Deference Overview
Building Community
In many cultures, eating together symbolizes shared experience and interests. A person’s manners and the ceremony surrounding the meal communicate goodwill and show a willingness to understand others and build good relationships.
Think Community
Life is a shared experience. You share your home with family members. You share your community with neighbors. And you share your workplace with colleagues.
Whether individuals meet for conversation or for business negotiations, they show their esteem for others by holding a constructive conversation and by helping others benefit from the experience.
Thus, your habits and mannerisms affect how you get along with others and what contributions you make to your community.
Identify Responsibility
At the table, a person’s relative position indicates his or her role and responsibility. As a host or hostess, you seek to make your guests comfortable. As a guest, you receive what the host or hostess has prepared.
Showing deference means doing what will most benefit the other person, not simply complying with someone’s whims. Know what lies within your responsibility. Then, identify which principles of good character apply to the situation.
In daily life, your responsibilities to others will differ with each relationship. You have a responsibility to serve customers when they come to your business. You also have a responsibility to help your children do their homework.
Exercise Freedom
Freedom is the ability to fulfill your responsibilities. Thus, freedom ceases to be freedom when it oppresses or insults another person.
Whatever you need to do, communicate respect to others. You might avoid chatting with a coworker so that he or she can finish a project. Other times you might turn down your radio so that you do not distract others from their responsibilities.
A butter knife is curved inward to signify goodwill toward others. In the same way, deference allows you to honor others and communicate genuine goodwill.
Written by Lauree Beth Stedje