Character Currency

You’ve heard adults trying to teach an important lesson to adolescents say, “When you give respect, you get respect.” Or “Respect is earned.”

As part of the social contract we have with each other we give a person respect until they give us a reason not to. Once that point is reached the person then has to prove themselves once again deserving of our respect through consistent behavior and good decision making.

Consistent behavior and good decision making.

We’re all at different points in this journey of life so one noteworthy caveat here is that there will be some character lessons that some of us simply haven’t learned yet, and we’ll be judged harshly for the lack of them. This is why some people will totally disregard the voices of young people; they simply haven’t been around long enough to understand the bigger picture of their own argument or the unintended consequences of terrible decisions.

They haven’t had time to make enough mistakes to make you confident that they learn from failure.

I’m a believer that people go through a transition period (Usually adolescence) of realizing that their words or actions impact others and seeing how this works affects the trajectory of their growth. During this time of terribleness we either feel embarrassment - suddenly unaware that we were ‘that person’ - or we continue doing and saying what we want because they just don’t care.

This period is necessary if people are ever expected to become fully-formed humans later in life. Those older decision makers that don’t listen to the youth know this.

Consistent behavior is usually learned from inconsistency.

Good decisions come from seeing the after effects of terrible decisions.

Foresight comes from getting punched in the teeth by unintended consequences.

Taking those hits and asking yourself if you had it coming or what did you contribute to whatever led up to that punch is a sign of maturity.

More directly: Ownership

Admitting to mistakes and actually learning from them whether or not the consequences were entirely your fault.

See: Ownership.

Which is universally recognized as the thing that allows a teenager to speak among oldheads about things that matter and not be eyerolled out of the room.

When you possess a level of tested character people will listen when you speak, talk to you instead of talking at you, and are willing to discuss disagreements instead of cutting the conversation short because there’s no good way to continue it.

Because that’s how we behave when someone has our respect.

I don’t want to believe I was ever as dumb as the high school kids I interact with daily, but I know I was. I’m sure of it. I had to be. I remember periodically apologizing to my parents for being the terrible person I’m sure I was even if I didn’t remember.

Because they deserved to hear it even if it was 10 years late.

When you are a dickhead you owe it to the people you were a dickhead to to acknowledge it, apologize for it and show your growth from the experience.

The social contract demands it.

Respect is a currency. It would be the current market value of your character: It can be saved and spent and even used as collateral when needed but when that value reaches $0 or we’re writing IOU’s with the favor we’ve earned – we’re in trouble.

How you handle a failure is just as important as how you handle a success. Currency is added to or removed from your account and there will be new decisions, new lessons to learn, new mistakes to make and the most important thing to understand here is that the currency exchange never ends. The market value of your character rises and falls because of you.

You have to make your own decisions and deal with the outcomes.

The decisions you make, the lessons you apply, the time you take to empathize and put yourself in someone else’s shoes – all of it forges your character.

Respect as currency is the simplest way for me to see it because, like any loan, it’s given on an individual basis and this means nobody gets a pass. You only get what you prove yourself worthy of and you’ll only get credit for who your mom or dad was for long enough to show lenders if the trust was misplaced.

What your parents did to earn respect has nothing to do with you. What you do to earn the respect of the current market shows how you apply the lessons they taught.

You have to make your own decisions and deal with the outcomes.

Stock rises. Stock dips. Consistent growth is what everyone is looking for.

Certain institutions get the benefit of doubt here because their core tenants have already met the baseline for what we would consider to be worthy of respect. Military and First Responders, or really anyone who runs toward the gunshots or into the burning building while everyone else is running away.

To serve and protect in the best interest of us at the cost of themselves, if need be.

These people are already made of stuff most of us aren’t so, by default, we recognize them for what they are prepared to do at a moment’s notice whether or not we’ve seen them do it ourselves.

It’s the truest case of giving someone respect until we are given reason not to.

And that’s how it needs to be. The social contract demands it.

There are cops that demand respect when they’ve done nothing to earn it besides wear the uniform or firefighters that habitually remind you of 9/11 or Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen who demand you respect a flag because of what it means to them and they’re parts of these respected institutions as well. The exemplary people stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the dickheads every day and consider them family, even if they disagree on what should be most important and recognized about their institutions.

We do not - and should not - judge an entire institution by the worst representatives of it. The organization as a whole isn’t destroyed or redeemed by an individual member and despite their individual feelings about facets of their function they still signed up willingly to do the same job.

There’s honor in that. Honor that is uncommon among common people.

And while no organization is made or broken by one member the office is only as strong as the people who hold it. So judging people on their individual merit and seeing an institution as a group of people (And ultimately fallible) means those institutions are – and should be - subject to the same rules we would apply to an individual.

It makes sense now that people refuse to offer respect simply because of the branch of service a person enlisted in or the job they do; It doesn’t make sense give the entire Army your checkbook when every soldier you personally knew ran out of IOU’s the day you met them.

Your word means nothing when you haven’t shown any ability to make good decisions, or learn from mistakes, or own your failures. It doesn’t make sense to lend character credit to entire groups of representatives if the institutions we are lending to repeatedly show themselves to be unworthy of the respect they have come to demand.

See also: Elected Officials.

IOU’s are just paper promises – what you’re asking for in exchange is priceless.

And you haven’t earned it.

You know what a major question any HR manager loves to ask people who want to be hired for a leadership roles is?

Tell me about your failures.

The brilliance is in the simplicity of it. Everyone comes to an interview with stories that make you a better or more valid a candidate for a position, few are prepared with a, “Here’s the time I was woefully unprepared and willfully ignorant and made a terrible decision...”

They should be, though, because if you want to be a leader you need to be able to see where you fell short and own your failures as well as your successes.

Ask any soldier or cop you know and they’ll tell you that a leader does a lot of mental prep for whatever lies ahead and a lot of gut-checking when things go sideways.

Something the best leaders all have in common is that they troubleshoot from the top-down instead of from the ground-up.

How could I have prepared for this?

What do I need to do to prevent this in the future?

What example do I want these people to follow?

Am I willing to set that example?

Am I demanding from others a higher standard than I hold myself to?

All are questions asked by people of character. All are questions avoided by people who have none.

The HR Manager won’t tell you this either, but what you choose to gloss over in your resume tells more about you than the awards you want everyone to see ever will.

Stock rises. Stock dips. Consistent growth is what everyone is looking for.

Character is who we are after we’ve gotten our hands dirty to fix problems whether or not we caused them.

Character comes from times we’ve had to do more than we thought we were capable of or when we had to take consequences squarely on the chin. It’s what happens when you see that blaming other people for unrelated issues in order to distract others from your own mistakes is weak. Cowardice.

Character is not taking the time to place blame because you know it won’t do anything to help the current situation and anything that costs time and doesn’t help is a distraction you can’t afford.

Character is who you are when you’re with yourself. Would you hire you?

Some people go their whole lives and never develop any. Some have a lifetime supply at 16 and the difference between them is how soon they decided to take 100% ownership of anything they did.

Character is the voice of someone important telling you you’re stronger than your obstacle, smarter than terrible decisions or demanding you get off the damn floor.

Character is Captain America choosing to stand between a friend and someone meaning to do them harm despite having almost nothing left in his tank to continue the fight.

We pay in respect what we deem a person’s character to be worth.

Remember that next time you’re told you need to respect an office regardless of who’s in it.