Respect, Honesty, Trust & Loyalty

“Respect is earned. Honesty is appreciated. Trust is gained and Loyalty is returned.”

We do get a lot of whatsapp messages every day wishing us good morning and also sharing with us some interesting quotes or videos. Many of the these quotes give me ideas to write blogs. Someone asked me as to how I get ideas every week. Apart from my own reflection and insights, I get a lot of ideas from such sources and also from my interactions with people at all levels.

As a HR professional for life, I have had the privilege of interacting and learning from all levels of employees. These interactions were also a great source of ideas. The above quote on respect, honesty, trust and loyalty helped me to distinguish the four concepts.

Let us first understand “Respect”. In the early stage of our lives, we may respect our parents, elders and teachers out of fear or due to consequences associated with non adherence. But, as we grow up in life, we respect people, who earn their respect.

We may not necessarily respect a senior at work. A senior colleague earns respects through his actions and not his words. When leaders walk their talk, they earn respect. When there is no gap between what they say and what they do, they earn respect. We may wish a senior colleague in a formal way ,but that may not necessarily mean, we respect them.

As kids, we are taught in school and college to be honest in all dealings. Our parents and teachers almost spend their lifetime, trying to inculcate this value of honesty in us. We do appreciate the value of honesty but sometimes, when we see successful people around us, who are dishonest, we start questioning if this value of honesty is worth living.

After we go through the ups and downs in life and if we have pursued a path of honesty ,we realise that we are always appreciated for our honesty. I have never missed a good sleep at night ,since I have been honest in my profession ,right through my life. Further, union leaders always appreciated honest officers and I experienced this right from the beginning of my career. when, even senior corrupt officers were being gheraoed on an issue, the union leaders always appreciated us for our honesty and hence always kept us away from gheraos and other forms of coercive protests.

The most expensive thing in the world is Trust. It can take years to earn and a matter of seconds to lose it. Trust is gained through our, day to day actions. Parents, teachers or elders gain trust of the youngsters, when they see them practising ,before they preach. Trust is never gained through words or speeches. It is always gained through our explicit actions. It takes years to earn trust ,but may be seconds to lose it. A politician may have earned the trust of his voters and won multiple elections but when he is convicted in a corruption scandal, the years of trust is lost in minutes.

Lastly, loyalty is always returned. An employee, who is well taken care by any organisation, never wants to leave because of loyalty and wants to return the good will, through her service to the organisation. A player never leaves a team, if taken care of , during good and bad times and continues to be loyal to the team.

Let us learn to distinguish respect, honesty, trust and loyalty from today.

S Ramesh Shankar

1st July 2025

Relationships are like birds

“ Relationships are like birds. If you hold tightly, they die. If you hold loosely, they fly. But, if you hold with care, they remain with you forever.”

Karma says – “Relationship is not about kiss, hugs and romance. It’s all about trust and never giving up ,on each other.”

I found two interesting quotes on relationships and found them very insightful. Our life begins with our relationship with our parents and siblings. Our parents hold our hands and help us to walk in life. Our siblings are like the support systems ,with whom we can laugh and cry ,as we try to find our foot hold ,in life.

We then grow up and develop friends with our classmates in school and college. We move closer to these friends and they influence us, more than our parents and siblings ,at this stage of our lives.

After our academics, we move on and our colleagues at the work places, are our best friends in life. As we move from one relationship to another, we realise that each has its value and has a timeline ,attached to it. Some of them sustain themselves ,while others fade with time.

We then get married and have our life partners with us. This relationship is complex but real. We have either chosen each other out of our own volition or gone by the choice of others. Either way, it evolves over time and we start depending on one another, for our sustainable living.

All the relationships, which sustain themselves ,have some interesting similarities. Our siblings are with us right through our lives and during thick and thin, they try their best, to support us. Our classmates may not be interacting with us regularly but some of them are friends for life and we trust their advice always.

Then friends and colleagues ,lay the foundation for a life long journey, for us. Our spouse becomes a partner in life and is willing to walk along with us ,to the peak of the mountain of life. There could be good or bad days in our lives but we go through them together, fight with each other, resolve our conflicts and are willing to support one another.

The first similarity of a good relationship, is its unconditionality. We are not breathing ,on each other’s neck. We let go and are still in touch. I can recall many close friends, whom I may not have even talked over years ,but still close enough ,to seek counsel, when I need them.

When relationships become conditional – we tend to use and throw. Such relationships ,do not last a life time. It is like holding a bird tight and it dies. We need to learn to invest in every relationship, we want to nurture in life.

At the same time, relationships are not about hugs and kisses every day, like the compatible life partners teach us. They trust one another and care for one another ,without expecting anything, in return. Trust is a two way street. We get ,what we give to others. We need to remember that we earn trust by our deeds and actions ,and not by our words of intent.

In order to nurture a good relationship, we need to earn mutual trust, care unconditionally, let go and give space to one another. At the same, always be accessible and available to one another, when they need us the most.

From now on, let us try it.

S Ramesh Shankar

1st July 2025

Balance between ambition and contentment

I wrote a blog on “How much money is good enough for being happy in life”. On reading this blog and liking it, one of my ex colleagues asked me ,if I could write on “How to balance ambition and contentment”

In my view, ambition and contentment are like goals and happiness in life. We need to fulfill our goals , but when we get greedy, we lose the race of life. It is like ,a sportsperson realises, when to stop playing actively and retire from an active sport. However, if the sportsperson continues to play even though his body signals to stop, he or she may end up with some avoidable injuries.

Life is no different and neither our career nor business ambitions, are. Let me first illustrate this with a simple incident, I experienced in life. We had a chaat shop in our township, when I worked in a steel plant, at the start of my career. This shop still exists at the same place, even today.

It is very famous for their chaats and gulab jamuns. They open at 6 pm and close at 9 pm sharp. When I visited the shop after about 30 years and enquired why they have not expanded or changed ,the owner gave me a very insightful reply.

There is a huge demand for the chaats and gulab jamuns. Customers queue up even before the shop opens and almost have to be evicted, when they shut down. They have more demand ,than they can cater to. He said he earns enough ,to take care of his family and is very happy with the way his business runs ,and has maintained his quality and service. He does not want to get more greedy and destroy his reputation, built over decades. It was a great lesson on contentment in life.

Our careers have to be evolved this way. We need to ,set a goal for ourselves. We need to work zealously ,to reach that goal post. We could stretch ourselves ,if we think we have not yet realised our potential. But we have to learn not to stretch beyond our limits, as otherwise ,we would break down. It is like stretching the rubber band. By instinct, we know when to stop. If we break a few rubber bands, we learn by our experience and stop at the right time later.

So, whether business or an organisational career, we need to set goals and sub goals and strive our best to achieve them. The day we realise that the rubber band in us ,is fully stretched and may now break, we need to stop. It is like ,when a player retires, everyone asks – “why now?”, rather than “Why not now ?

Life gives us ,a lot of innate warnings. We need to learn, to listen to our own body, mind and soul. The individual is the best judge, as to when to stop. A coach cannot and should not guide a player, to retire from a game. It is the player, who has to realise, when to retire with pride rather than being dropped from the team, unceremoniously.

Ambition takes us where we want to go and contentment teaches us when to stop. Contentment and gratitude keeps us happy in life. So, we need to be ambitious enough to achieve our career goals and stop when we feel content. We also need to be grateful to all the people, who made us achieve our goals in life – parents, teachers, siblings, friends and colleagues.

Let contentment help us balance our ambition in life.

S Ramesh Shankar

27th June 2025