You can tell more about a person from how they treat someone who can do nothing for them than from almost anything else you’ll observe.
Not how they treat clients, or their manager, or anyone whose good opinion they need. How they speak to the person clearing the table, the delivery driver, the junior who has been at the company three weeks.
That’s the whole thing, and everything else here follows from it.
Why it matters more when you’re the one in charge
Everybody has always been reading this signal. What changes when you run something is that a group of people now read it professionally, every day, and draw conclusions about their own position from what they see.
Your team watches how you speak to the supplier who made a mistake. They notice whether you’re different with the client than with the junior. They register what happens when the delivery is late and it isn’t anyone’s fault.
And they aren’t being judgmental about it — they’re gathering evidence. If you’re sharp with someone who can’t push back, everyone present learns something about what happens when they can’t push back either. It doesn’t matter how you treat them personally on a good day. They’ve seen the other setting exists.
This is why the question isn’t really about manners. The way you treat people with no leverage is the most honest statement you make about how you use power, and your team is a captive audience for it.
The trap in most advice about this
Be nice to the admin and they’ll process your expenses faster. Learn the security guard’s name and your parcels turn up sooner. Look after your hairdresser and you’ll get the better appointment slot.
All of that is true. It’s also the wrong reason, and the wrongness is detectable.
People can tell when warmth is an instrument. The person who is friendly because friendliness is useful behaves differently in the moment it stops being useful — and everyone eventually gets to see that moment. The strategy defeats itself on contact with a bad day.
So the benefits are real and they can’t be the point. They’re what happens when the thing is genuine, and they evaporate when it isn’t.
The people it’s easiest to overlook
The person who keeps your workplace running. At a previous employer I knew the cleaning staff, the security team and the people on the loading dock. Not as a strategy — I worked in the building and they worked in the building. But it meant I knew what was actually happening there, because the people who move through every part of an organisation see all of it, and almost nobody asks them anything.
Anyone serving you in public. The waiter, the flight attendant, the person on the phone. You will never see them again, which is precisely why it counts. And if you’re at dinner with someone you’re considering hiring, this is more informative than anything on their CV.
Your children’s teachers. Large classes, limited resources, frequently their own money spent on supplies. A parent who treats them as a partner rather than a service provider gets a different relationship, and the child is the one who benefits.
The people who care for your family. When my father needed care, I dealt with caregivers, doctors and geriatric care managers over a long period. Those relationships mattered enormously — not because I cultivated them, but because we were engaged in something difficult together and treating each other well was the only sensible way to do it.
And your spouse. After more than 25 years, I’d say this is the one that takes the most deliberate effort, because it’s the relationship where the consequences of neglect arrive most slowly. Nothing breaks immediately. It just gradually becomes something other than what it was.
What this looks like in practice
Less about gestures than about defaults.
Learn names and use them. Trivially small and it changes the register of every subsequent interaction.
Notice when something is being done for you. Not effusive thanks — specific acknowledgement. “That got sorted quickly, thank you” lands differently from a general pleasantry.
Watch yourself under pressure. This is where it’s actually decided. Anyone can be pleasant on a good day. The question is what happens at four o’clock when something has gone wrong and the person in front of you didn’t cause it.
Be the same person across audiences. If you’re markedly different with the client than with the receptionist, everyone has noticed, and they’ve drawn the obvious conclusion about which version is real.
One thing worth separating out
Respect is not the same as agreement, and it isn’t the same as avoiding difficulty.
You can treat someone with complete respect and still tell them their work isn’t good enough, decline their request, or end their employment. In fact respect is what makes those conversations survivable — people can take hard news from someone who has consistently treated them as a competent adult.
What they can’t take is being treated dismissively and then handed a difficult message. That combination is what people remember for years.
So this isn’t an argument for being nice. It’s an argument for treating people as though they’re real, which includes telling them the truth.
The test
Next time you’re out with someone whose character you’re assessing — a prospective hire, a potential partner, anyone you’d be trusting — pay attention to how they speak to whoever is serving you.
It’s the most reliable read you’ll get, it takes no effort, and it’s very difficult to fake for an entire evening.
Then apply the same test to yourself, honestly, on your worst recent day. That answer is more useful than the flattering one.
More on staying professional when it’s difficult and the leadership skills nobody trains.
