Incivility: Fix That Broken Window
You’ve seen it many times: rude, insensitive or disrespectful behaviour by colleagues or managers, where it’s unclear whether or not there’s intent to harm. Well, research shows that the fingerprints of such incivility can be found in many organizational nooks. It has an eroding effect on individuals, teams and organizations. According to research published by the Harvard Business Review, 78% of people who experience rudeness by colleagues or managers report that their commitment to the organization declined, 48% say they decreased their work effort, and 66% say their performance declined. Classic incivility behaviours include gossip, social exclusion, dismissive body language such as eye rolling, berating others in public or otherwise, and skipping basic social niceties such as saying hello.
Incivility flies under the organizational radar, strongly felt but rarely addressed. When it is allowed to persist without organizational intervention, it creates the impression that no one cares and, over time, incivility becomes embedded in the culture. You’ll also see a rise in harassment and bullying, disruptions in customer service as well as higher stress levels and absenteeism.
Here are some ideas for tackling incivility successfully:
ü Get the vision. Before acting, become clear about why you want to tackle incivility and how specifically you will do so. Without this determination, don’t even bother with this issue, because changing the prevailing culture will require significant resolve and focus.
ü Leverage the values. If your organization’s values include ones that are relevant (‘respect’, ‘community’), figure out how to leverage these in all that you do.
ü United We Stand. Every leader within the division, department or organization needs to be on the same page. Without a uniform approach, you risk isolating those courageous leaders who do take action, potentially making them the subject of resistance and cynicism.
ü Model or else. Leaders from the top down need to demonstrate the very behaviours that employees will be required to follow. Yes, they’ll need to be ship-shape on their hellos, not barge into meetings, leave their moods at the door and be super-respectful when giving any kind of feedback.
ü Separate personality from behaviour. Stop operating under the paradigm of ‘you can’t control people’s personalities’. Yes, it’s true that you can’t direct people’s personalities, but an organization has both the right and responsibility to require that people be civil. People with obnoxious or abrasive personalities can set them free in their private lives. In the workplace, it’s about courtesy, politeness and consideration.
ü Rethink your code of conduct. Formal policies are limited in their ability to create civil workplaces. Incivility by definition is ambiguous and hard to pinpoint. Therefore, policies that attempt to prescribe body gestures, social inclusion and the like are bound to be ineffective, and possibly even the subject of ridicule. Still, a comprehensive civility strategy requires that you update your code of conduct to reflect the organization’s expectations and commitment.
ü Create Team Charters. Every work unit should create and commit to terms established in its own team charter, in which people together decide how they want to treat each other. It is crucial to revisit and revise these team charters on a regular basis to ensure that they are living, breathing documents.
ü Launch ongoing, public dialogue. Make incivility a topic of conversation and debate, both formally and informally. Discuss it in team meetings. Create task forces. Have cross-departmental debates over lunch. Institute competitions and prizes for the most civil person or team. Have teams commit to working on one specific civil behaviour for a week or a month, then discuss it, learn from it and decide on the behaviour to practice next, then repeat the cycle over.
ü Dedicate the time. Making the change will require time and intensity. Don’t let this become yet one more of those projects that launch with a splash and end with a whimper. Allot time and resources in advance, and assume it will take more effort than originally planned for.
ü Partner with the union. If you’re unionized, get the union on board. Together, your chances of creating lasting change are exponentially better.
ü See it, name it, act on it. Leaders need to promptly call people on uncivil behaviours. This requires two distinct skills: first, the ability to accurately diagnose incivil behaviour. Second, the courage to comment on it, sometimes even in public.
ü Embed incivility into organizational processes. References to incivility should be woven into all organizational processes. Beginning with pre-boarding and on-boarding, through performance appraisals, ongoing supervisory conversations, salary discussions, 360’s and exit interviews.
ü Provide training. Provide both leaders and employees with civility-specific training. Leaders will need to understand what incivility is and how it fits within the larger business context. They’ll need to learn how to model it themselves and how to call people on their behaviour. Employees too will benefit from learning how to contribute to the creation of a civil environment, where everyone is free to perform at their best.
ü Measure. Measure how the changes you’ve made show up in various organizational indicators. In terms of employees, do you see a reduction in stress levels? Is there less absenteeism? Do people report a stronger connection to the organization? Do they report feeling respected at work? On the business side, look for a surge in innovation as employees become increasingly comfortable taking risks. And look for higher rates of customer satisfaction, which will happen as a direct result of stopping the leakage of incivility from your back office into the interface with customers.
Broken Window Theory is a criminological theory that helped reduce crime in neighbourhoods across North America. It asserts that when a neighbourhood window is broken, you better fix it swiftly. If you don’t do so, crime rates in the neighbourhood will rise, simply because people assume that no one cares. Applying this theory to workplace incivility means that you need to actively keep incivility at bay in order to protect the organization from more serious risks, as well as from the effects of incivility itself. Indeed, the time to fix that broken window is now.
by Sharon Bar-David
Follow Us!