“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