I first wrote about how to show Respect during a pandemic in May, based on what I was experiencing and observing in March and April – the early days of the pandemic feeling real. Now, six months later, I’m realizing how much more I am learning about showing Respect for others during a pandemic. This isn’t just valuable during a pandemic. It will be incredibly valuable going forward when we are able to move past this.

I think treating people with Respect is the key to effective leadership, and frankly, it is just the right way to treat people. Respect is foundational to lean. Respect for People and Continuous Improvement are the Guiding Principles at Toyota, with Respect for People including both Respect and teamwork:

In the teamwork principle, there is an underlying assumption that people are ready and able to focus on their development and maximize performance.

Pre-pandemic, I assumed those conditions were met in my default thinking on lean, which is why I have written about meaningful improvement requiring a Growth Mindset, and how people need Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose to perform their best. I knew those conditions weren’t always met. I didn’t spend time thinking about what it meant for using lean in practice, with the exception of psychological safety or other conditions when I encountered them.

Then March 2020 happened. I was thrown back to focusing on my basic need for safety. I was reminded how important Maslow’s work on motivation, including the hierarchy of human needs, was to Respecting others. We show Respect by understanding where people are in having their needs satisfied. These are individual needs, and are based on your perception of your needs. In the same conditions, we may think differently; I may perceive my safety needs are satisfied and you may perceive that your safety needs are not satisfied. The Respectful way for me to interact with you is to not make assumptions. Rather, I should seek to understand how your safety needs are not satisfied, and understand with you if I can support you in satisfying those needs. It is not to tell you that you should feel safe as I feel safe in the same conditions – that is incredibly disrespectful.

Usually, people need to satisfy their lower level needs before addressing their higher level needs. This starts with physiological needs (food, water, and shelter) and progresses to safety needs. Once satisfying those basic needs, people tend to focus on their psychological needs, which include belonginess, love and esteem. When these needs are satisfied, people will then focus on their self-actualization needs (Maslow 1943). Self-actualization is where we can create the conditions to maximize personal and professional growth and performance. This is the space where our needs for Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose come into play, and where we can flourish with a growth mindset. This is a simplification, and is generally the order in which people satisfy their needs. Most people are working on satisfying multiple needs at the same time, and some people work on satisfying them in a different order (Maslow 1943).

Our physiological, safety, belongingness, love, and esteem needs can all be satisfied. What each of us requires to satisfy those needs is different. We will be motivated by them until we satisfy our need. Then for continued motivation, we have to work on satisfying another need. Motivation for self-actualization continues to grow the more you achieve (Maslow 1943). Through striving to achieve our full potential we can reach it, though there is always more that can be achieved.

The current pandemic has drastically increased the number of people that are struggling to satisfy their basic needs. The large levels of unemployment and underemployment make it hard for some to satisfy their physiological needs for food, water, and shelter. The existence of a highly contagious deadly disease impacts our ability to satisfy our safety needs. Those who have lost friends and family are likely having a harder time satisfying their belongingness and love needs. The social isolation that is part of our new normal contributes to not being able to satisfy belongingness and love needs for some, and esteem needs for others. Unemployment and underemployment can impact people’s ability to satisfy their esteem needs. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m sure everyone can relate to how the pandemic has impacted their ability to satisfy some of their needs. As we process our new and ever-changing reality, sometimes we can figure out new ways to satisfy our needs, and sometimes we can’t. We are all processing the pandemic in our own ways, and its impact on our ability to satisfy our needs varies for each of us.

What can we learn from our experiences to understand and support people in satisfying their needs? In some instances, our shared experiences will enable us to have empathy when supporting other people. And in other instances, we may not be able to empathize, if we can’t understand what people are going through. If we are processing and satisfying (or not satisfying) our needs differently, we may not understand what other people need. In those situations, we should seek to understand, which may enable us to empathize with them. It is best to err on the side of needing to seek to understand, and not assuming we understand what other people need. This is important not just during a pandemic. This is how we should support people all the time. This is how we show Respect.

We can show Respect by providing the conditions for people to safely discuss their needs with us. Sometimes there are things we can do to help people satisfy their needs. Sometimes all we can do is listen and try to understand their needs. Either way, we should do it with Respect, not make assumptions, and not try to satisfy people’s needs for them.