Harmony, equanimity, and balance saturate my existence as I imagine myself in the picturesque towns, rolling hills and still vineyards of the Tuscany, Italy, where I am about to visit shortly on a well-deserved vacation.

Which bears the question: as you go through your working day, do you experience feelings as described above, or would your day be characterized by terms such as stress, feeling overwhelmed, irritated, and wishing you were somewhere else?

If the latter is where you’re at, the challenge becomes: how do you bring those ‘vacation’ feelings consciously into your everyday existence at work? (Google helps its employees do so by providing a physical environment that creates a sense of play, thereby fostering innovation – see one of the work spaces in their Tel Aviv office alongside this text).

As you probably already noticed, when people are stressed and overwhelmed it is easy to slide into workplace incivility. Incivility then leads to further irritation, which in turn triggers mini-aggression, which leads to more stress, then more irritation and incivility… before you know it, instead of being in Tuscany-land, suddenly you’re inviting an outsider like Bar-David Consulting to assist with team rehabilitation.

Here are three within-your-reach strategies for bringing the peaceful hills of Tuscany into your office:

1. Convert to meaning. You may already be doing lots of meaningful things, but in a non-meaningful way. For example, you visit your elderly parents but rush through the visit without ever being present. Or you help a stressed-out colleague with their work without being present to how this action fits with the larger vision of ‘who I really want to be in life when-all-is-said-and-done’.   If you want to say at that 80th birthday celebration that you were a ‘caring colleague’, convert these small experiences right now: when you lend a helping hand, exercise mindfulness and presence. This will cost you no extra time, but oh what a difference it will make to you – and the other person (read more on this)
2. Create mini-vacation every day. Even if it’s only for a few minutes, you can transport yourself to Islands of calm and oceans of harmony by taking even a few minutes to bring in a free-spirited vacation sense into your day (read more on this)
3. Be the bright light. Make someone’s day. Bring in ringing laughter to the team. Be a model of civility. Greet people with a cheerful hello. Apologize when you ought to. As Stephen Covey says, focus on those things that are within your Circle of Control. And bringing to your day and to those around you a sense of positive energy is always (yes, always) within your control.

The post You Choose: Tuscany Hills or Down-Hill? appeared first on Bar David Consulting.

Sharone Bar-David will be a guest speaker at the Partners in Prevention 2013 Health & Safety Conference & Trade Show, held on April 30 – May 1, 2013 at the International Centre in Mississauga, Ontario. This is Canada’s largest health and safety event, featuring experts from every sector.

Sharone will be leading a full-day pre-conference session entitled, “I Can’t Stand the Gossip!”: Mastering the Incivility Challenge. She will also deliver a conference presentation entitled, “I Can’t Believe that Just Happened!” :The Challenge of Abrasive Leaders.

Feel free to contact us to explore how we can contribute to the success of your next conference or to discuss your overall training needs, or needs related to abrasive leaders.

The post Largest Health & Safety Conference Features Sharone Bar-David as Guest Speaker. appeared first on Bar David Consulting.

Many freshly minted leaders fall into unhelpful patterns that will boomerang over time. They don’t realize that maintaining a respectful and civil work environment is crucial to their team’s performance (and in fact also to the very way they are perceived as leaders). Here are three sink-or-swim no-no’s:

1. Don’t succumb to New Supervisor Confusion Disease.  Your unmitigated allegiance is now to the organization. Don’t get confused by the belief that you can maintain your old friendships as if nothing had changed. If you are ‘friends’ with some of your employees and visibly show it, that will inevitably create the impression of favouritism and exclusion. When people feel excluded, their body secretes stress hormones, their concentration is compromised and the pain centre in the brain’s Anterior Cingulate Cortex gets activates. None of this is good news for anyone involved (including yourself).  Remember that in your new role, it is your responsibility and privilege to create a civil work environment where everyone can perform at their best, free of anything that compromises their dignity.
2. Forget about the popularity contest. When you take on a leadership role, it’s no longer about being liked, it’s about being respected. As a leader you must take actions that will decrease your popularity in the short term, but over the long term will earn your workers’ respect. This is especially true if you were promoted from within the team, because you will need to deal head-on with many of the problematic behaviours that you had observed while you were an ordinary teammate. Bottom line, being liked is nice-to-have, but being respected is the must-have. If you want to be popular, get that need met elsewhere.
3. Clear the decks or else. Many newly appointed leaders walk into a team culture that has sanctioned uncivil and even low-level harassment behaviours. Cliques, gossip, eye-rolling, belittling others’ opinions, sarcasm, foul language and off-colour jokes are some examples. You’ll need to take action on these immediately (even if it means embarking on those unpleasant performance management processes). If you don’t tackle the issues immediately, you will get inducted into that negative culture and it will be exceedingly difficult to make changes or manage performance later on. Clear the decks immediately, or be prepared to learn on your own skin that what you permit, you promote.

