Self-esteem or self-worth is a person’s subjective appraisal of himself or herself as fundamentally positive or negative to some degree. Self-esteem also involves both self-relevant beliefs, and associated self-relevant emotions.

So why is self-esteem important in a respectful workplace?

In an article by Candace Webb entitled How to Build Self-Esteem in the Workplace, the author states that employees who feel good about themselves are typically able to focus better, need less time off, and generally get along well with coworkers.

This may sounds like a company’s dream employee. However, one may argue that an employee’s self-esteem should not be the company’s concern. Nevertheless, an employee with high self-esteem will manage to keep themselves more motivated than an employee with low self-esteem who may be less productive and more hesitant in putting forth their best efforts.

This is why legacy business cultures dedicates an entire unit in their Increasing Human Effectiveness and Connecting With Respect curricula in order to teach their clients the importance of developing a healthy self-esteem.

Legacy Business Cultures’s Connecting With Respect curriculum states that self-esteem is the degree to which individuals feel comfortable with themselves as they are, believe that they have inherent value as individuals, and demonstrate confidence in their ability to successfully achieve their own measure of success.

Some of the attitudes to support these characteristics of healthy self-esteem are:

  1. Assuming greater personal accountability for out-comes
  2. Building and maintaining healthier one-on-one relationships
  3. Being more receptive to new ideas and other people’s approaches
  4. Demonstrating a greater capacity for empathy
  5. Comfortably and respectfully interacting with people who have different backgrounds and values
  6. Respectfully sharing opinions that may run counter to the majority
  7. Demonstrating socially appropriate levels of assertiveness
  8. Constructively managing criticism and feedback from others
  9. Proactively pursuing meaningful goals
  10. Regularly acknowledging and complimenting the contributions of others

Overall good indicators of healthy self-esteem are serving and sharing. Do not be afraid to be approachable to your fellow co-workers or employees. Compliment someone in your office on how good of a job they doing. This will help build their and your self-esteem, and could possibly start a chain reaction of developing respect inside of the workplace.