Bad manners are bad for the bottom line. Minding your Ps and Qs, or your manners, is more than a quaint fad from the past. Research shows that businesses and organisations that allow rudeness and disrespect are likely to have lower profitability, poor staff morale, reduced customer loyalty and higher employee turnover.
There’s no doubt that our lives are busy and we’re working at an unsustainable pace but poor behaviours often point to a larger cultural problem within an organisation.
We can all feel overwhelmed at times and might not see how our actions impact others but when it becomes a way of working, it’s an expensive issue to solve.
How often have you seen or participated in rude behaviours at work? This might include not responding to emails, ghosting people’s phone calls or texts, speaking over others, publicly mocking or belittling colleagues, gossiping, offensive jokes or texting while someone is speaking.
When you’re tired it’s easy to miss things and tempting to avoid the pleasantries.
My mother used to say “a smile costs you nothing” but in competitive workplaces, some people think, incorrectly, that respecting others makes them look weak. Others believe in the strongman myth and that “punching down” gives them power.
“Incivility is a bug – it’s contagious and we become carriers of it just by being around it.” says American leadership researcher and academic Christine Porath who has dedicated her professional life to studying its impact.
Brain rot
Rudeness doesn’t just make you hard to be around, it also greatly impacts on others’ ability to think and respond well. Porath’s research shows that mental performance, such as our ability to take in details and make appropriate decisions, suffers if we’re the target of incivility.
Perhaps surprisingly, individuals who simply witness this behaviour also suffer quite significantly from temporary cognitive decline.
“Those who see or read rude words are five times more likely to miss information afterwards. It takes them longer to decide and there is a higher number of errors as they lacked the attention span or awareness to take details into account,” Porath found.
What happens to the brain when we encounter social aggression?
Humans are incredibly social animals and we’re wired to be highly sensitive to environmental threats. We unconsciously scan for things that might hurt us and the primitive threat of lions or bears has been replaced by social slights or rude comments. Our bodies can’t tell the difference between these threats though and this creates bursts of adrenalin and anxiety as we fixate on the injustice and the why and who of the moment.
This natural response to a perceived environmental threat leads to needless stress, anxiety and anger. At work, it also corrodes trust and reduces productivity.
How can you concentrate if you think a colleague is going to verbally attack you or a colleague or humiliate you in front of your peers? Even worse, unchecked incivility can lead to physical aggression and violence.
When a workplace lacks psychological safety, it leads to impaired thinking for everyone and creates underperforming teams. It also means staff members are less creative, innovative and more likely to quit. When you’re afraid, you can’t see the wood for the trees.
Counting the cost
Customers, external consultants and suppliers can smell an unhappy workplace a mile away. If you’re not answering emails, avoiding phone calls and meetings then it screams of an unhealthy culture where decision-making is avoided or even punished.
This does not build confidence in your brand and it damages the possibility of long-term loyal customer relationships. Just think of how many times you’ve avoided a restaurant, venue or shop because of poor service or rude behaviour? Even one bad experience can equal lost business.
This culture of incivility is costing businesses time and money. Risks include lawsuits, absenteeism and time spent managing complaints and incidents.
Managers and executives at Fortune 1000 firms in the US spent an estimated 13 per cent of their work time dealing with the aftermath of incivility, according to Harvard Business Review. Staff members in disrespectful workplaces are also less motivated.
Porath and her team send a survey to business school graduates working in a range of organisations and found that when incivility occurred 66 per cent cut back work efforts, 80 per cent lost time worrying about what happened, and 12 per cent left their job.
After reading this research, Cisco ran their own data and estimated, conservatively, that incivility was costing them $12 million (€10.5 million) a year. How much is this behaviour costing you in terms of your own headshead spacer enjoyment at work and to the company’s profit margin?
Cultural transformation
In Porath’s popular TedX talk, she says: “Civility pays and it ties to one of the most important questions around leadership: what do people want most from their leaders?
“We took data from over 20,000 employees around the world, and we found the answer was simple: respect. Being treated with respect was more important than recognition and appreciation, useful feedback, even opportunities for learning. Those that felt respected were healthier, more focused, more likely to stay with their organisation and far more engaged.”
Do nice guys finish last? Nope, they actually do just fine, says Porath. “There’s really rich research on this issue. The number one reason tied to executive failure is an insensitive or abrasive style.”
[ Soft quitting: Why are so many workers emotionally disengaging from their jobs?Opens in new window ]
That’s good news for kind people with good manners; hang in there are you’re likely to outlast colleagues and managers with a less palatable personal style.
There’s no vaccination for burnout, a big issue in today’s workplace, but respectful workplaces are more inoculated against negativity and distraction. Individuals who work in healthier, more supportive environments are more resilient, and better able to focus on their work.
Our course it’s impossible to wrap yourself and your team in cotton wool and, sadly, incivility is part of our lives. But “thrivers” are less likely to worry about a comment or take it as a personal affront, says Porath. They can identify the emotions that arise when they’re treated rudely, brush the negative emotions aside and refocus on navigating toward their goal.
How can you help yourself thrive?
Porath suggests a two-pronged approach: “Take steps to thrive cognitively, which includes growth, momentum and continual learning; and take steps to thrive affectively, by which I mean feeling healthy and experiencing passion and excitement at work and outside it.
“These two tactics are often mutually reinforcing – if you have energy, you’re more likely to be motivated to learn, and a sense of growth fuels your vitality. But distinguishing between them can help people recognise in which area they may be lagging and take steps to bolster their defences for the next hostile encounter.”
The science doesn’t lie: when you lift people up instead of cutting them down, you create a more productive working environment. You don’t need beanbags, coffee docks or pool tables. It’s the small things that really add up: smiling, saying hello, thanking people, sharing credit, listening attentively, humbly asking questions, acknowledging each other and smiling definitely has an impact.
Margaret E Ward is chief executive of Clear Eye, a leadership consultancy. margaret@cleareye.ie