If you have juicy stories about respect-related mistakes you’ve made as a new leader, please do share them with me – they might find their way somehow to being useful to others via this blog (one never knows).

The post Three No-No’s for New Leaders appeared first on Bar David Consulting.

Sharone Bar-David will be offering a two-day seminar, Critical Skills for Maintaining Workplace Civility and Creating a Respectful Work Environment, at the Schulich School of Business on April 25-26, 2013. The Schulich School of Business was ranked #1 in Canada by The Economist in 2011 and ranked #9 amongst MBA programs internationally by Business Week in 2010.

This seminar offers a great opportunity to learn real-life strategies for creating civil, respectful work environments. It is ideal for executives, human resource and employee relations managers, or any front line managers facing respect-related situations.

Topics include:

• The Respect Continuum: Mapping Your Workplace Landscape
• Incivility: The Behaviour Molehill that Can Cause a Mountain of Problems
• Harassment: An Ever-Changing Phenomenon
• Bullying: Serious Danger in the Workplace
• Common Dilemmas Related to ‘Respect’
• Prevention and Planning
• Dealing with Respect-Related Complaints

Click here for more info and to register for the seminar.

 For ideas on creating respectful workplaces or to discuss your training needs, please contact us – we’d love to hear from you.

The post Sharone Bar-David’s Seminar Offered through the Schulich School of Business Executive Education Centre. appeared first on Bar David Consulting.

There’s a good chance that your team members (and yes, that does include you) suffer from an undiagnosed and serious addiction.  Let’s call it the RUT Addiction – Rude Use of Technology*. If you’ve ever gone to the bathroom at work (or at a party) to check your email, Facebook or text messages, you are likely a techno-addict.

Bathroom or parties are one thing. But giving into your addiction in a way that is experienced by your coworkers as rude, discourteous or incivil is a completely different matter.

A survey of 1023 Australian folks aged 18 to 65 revealed that 51.7% have secretly checked their phone during a meeting. One in five relayed that they had answered their phone during a meeting, and one in ten admitted to browsing social networking sites, while meetings were taking place. Interestingly, although half of the respondents admitted to having poor phone etiquette on occasion, over a third stated that using phones during work meetings was the most annoying practice of all.

Addictive, rude use of technology goes well beyond the use of mobile devices. It can include, for example, looking at your computer screen while someone is at your workstation or office.

Discussion Questions:

In your team, consider any or all of the following questions:

1. As you reflect objectively, without blame or finger-pointing, what specific manifestations of the RUT Addiction does your team display?
2. Comparing the behaviour on your team to the findings of the above study, what differences or similarities do you identify?
3. What symptoms of the RUT Addiction do you personally ‘suffer’ from? (This is the time to be brutally honest with yourself)
4. ‘Workplace Incivility’ is comprised of seemingly inconsequential rude or discourteous behaviour, where the intent to harm is ambiguous. Incivility often triggers a spiral effect, whereby those who are subject to it respond with acts of mini-aggression. What spiral effect/s has the RUT Addiction had on your team?
5. As a team, what are three basic principles you would like to live by that will enable you to handle technology in ways that will lead you all to proudly say: “ours is a respectful workplace and team”?
6. What three action steps will you take, collectively and/or individually, to integrate the three principles above into your daily work together?

 For more ideas on creating respectful workplaces or to discuss your training needs, please contact us – we’d love to hear from you.

* Credit for the birth of this acronym is due in large part to Patti and Beth at CAMH

The post Abandon Your RUT Addiction appeared first on Bar David Consulting.

If you have an abrasive leader in your midst, you already know that this person’s harsh interpersonal conduct triggers distress in people and the work environment. And yet, this abrasive leader is likely unaware of the damage that he or she cause and the risks that the behaviour poses — these matters are situated in his or her blind spot. And as long as things remain safely lodged in that blind spot, the person’s behaviour cannot and will not change.

