How you treat people means everything—whether they will trust you, build relationships with you, follow you, support you, and work hard for you or not.
A Catalyst In Success
Civility helps people succeed. People enjoy collaborating with someone who is cooperative and respectful. Seeking people’s input, listening to their ideas, thanking them for their efforts, and sharing credit with them increase productivity.
Team members feel safe in a civil environment, which frees them to take risks and offer suggestions. Civility spreads just as pervasively as incivility since people reciprocate each other’s behaviour
Seven strategies for civility feedback
- Ask for focused feedback on your best and worst behaviours.
- Work with a coach – A professional coach can observe your behaviour in various work situations and provide feedback
- Conduct a team tune-up: Use colleagues or friends as coaches.
- Get 360° feedback.
- Teach yourself how to read the emotions of others.
- Make time for reflection – Keep a journal.
- Take care of yourself – Avoid burnout.
Scoring and Practice
If civil behaviour matters to your organization, put systems in place to track it.
Focus less on results and more on how people achieve them. Evaluate employees against metrics that highlight civilities, such as collaboration, empowerment, respect and encouragement. Recognize and reward “all-star helpers”—employees who go above and beyond their job descriptions to help their colleagues.
Codes and Coaches
- Every employee should know that civility matters.
- Describe how they should treat one another.
- Publish a basic code of conduct.
- Emphasize civility repeatedly; notice when it occurs.
Incivility carries heavy costs, but civility pays big dividends
The typical reaction to incivility is stress, which can trigger health problems and result in more instances of abrupt or rude behaviour. Rudeness also takes a psychological toll. When someone treats people meanly at work, they lose concentration, and their performance suffers.
They become less creative, have more difficulty making decisions, and have trouble processing or recalling information.
Unintentional Rudeness
People misread texts and emails because the written notes lack the nuance of face-to-face and phone interactions.
Often, people are uncivil when they’re tired or stressed. Generally, they’re not aware of how their actions affect others. Yet, unintentional rudeness is also destructive. When someone feels hurt, it doesn’t matter if the precipitating behaviour wasn’t deliberate.
Lost Productivity
Workplace relationship problems have significant costs for employers in the form of lost productivity, absenteeism, and turnover. Dealing with incivility takes an average of 13% of managers’ time as they work to mend relationships and deal with the aftermath of crass behavior.
Rudeness causes recipients to be less likely to welcome feedback or initiate interactions. Their willingness to help others or share information drops significantly.
Rudeness On The Rise
In the “Civility in America 2016” survey, 95% of respondents said “incivility” is a major problem in the United States. Workplace incivility takes many forms: making calls or texting during meetings, yelling at employees, belittling or heckling subordinates, taking credit for someone else’s work or ideas, and undermining other people’s efforts. Often, people are uncivil when they’re tired or stressed.
Be brief, informative, friendly and firm
If you’re the victim of incivility in the workplace, you can’t control the other person’s behaviour but you can manage your reaction.
Focus on the issue rather than the individual. Listen closely to his or her response. Your goal is to agree on norms going forward. If you feel the discussion is futile, follow the acronym BIFF(Brief, Informative, Friendly and Firm) in future interactions.
Rudeness Vs Respectfulness
To make the greatest impact in your business and to get the most out of your career, choose the path of respect over rudeness.
Globalization brings people from different cultures into contact with one another. What is seen as acceptable in one culture may be perceived as rude in another. Increased workloads cause stress and make people feel overwhelmed, causing them to lash out.
The Three Fundamentals
Begin the journey to improved civility for yourself and your organization by focusing on the three basics.
- The first “civility fundamental” requires you to smile more. When you smile, you feel happier and more relaxed; you lift other people’s moods.
- The second fundamental is to build authentic relationships with your staff members.
- The third fundamental is to sharpen your listening skills. Get rid of distractions, focus your attention, make eye contact and ask questions.
Five Forms of Giving
When people share knowledge, resources and connections, civility becomes the norm. Five forms of giving are most effective in creating an affirming atmosphere:
- Share resources – Collaborate with your co-workers to forge closer relationships.
- Share recognition – Give credit to everyone who contributes.
- Share gratitude – Thank people for their efforts, and reward positive behaviours.
- Share feedback
- Share purpose
Civility Pays Off
Behaving politely toward others conveys respect and regard. It lifts people up. A smile, a cheerful greeting, and a compliment make people feel valued and appreciated. When a leader treats employees in a respectful way, the leader’s status increases along with the employees’ motivation. People work harder for warm, approachable bosses they respect and admire.
Your attitude, mindset, and willfulness can make all the difference.
People are people: emotional torture vs emotional rescue
People don’t easily recover from the negative effects of rudeness.
Even low-intensity events or single incidents can diminish their focus and cognitive abilities.
On the flip side, being genuinely appreciated lifts people up. It energizes. It’s also a powerful tool for encouraging the right behaviours.
Email Etiquette
- Never send an email while angry, stressed or upset.
- Never be overly informal or too verbose, don’t hit Reply All unnecessarily and don’t fail to respond to your email.
- Fundamentals of email etiquette include using self-control, writing in a respectful tone and valuing your correspondents’ time.
- Include a clear subject line.
- Be concise; use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling; and copy only those who need a copy.
Lift Your Organization
- During interviews, pay attention to the way candidates behave.
- Ask them to describe their past behaviour and to give you examples.
- Discuss how they handle anger and stress.
- Observe how they speak about their former employers.
- Follow up with employees who interacted with your potential hire, such as receptionists or parking lot attendants.
- Research how candidates behaved in previous jobs.
The Bottom Line
Your best defense against incivility is to develop your own “sense of thriving.”
The stronger you feel, the better you will handle adversity. Strengthen and reinforce your sense of thriving by finding purpose in your work and outside activities. Seek the support of a mentor, and build positive relationships in every area of your life.
