Like vs. Respect

I've been ruminating lately on two seemingly-opposed things: being LIKED, and being RESPECTED.

As far back as grade school, I knew there was a big difference, and I knew that people usually got a lot of one or they got a lot of the other but rarely both. I figured the luckiest ones were simply the people who were conscious enough of interpersonal interactions that they could choose WHICH one they got. By high school and college age I had started to wonder whether I was making a false dichotomy; maybe one person COULD really earn both, and maybe I just didn't know how.

But now I'm back, mostly, to my original stance.

I think a lot of it depends on the underlying attitudes of the people around you. Naturally, if person A is surrounded by a bunch of young punks who shove each other to create a social pecking order, and person B is surrounded by Mother Theresas, the two people could have identical personalities and yet get widely varying levels of both liking and respect from their social circles.

It also depends on how aware the people are. I respect technical excellence, but I have such a strong aversion to jerks that if someone goes around strutting his own brilliance by putting others down, I will neither like nor respect him. My experience in the working world has shown that this level of awareness of conflicting signals (or perhaps simply this level of aversion to jerks?) is quite rare. Subtle putdowns are highly rewarded in my field.

I feel that in the workplace, I get an awful lot of like and not so much respect. Obviously, I am too nice.

I had a great conversation with Rob just a couple hours ago about this. The absolutely mind-bogglingly wonderful thing about that conversation is that HE GETS IT. He understands completely what I mean when I explain these thoughts to him. He may not agree with me about the extent to which it happens -- we didn't have time to get that far -- but when I point to a specific example, he doesn't for a minute misunderstand or pretend it's not there.

I'd love to have the respect of people whose values I, in turn, respect. I think that's frankly not so hard to come by; naturally I tend to respect value systems close to my own. But I'd ALSO like to have the respect of the less-aware, less-strongly-jerk-averse types that make up my professional circle. Not that these people are apes. They're not, and one of the great things about the company I work for is that the people involved are actually unusually grown up. But they still do get into the dickwaving thing, and minor rudeness still works well in that arena.

(The obvious question is why I give a hoot what they think of me. The obvious answer is I'd like to buy a new car some day, know what I mean?)

So my deep and difficult question to myself is: To what extent am I willing to compromise my own values to play the game these people need to see played?

Probably not zero. Definitely not a lot. I have to find for myself where that line is.