. Each one carries a population, a date and a type of claim that limits how it can be used. The table below lists them with those qualifications attached.
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| Figure | Population or measure | Source and date | What it does and does not show |
|---|---|---|---|
| Respect ranked as the most important leadership behavior | Nearly 20,000 employees worldwide, surveyed by Christine Porath of Georgetown University | Reported by Harvard Business Review, 2018 | A survey ranking reported by HBR. Sampling details and field dates are not stated in the accessible article text, so it should not be read as a current global estimate. |
| 37% of workers strongly agree they are treated with respect at work | All workers, as measured in Gallup’s latest listed figure at the time | Gallup, “Respect at Work Returns to a Record Low,” January 12, 2025 | A snapshot from early 2025. It is not a figure for every country or workforce, and newer Gallup measures may exist. |
| 32% strongly agree they are treated with respect | Fully onsite workers who could work remotely but do not, as compared in the same Gallup article | Gallup, January 12, 2025 | A comparison within the same report. It describes a group difference, not a cause. |
| 90% of employees who disagreed that they were respected reported at least one of 35 discrimination or harassment behaviors in the prior 12 months | Employees who disagreed or strongly disagreed that they were respected, from a 2018 Gallup study | Described in Gallup’s January 12, 2025 article | A reported association from that study. It does not show that disrespect alone produced the behaviors. |
| Engaged employees are five times more likely to strongly agree they are treated with respect | Engaged employees compared with other employees | Gallup, January 12, 2025 | An association. It does not show that respect causes engagement, or the reverse. |
| Four times as likely to be engaged and thriving in wellbeing | Employees with a great manager who holds weekly meaningful coaching conversations, regardless of work location | Gallup, January 12, 2025 | A finding about manager conversations, not a direct measure of respect alone. |
Taken together, these figures support a narrower claim than many articles make. Respect is strongly associated with engagement and with how safe employees feel. It is not established by these sources as the single cause of engagement, retention, productivity or profit.
How leaders demonstrate respect in practice
Respect is shown through behavior, and many of the damaging cases are accidental. Rogers gives examples such as greeting some team members while ignoring others, or giving negative feedback in public when the team’s norm is private correction. Neither act has to be intentional to be experienced as disrespect.
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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →The following practices come from Gallup’s recommendations and from Rogers’s examples:
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- Author: Bungay Stanier, Michael.
- Publisher: Page Two
- Pages: 244
- Publication Date: 2016-02-29
- Edition: 1
- Listen without dismissing. Let people finish, and respond to the substance of what they said.
- Address people consistently. Greet and include everyone on the team, not only the people you interact with most.
- Give corrective feedback in an appropriate setting. Find out whether private or group feedback is the local norm before choosing how to deliver it.
- Explain decisions and expectations, including the reason behind a policy, so people can understand what is being asked of them.
- Ask what communication practices work for each person, since preferences differ.
- Make reasonable individual adjustments where possible. Gallup notes that employees differ in whether they want work contact outside normal hours, for example.
- Recognize specific, fair contributions, and make the standards clear enough that people can judge their own work against them.
Gallup’s recommendation of weekly, meaningful one-to-one conversations is the most concrete of these. Frequent conversations also give a leader a chance to notice when an intended action is landing as disrespect, which is hard to see from the manager’s side alone.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How respect relates to psychological safety
CIPD’s evidence review on trust and psychological safety, published February 7, 2024, defines psychological safety as confidence to take appropriate interpersonal risks without fear of punishment or ridicule. In CIPD’s summary, that means people can offer ideas, share a view, ask a question or admit a mistake without expecting to be punished or mocked. Respect and psychological safety are related, but they are not the same thing. A leader can be respectful in tone and still create conditions where mistakes are punished, and the reverse can also happen.
For that reason, treat respect as one of the behaviors that feed psychological safety, alongside consistent standards and a fair response to errors. CIPD’s review also stresses trust in other people’s behavior and actions as central to healthy, sustainable organizations, which points to the same conclusion: respect is necessary groundwork rather than a complete solution.
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Where respect has limits
Respect does not guarantee productivity, retention, innovation or profit. The sources here establish relevance and association, not a universal causal rule. Respect also cannot compensate for unclear goals, unfair treatment in pay or promotion, or unsafe working conditions. A leader who is courteous but inconsistent in applying standards will still struggle to build trust.
Respect also varies by context. A standard of courtesy that fits a small, frequently interacting team may need adapting in a large or distributed one. The most reliable way to learn what respect means to a particular group is to ask its members directly and to keep checking whether the answer still holds.
For readers who want to go further, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman’s HBR article “7 Ways to Make Employees Feel Respected, According to Research,” published June 7, 2023, offers expert framing that treats respect as foundational to how employees experience their work.
Leadership is a financial topic in a practical sense too: teams that speak up early, and managers who keep people engaged, tend to avoid expensive surprises. But the core of the answer is simpler. Respect gives people the security to contribute honestly, and that is why it matters in leadership.
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