CEO of Pegipegi Shared the Importance of Collaborate with Respect Inside the Workplace

Every workplace is always facing challenges from time to time to pursue company goals.

And every person inside the company has different perspectives, outlooks, and ways of working. Disagreements that sometimes happen inside the company can lead to decreased productivity, demotivation, and misunderstandings. Especially during the pandemic and post-pandemic, we won’t always meet each other directly, and the workplace can have more obstacles than before.

If we look at a survey by Harvard Business Review, almost 20.000 employees agreed to be respected encourages greater commitment and engagement. The research shows it gives more positive impact than recognition, constructive feedback, sharing the company vision, or career or personal development opportunities.

Still, based on research findings, employees are less likely to be stressed and more likely to apply themselves to their work. This is also true when employees know that their managers and team leaders respect them and the work they are doing.

This is solid evidence — respect plays an important role in building commitment, engagement, and trust with each other. So, this is what Pegipegi tries to implement through Collaborate with Respect, one of the Pegipegi core values — called Pegipegi 5 Essentials.

According to the Pegipegi 5 Essentials culture book, Collaborate with Respect means:

“Collaboration is key in achieving our common goal, that is why we choose to effectively respond to our stakeholders. We aspire to always challenge ideas and embrace constructive feedback, while we create a psychologically safe environment where we are able to show empathy and respect.”

CEO of Pegipegi, Serlina Wijaya, the one who was involved in formulating the Pegipegi 5 Essentials, shared her personal thoughts and experiences regarding some of the guiding principles that she continues to practice this value.

She wanted to remind that every leader, every member, and everyone in Pegipegi fully understands and starts to embody the guiding principles. And maybe, you as our reader can try to implement this value in your daily life to grow better.

Be an effective collaborator

Serlina noticed a few practices or behaviors in many companies which can be done less or gradually eliminated to be a more effective collaborator. She believes most of us might have experienced these ourselves.

Here are some of them:

1. Being super quiet does not contribute to thinking during a meeting or discussion.
2. Tend to be nice, to agree on things in a meeting or discussion; but then go back from the meeting or discussion being clueless, disagree on things, and don’t follow up action items from meetings.
3. Does not provide any responses for questions or comments directed through Slack, email, or others.

“All of the above examples, whether we realize it or not, actually hinder us from being an effective collaborator to the people, process, and output around us,” Serlina said.

Then, how do we do it better? Here are some of the tips from Serlina to address the issue:

First issue: Being super quiet and does not contribute any thinking during a meeting or discussion.

Remember, staying quiet does not help. Instead, we practice some of these:

1. Prior to the meeting, ask ourselves if we are the right person to attend the meeting: “What will be my role in the meeting: decision maker? Giving additional points of view? Or stakeholder to be informed?”
2. Attend if you are the right person needed for the meeting, delegate to our relevant members (in case we are not the relevant person) — or decline the meeting; but remember to provide updates if we are to delegate or not attend the meeting. But, this does not mean that we can end up declining every meeting where we are in fact needed.
3. Prepare ourselves before the meeting. Ask for the materials to read beforehand, understand the problems beforehand, and bring in our agenda to discuss or to advance prior to the meeting.

We can play our part in the meeting based on our expected role (as elaborated above), based on the preparation. It is expected for us to ask questions, contribute thinking, clarify things, and even challenge things during the discussion — we have to do it effectively and respectfully.

Second issue: tend to be nice, to agree on things in a meeting or discussion; but then go back from the meeting or discussion being clueless, disagree on things, and don`t follow up action items from meetings.

“Remember, we do not always have to appear as “nice”, the most important thing is we are effective and respectful. Nice but not effective does not help. Nice and effective, this is obviously ideal,” she said.

So what can we do? Serlina gives two tips:

1. Be clear regarding what we need to discuss, clarify, or challenge during a discussion. Set the intention right, and be assertive while still being respectful.
2. Do not complain behind your back (while saying nothing during a meeting), especially if we are in control to solve things. Discuss it, solve it!.

The third issue: does not provide any responses for questions or comments directed to us through Slack, email, or others.

According to Serlina, to be an effective collaborator, one must always be able to keep the conversation going to not be a hindrance to other members, teams, or functions, to be a thought partner, and to be a solution provider. Hence, one could not possibly achieve it without ensuring that she or he is effective in providing responses.

“Remember, the key is not the speed to respond. The key is to provide effective responses or updates and to manage expectations. If we can be effective and fast, this is obviously ideal,” said a woman who graduated from Bandung Institute of Technology.

There are some tips that we can practice:

1. To not be overwhelmed in using Slack or emails — we can mark which persons or which Slack channels we want to prioritize to read. Dedicate a certain time slot by marking in our calendar to reply to messages. This is to ensure we do not miss or skip the thread we are supposed to reply to too often.
2. If we can not reply immediately to certain questions, as we need more analysis, and research, we can always manage expectations by replying “I will get back later”. Do not let things hang around or be unattended for too long.
3. For some questions or comments which do not need an elaborative reply, show our acknowledgment or that we have read and understood it, by using some emojis like a check mark, thumbs up, memo, etc. Do not leave it unresponded. Remember, a response does not always have to be a lengthy reply, emoji can do.

“So that`s my personal thoughts. Thanks for reading this and let’s remind each other to practice this in our professional and daily life,” Serlina closed her statement.

Check our career page if you are interested to collaborate with us!