The Space We Give Other People

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We talk a lot about respect as though it is something we either possess or we don’t. Someone is respectful, somebody else is rude, another person is kind. We tend to describe these things as characteristics, almost like personality traits, but maybe they are closer to intentional decisions. Most of the ways we communicate another person’s value happen in moments so ordinary that we barely notice them being made. We decide whether to acknowledge somebody when they enter a room, whether to turn towards them when they speak, whether to make space for them in a conversation, how we introduce them to somebody else. None of these things looks particularly significant on its own, and perhaps that is why we underestimate how much they can communicate.

Courtesy has always sounded slightly superficial to me. The word makes me think of manners, remembering to say thank you or holding a door open for somebody behind you, yet I’m less sure that courtesy is really about manners at all. These actions seem to be more indicative of the small decisions we make every day that quietly tell somebody where we believe they belong. An introduction can give somebody standing or remove it. Bringing another person into a conversation can make them feel that their presence matters, while continuing as though they are not there communicates almost exactly the opposite.

I was reminded of this recently during an interaction that probably lasted only a few minutes. I was introduced to somebody in a way that significantly diminished the role I actually held. It wasn’t simply that a detail had been forgotten or somebody had stumbled over a title. The description placed me somewhere quite different from where I actually sat, and I remember feeling that peculiar mix of irritation and embarrassment that comes when you know something is wrong but correcting it risks making you look more concerned about status than you actually are. My ego did not need a particular title announced to the room. What bothered me was not who I needed people to believe I was, but who somebody else appeared to be trying to reduce me to.

As the conversation continued, the person who had introduced me physically moved between me and the person we were speaking with, with their back towards me for most of the exchange. I was close enough to hear the conversation but positioned almost completely outside it. Later, when I met another group of people, I eventually had to introduce myself to them, as an introduction from the person who maintained that relationship made no attempt to include me in the conversation at all. None of this was dramatic. There was no argument, no raised voice and nothing that, described individually, would sound particularly serious. Perhaps that was what made it so uncomfortable. The verbal language and the physical language were saying the same thing.

I have no way of knowing what was going through somebody else’s mind in those moments. It would be easy for me to decide the intention was malicious because that is how the behaviour felt, but feeling something and proving it are different things. Perhaps there was another explanation, but what I find harder to dismiss is that choices were still being made.

Nobody forces us to use a particular description when we introduce another person. Nobody forces us to turn our back on somebody standing beside us. We choose the language we use, where we place ourselves and who we bring into a conversation, even if some of those decisions happen so quickly that we barely register making them. I think there is a reasonable expectation that, as adults, we develop some awareness of the effect those choices can have.

That does not mean every awkward interaction is deliberate disrespect. I have said things badly, forgotten to acknowledge people properly and probably excluded somebody from a conversation without ever intending to. I would be horrified to discover some of the moments another person may remember about me that I have completely forgotten. Intent matters for exactly that reason, although one of the biggest problems with intent is that we don’t get to decide how somebody else experiences it. There is a significant difference between hurting somebody accidentally and setting out to diminish them. An accident can be acknowledged and repaired. Deliberate diminishment crosses a much harder line.

The problem is that once you believe somebody has intentionally tried to make you smaller, you lose some of your ability to interpret what comes next generously. Something you might once have dismissed as thoughtless starts to feel like part of a pattern. Eventually the question stops being whether every individual incident was intentional and becomes whether you trust the person enough to assume that it wasn’t.

I have encountered different versions of this throughout my career. In one previous role, work produced by my team regularly received very little recognition, while responsibility or credit somehow migrated elsewhere. Sometimes another team was credited for something we had done, and sometimes nobody corrected the impression when others claimed ownership. Any single example could have been dismissed as confusion, but repeated often enough it became difficult to experience it that way. When I once described some of the behaviour as a microaggression, I was told that the person I was speaking to did not understand what the word meant. There was something almost perfect about the response because, rather than discussing the behaviour, I suddenly found myself having to justify the language I had used to describe it.

That is partly what makes small acts of diminishment so difficult. If somebody openly insults you, everyone knows what happened. When the behaviour is smaller, challenging it can create another problem. You risk appearing sensitive, defensive or overly concerned with recognition, so sometimes it feels easier to absorb the slight than explain why something that looks insignificant from the outside did not feel insignificant when you were standing inside it.

But the opposite is also true, and perhaps that is the more useful thing to remember. If small decisions can diminish somebody, the same kinds of decisions can make them feel valued.

Jon Platt (now the CEO of Sony Music Publishing) was one of those people for me when I was at Warner Chappell. At an important stage in my career, he believed in me, supported me and made sure I was included in conversations where my presence could actually make a difference. He did not simply tell me he thought I was capable. He behaved as though I was capable, which is a very different thing. Being included in the right conversation changes what you hear, who you know, what you understand and, eventually, what becomes possible for you. My current boss does something similar. He brings the right voices into conversations and gives people room to contribute.

Perhaps this is why I have become so conscious of introductions myself. When I introduce somebody, I am not simply transferring information between two people who have not met. The words I choose tell one person something about how I see the other. If I minimise somebody’s role, fail to mention the work they have done or present them as peripheral to something they helped create, I have altered their standing before they have even had an opportunity to speak for themselves.

I have always thought some of the most useful things we learn from other people come from watching what we never want to repeat. Sometimes those lessons come from generosity and sometimes from its absence. I suspect that most of us carry a collection of behaviours we have quietly decided not to reproduce because we remember what it felt like to be on the receiving end of them.

That feels particularly relevant today because expectations have changed, and I think they should have. Things that might have been dismissed as simply how workplaces operated twenty years ago, or even ten, no longer get the same automatic pass. I do not think that means people have become weaker or less capable of dealing with difficult situations. Perhaps we have simply become more willing to ask why unnecessary difficulty needs to be created in the first place.

Creating a more inclusive environment does not always require some enormous initiative either. There is a much more immediate version available to us every day. We can notice who has not spoken. We can make sure somebody receives credit for work they actually did. We can introduce people accurately. We can turn towards them rather than away from them. We can decide that another person does not need to become useful, senior or important before we treat their presence as though it matters.

None of this requires perfection. What matters more to me is whether we are prepared to take responsibility when our choices have an impact we did not intend. “I didn’t mean it that way” may explain an action, but it does not erase what happened. We know what we meant because we have access to our own intentions. The other person knows what they experienced. Both things can be true.

Every interaction creates some kind of ripple, even if most disappear almost immediately. A word lands differently from how we expected. An introduction gives somebody confidence or quietly takes some away. An act of inclusion creates a relationship that leads somewhere neither person could have anticipated. Small things accumulate, and occasionally they become much larger than the moment that produced them.

We cannot control every ripple we create, and trying to would probably make ordinary human interaction impossible. But we can be more conscious of the water we disturb.

The space we give other people may be physical, professional or emotional, but it is rarely neutral. We can use it to make somebody feel smaller, or we can make enough room for them to become more fully themselves. Most of the time the difference begins with choices so small that nobody else in the room will ever notice them.

The person receiving them usually does, though.