What Does Respect Mean at Work? Kevin Ford on Respect, Empathy, and Connecting With Others

Former Calian Group CEO Kevin Ford breaks down what respect actually means in leadership, the real difference between sympathy and empathy, and why connecting with others is the second pillar of positive leadership.
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Part 2 of a 3-part series on positive leadership. Kevin Ford, former CEO of Calian Group, joins Craig Dowden to unpack candor, respect, and empathy, and why the order you build them in changes everything.

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What Does Respect Mean at Work? Kevin Ford on Respect, Empathy, and Connecting With Others

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What does respect mean in leadership?‍

A: Respect means treating people's perspectives, time, and dignity as valuable regardless of title or hierarchy. It's demonstrated through tone, how questions are asked, and consistency between what a leader says and how they act, not claimed through authority.

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Q: What is the difference between sympathy and empathy?‍

A: Sympathy is feeling concern for someone from your own perspective, often from an emotional distance. Empathy means stepping into someone else's perspective and sharing their emotional experience directly, which is why it requires more effort and often more discomfort [web:21].

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Q:  What is empathy, and can it be learned?‍

A: Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person's emotional experience, then act on that understanding. Kevin Ford argues it is a learnable skill built through observation and practice, not a trait some leaders simply lack forever.

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Every leader says they value respect, but ask ten executives what does respect mean in practice and you'll get ten different, mostly vague, answers. Kevin Ford, the former CEO of Calian Group who grew the company from roughly $250 million to $800 million in revenue during his tenure, has a much sharper answer, and he unpacked it in part two of a three-part conversation with Craig Dowden on the Do Good to Lead Well podcast. This installment focuses on the middle piece of Dowden and Ford's Positive Leadership Framework: connecting with others, built on three sequential ingredients, candor and transparency, respect, and empathy.

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Ford's framing matters because it makes respect clear instead of vague, which is how most companies talk about it. He also draws a clean, useful line between empathy and sympathy, a distinction that gets confused constantly in leadership advice. Below, we walk through the conversation in order, starting with candor, moving into respect, and closing with empathy, the same sequence Ford and Dowden used.

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Candor and Transparency Set the Table

Ford opens by defining candor precisely, "the quality of being open, honest, and sincere in what you say or do." He breaks that into three distinct elements, openness, honesty, and sincerity, and argues sincerity is the piece most leaders struggle with, because it is less about following a communication policy and more about how you show up day to day.

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As a public company CEO, Ford operated under formal transparency obligations, financial audits, ESG reporting, and shareholder disclosure. But he points out that the real test of transparency is whether employees can answer basic questions. Ford used a simple tool with his own board, a color-coded red, yellow, green chart that reflected his gut feeling about different parts of the business, separate from the financial numbers.

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Transparency isn't absolute, though. Ford is clear that legal, competitive, or sensitive HR matters sometimes require leaders to hold back details. The skill isn't choosing between full disclosure and silence, it's asking, in any given moment, how much can I responsibly share right now.

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What Does Respect Mean When You Actually Have to Practice It

Respect is not a title, and it is not something a CEO can demand by virtue of rank. "I don't think respect is title," he says. "It is something that... people will see authentically if you have respect as part of your demeanor." At Calian, after two decades of acquisitions and a workforce spread across dozens of cultures and languages, Ford treated respect as the operating foundation that made every other leadership behavior possible, because without it, transparency becomes an excuse to be harsh, and feedback stops getting through even when you mean well.

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Respect, in Ford's telling, shows up mostly in tone and in how questions get asked. He describes actively calling out disrespect when he saw it among his team, treating it as a non-negotiable standard rather than a personality quirk to tolerate. He also insists respect has to survive difficult moments, including layoffs and tough performance conversations. The goal in those situations is delivering them in a way that still honors the person on the receiving end. As Ford puts it, plainly. "Respect is the highway, man. This stuff's gotta fly on because if you have communications, if you have interactions... on a foundation of respect, I think it's much more powerful."

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That definition also includes repair. Ford openly shares moments where he lost his temper with an executive and later circled back to apologize, without abandoning the substance of his original point. "I didn't back off my point," he says, "but I said, look, I don't think my tone was appropriate. So my apologies." That combination, holding a position while owning how you delivered it, is a large part of what separates performative respect from the real thing.

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Empathy: What It Actually Means and Why It's a Skill

Empathy is the third and final ingredient in Ford's framework, and it is where the conversation gets the most practical. So what is empathy in a leadership context? Ford defines it simply as the ability to see people as full humans, not output generators, and to genuinely care how they're doing, physically, mentally, and energetically. He frames the single most important leadership question right now as, How are you doing? asked sincerely, not as a passing pleasantry.

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Ford is candid that empathy doesn't come naturally to everyone. "It's something I think you have to learn," he says, "either you care about it or you don't." He describes it as an observable skill built through attention, reading energy levels, noticing changes in tone or posture, and being willing to pull someone aside when something feels off. During the pandemic, Ford held an unscripted virtual town hall with no agenda, simply to let people express how they were struggling. He calls that moment one he'll never forget, not because it solved anything immediately, but because it signaled that people were seen.

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Ford pairs empathy with accountability and performance rather than treating them as opposites. Noticing someone is struggling isn't the finish line, it's the starting point for action, whether that's a direct conversation, delegating support to a manager, or simply following up. "You need to be able to show people you're listening," he says. "I see you as a human, and I'm trying to do something about it."

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The Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy

While Ford doesn't use the word sympathy directly in this conversation, the distinction matters enough to spell out clearly, because leaders often default to sympathy when empathy is what actually builds trust. Sympathy is feeling for someone, a pity- or concern-based reaction to their situation, delivered from your own perspective and at an emotional distance. Empathy is feeling with someone, actively stepping into their perspective and sharing in the emotional experience rather than just acknowledging it from the outside. Merriam-Webster draws this exact line, sympathy is sincere concern for someone, while empathy involves stepping into that person's shoes to actively share their emotional experience.

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That difference explains why Ford's "how are you doing?" question only works if the leader is prepared to actually sit with the answer. A sympathetic leader might say that sounds hard and move on. An empathetic leader, per Ford's approach, stays in the discomfort, asks follow-up questions, and takes action based on what they learn. The Center for Creative Leadership makes a related point about respect that applies just as well here. Respect and empathy are both actions, not just internal feelings. You show them through specific, repeatable behavior, not sentiment alone.

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Bringing It Together: A Sequence, Not a Checklist

The reason this framework works, according to Ford and Dowden, is the order. Candor and transparency establish that you can be trusted to tell the truth. Respect ensures that truth lands without doing damage. Empathy makes sure the person on the other end of a hard conversation still feels seen as a human being, win or lose, promoted or laid off. Skip any one of the three, and the other two lose their power.

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Revenue growth from roughly $250 million to $800 million during his tenure at Calian, without ever sacrificing the human side of leadership for performance. That's the real argument buried in this conversation. Respect and empathy are the operating system that makes sustained results possible.

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There's also a retention and culture argument buried in here that's worth pulling out on its own. Ford notes that younger employees increasingly judge leaders on whether they feel heard and respected. A workplace built on genuine respect and empathy becomes a competitive advantage in hiring and retention, the same way a well-designed sabbatical policy or flexible leave program signals to employees that they're treated as whole people rather than productivity units. Leaders who treat respect and empathy as checkbox exercises, an annual survey here, a town hall there, tend to see through the effort quickly. The ones who build it into daily behavior, tone, follow-up, and consistency see it compound into the kind of loyalty and performance Ford describes at Calian.

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Check out these articles to help hone your skills even further:

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Craig Dowden

CEO
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