Army Respect

What is respect? Respect can be in various forms. It can be knowledge, self awareness, trust, character, honesty, understanding, and a positive attitude. But respect also has to be earned. If you can’t respect yourself then you won’t be able to respect others. To gain respect you have to treat others the way you would want to be treated. Without respect you can’t have team work and care for other peoples well being.
It is respect which creates devotion to the team, and the important part is that that respect flows both up and down the chain of command. A leader respects the skills, strengths, and sacrifices of the people who work for him, and by giving that respect, in time and with effort, his troops come to respect him as well. That respect grows into devotion: the devotion of the leader to his troops, to do his best to see them through tough times and bring them home to their families, and the devotion of the troops to accomplishing the tasks of their unit under the vision of their leadership.
Discipline is the glue that holds a combat team together. Without it there is no unit cohesion, no espirit de corps, and no coordination. However, discipline is a complex product of training, leadership, and respect. Disrespect, however, has exactly the opposite effect. If a leader disrespects his troops, he fails to earn their respect and therefore fails to create devotion to the team. His attitude will be noticed and will become detrimental to morale, which in turn will hurt the combat effectiveness of each troop as well as the whole. Because he cannot respect his troops, he will also fail to recognize their true strengths and employ his forces to the best of their respective abilities.
If, on the other hand, a troop fails to form respect for ANY leader, no matter how good that leader is at their job, then that troop forms a sort of uprising point... a point of discontention that saps unit cohesion and draws any other malcontents to it. Such behavior undermines the