2 stars because the idea is important even if the presentation is lacking.

The these of this book is critical: we should honor the dignity of each person we meet. Hicks separates dignity from respect. Respect is earned. Dignity is inherent and comes from existing as a feeling, conscious being. Violations of dignity are unacceptable, in life and in the workplace.

This is an important distinction (and one weakened by the book's later emphasis on empathy and love). Honoring dignity is a stronger call to action than respect or empathy. It says that it doesn't matter what someone does, it doesn't matter how much you hate them, there is still some modicum of honor that they deserve.

This book has two interwoven strains: honoring your own dignity and honoring the dignity of others. The bits on honoring your own dignity felt rather too self-help oriented for me. It is important to honor your own dignity, but in a book on leadership it should have been an introductory chapter, not a major theme. This is a problem because much of the guidance on building a culture of dignity rests on an assumption that if everyone understood what dignity was, why it is important, and how to honor their own, the rest would just fall out. The book decidedly lacked a systems perspective. It doesn't matter if everyone has the right values if there are persistent pressures that make those values secondary to other concerns. Thus, in the end I see this book as useful as a guide for honoring the dignity of those you interact with directly, but it decidedly fails on its promise of showing how to create a broader culture of dignity.

Another thing that bugs me about the book is that many of the chapters had the form, "See this useful leadership concept! It totally applies to dignity too!" E.g., because honoring dignity requires being aware of the ways we may be violating the dignity of others, Hicks makes a rather weak case that it connects to Kegan's adult development theories since they too have a focus on self awareness. This happens with many other recognizable leadership and development theories. For someone who is unfamiliar with these, it may serve as a useful but shallow pointer to some ideas to learn about. For someone familiar with nearly all of them, it was quite tedious. It also made the book feel repetitive.

The book does present a useful, although only anecdotally validated, model of dignity. The ten elements of dignity are: acceptance of identity, recognition, acknowledgement, inclusion, safety (physical and psychological), fairness, independence, understanding, benefit of the doubt, and accountability for your own actions that may violate dignity. Violate any of these and it is likely to result in a dignity violation. Dignity violations are critical because they reduce trust, and most organizations depend on trust to work effectively.

Why do people violate the dignity of others? Usually it is not intentional. Instead, we are tempted by the need for self preservation. Common patterns include taking the bait, saving face, not wanting to admit responsibility, relying on external signals to uphold your own dignity, wanting to maintain bad relationships, wanting to avoid confrontation, avoiding admitting your own role in creating a problem, resisting feedback, blaming others to make yourself look better, or using negative gossip to promote false intimacy,

Leading with dignity requires creating an awareness of the importance of dignity, encouraging everyone to be lifelong learners open to feedback, and creating an environment where it is safe to be vulnerable. Trust and empathy are tools we can use to help motivate people to respect dignity. And, critically, leaders must take visible responsibility for dignity violations they cause.

To institute this culturally, Hicks advocates for dignity education, including assessing the existing culture and addressing lingering wounds to dignity through facilitated dialogues. This is all good, but as I noted above, I don't think that awareness plus pointwise fixing of issues is really enough to change a culture that does not already have honoring dignity at its core. It is necessary. It is not sufficient.

In the end, this is an important topic, and what I really want is a book that presents this topic well. Sadly, this is not that book. ( )