You make them respect you by understanding what they do and treating them like what they are: the people who create value for your business. You show actual respect for the work they do and give them interesting things to work on.
I think Fog Creek gets it right. You don't treat programmers like second-class drones who make things for you; you treat them like the primary creators of value for you company, and yourself as their support staff (abstracting away the mechanics of running a software company so all they have to think about is coding and typing commit.)
> you treat them like the primary creators of value for you company, and yourself as their support staff
Bingo! The best managers I have had over the years spent far more time getting me what I needed in order to do my job than they did telling me what to do. They also got the most value out of me, and ended up looking the best in front of their bosses.
I think Fog Creek gets it right. You don't treat programmers like second-class drones who make things for you; you treat them like the primary creators of value for you company, and yourself as their support staff (abstracting away the mechanics of running a software company so all they have to think about is coding and typing commit.)