No respect: changing attitudes to hierarchy at work.

Society is built around hierarchies. Families comprise hierarchies. Organisations definitely are organised around hierarchies. Without the acceptance that some people call the shots and therefore are inherently more ‘valuable’ than others, there would be anarchy according to most accepted wisdom.  Just as there needs to be order in a family to provide the stability for young people to thrive, and a system of law and order in society, there is a need for people to accept authority on organisations.

It is true that some people are more equipped to make decisions, and most people don’t want to be in charge. We are not used to any other system but command and control in most areas of life. So, senior managers have become used to being respected in a relatively unquestioned way. The upper layers are not used to being challenged.

Unfortunately for senior leadership teams, many people don’t view senior leaders with the same level of respect that they used to. Whereas in the past, people accepted being ‘led by donkeys’ as long as they were paid okay, now people are much more discerning and expect to be led in a competent way. This trend, hastened by the lockdown realisation that many managers were barely missed, hastened a trend towards ‘accountability’ within hierarchies and the hinging of respect for hierarchies upon managers deserving to occupy their roles.

For a range of reasons, people will no longer put up with bad management. They will instead call it out, lobby for improvements, or even look for alternative work. 

Organisations however, tend to back their senior staff and clamp down on dissent because the senior people whose competence is being questioned ultimately have the power. Organisations generally attempt to back to a status quo, albeit a flawed one.

At the top of a hierarchy, people feel invincible. It is very easy to feel that you have helicopter vision and that people below are looking to you for visionary leadership and assume that you are worth a far higher amount than they are. This used to be the case, with people believing that the burden of responsibility was so stressful at the top that it was better lower down. Now, it is clearer that there are just different kinds of stress at play – and at the bottom you are not compensated for the stress you might be under. People are much more reluctant to endorse the value of those at the top, particularly since it is not clear what they actually do in sometimes.

Meanwhile, people, spurred on by a growing sense of entitlement in some cases, are deciding to take quiet steps outside the reach of hierarchies. Quiet quitting, job jumping and ‘lazy girl/boy jobs’ are all ways of pushing back against the traditional hierarchy, particularly by people who have not done too well in the hierarchy anyway. Despite what many organisations say about level playing fields and opportunities for all, it is a slow process to change old habits and many people are not convinced that things are changing.

For new generations of employees, hierarchies don’t really mean as much. Alongside the move to work from home, younger people don’t exclusively define themselves by their job titles but by their ability to command money and lifestyle freedom doing things that they enjoy. Experiences are worth more to Gen Z than positions in a hierarchy; indeed they may very well view seniority as suffocating, given that it is often accompanied by expectations about the way that they behave. Freedom is the new benchmark for success.

Employers should ensure that hierarchies actually make a positive difference to the organisation and are not just there for show. Genuine flatter hierarchies are the best way to truly enable people to contribute to success and feel valued but, in my experience, letting go of power is very hard for some people at the top. My advice: do it.