Transcript:

The Golden Rule & Platinum Rule Aren’t Always Right.

When I ask people “What does respect mean to you?”, they often reply “It’s the golden rule – treat people the way that you want to be treated”. 

Well what happens if people don't want to be treated the way that you want to be treated? 

For example, I like public acknowledgement, and yet I know many people who don’t. They think that being acknowledged publicly is embarrassing or perhaps even superficial. 

And then there is the platinum rule: treat people the way that they want to be treated.

Well what if they don’t tell you how they want to be treated? What if they’ve never thought about how they want to be treated. Or they give you a generic response like, “Just treat me with respect.” And that leaves you in the position of having to guess. You might do this by observing the way that they treat you and mirroring that back. Perhaps they like to surprise you with gifts and so you think “Oh, I’ll surprise them with a gift”. And it turns out that when you surprise them with gifts, they don’t actually like that. This could be because they like to give gifts but they don’t like the gifts that people give them. Or they might not want to trouble you into getting them a gift. And that is why the Platinum Rule can also be difficult to decipher.