But the abrasive leader is not the only one suffering from Blind Spot Disease. Your organization might be equally guilty of turning a blind eye and committing other ‘sins‘, as well as making persistent mistakes in managing this leader. All these, in turn, enable and entrench the behaviour.

If you’re feeling increasingly discouraged as you read this, please don’t. There’s some good news too.  Once an abrasive leader becomes aware of the effect that his or her behaviour actually has, change is more likely to happen. And once your organization resolves to take a firm stand on the matter, the chances of that change actually happening are exponentially higher.

Take a look: in your own organization, how well do you fair in having in place systems to prevent abrasive behaviour in the first place, or deal with it once it occurs? If you’re not sure, I invite you to assess your organization’s capacity to prevent and address leaders’ harsh interpersonal conduct by checking out our (free) Abrasive Leaders Organizational Actions Checklist. Hopefully, once you complete the tool and take time to reflect on the results, you will emerge confident that as an organization, you are well equipped to deal with any problem behaviour that may emerge. If not, and if you have a specific leader whose interpersonal conduct is of concern, you might want to assess the risks it poses. To do so, visit our Abrasive Leader Risk Assessment tool (also free) - you may find it enlightening.

Whatever you find, if there’s any feedback or insights your like to share (or if your organization needs assistance and would like to explore whether our REAL™ Solutions for Abrasive Leaders could be helpful), please don’t hesitate to stay in touch.

The post Leave Your Sins Behind appeared first on Bar David Consulting.

“We’re like a family” is a sentence I often hear when I facilitate training or consult to organizations that suffer from widespread incivility or even harassment. At the heart of this belief lies the notion that the closeness and caring that characterize family life allow members of the ‘workplace family’ to cross colleagues’ personal boundaries without being hurtful or inappropriate.

Well, here’s a thought: families are deeply flawed entities. They are not idyllic structures imbued with nothing but love and support. In real life, families can cause their members intense pain. And in those work environments that are fraught with incivility (or worse), people use the family analogy as window dressing that permits them to treat each other in destructive ways. The ‘family’ notion sanctions questionable behaviour and stops accountability at the door, in the same way that the phrase “boys will be boys” has enabled schoolyard bullying.

Discussion Questions:

In your team, consider any or all of the following questions:

1.   In what circumstances or situations do we tend to refer to our team or organizational culture as ‘a family’?

Make a list of all the situations where this term is used, either implicitly or explicitly. (For example, do we use it to describe the support we provide to each other during difficult times? Or perhaps we use it when we give each other feedback?)

2.   When we think of our culture as a family, what positive/constructive things are we able to do (individually and as a team)?  What positive/constructive things are we unable to do when thinking of ourselves as a family?

3.   When we think of our culture as a family, what negative/unproductive/destructive things do we do or say (individually and as a team) that we would not otherwise be doing or saying? What negative/unproductive/destructive things are we unable to do when thinking of ourselves as a family?

4.   As a team, which elements of the ‘family’ notion do we want to foster and maintain? Which do we want to leave behind?

5.   What three key actions do we need to take (individually and as a team) over the next two months in order to implement our answer to question #4 about?

For more ideas on creating respectful workplaces or to discuss your training needs, please contact us – we’d love to hear from you.

The post Beware of Family in the Workplace. appeared first on Bar David Consulting.

(published in Canadian HR Reporter Magazine, Feb 11, 2013)

Damaging beliefs that go unchecked will cause major problems to your organization.

What is the common denominator among the following: “Boys will be boys,” “Frank’s rough behaviour is part of his stellar sales record” and “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”?

All three are beliefs that sanction questionable behaviours. Boys will be boys is a time-honoured mantra that enables schoolyard bullying. The notion that a person’s abrasive conduct is crucial to his success permits employers to turn a blind eye to the distress he causes. And the Vegas notion has protected many a wild behaviour from scrutiny — and sanction.

There are several underlying beliefs that cause chronic damage to the work environment. So if you want your workplace culture to deteriorate in a hurry, make sure people hold the following three beliefs near and dear to their hearts — negative results are guaranteed.

‘We’re like a family here’

I hear the “We’re like a family here” most frequently at organizations that suffer widespread incivility. At the heart of this belief lies the notion that the closeness and caring that characterize family life allow employees to freely cross colleagues’ personal boundaries without being hurtful or inappropriate. But families are deeply flawed entities. They are not idyllic structures imbued with nothing but love and support. In real life, families often cause their members intense pain. And in work environments fraught with incivility, people use the family analogy as window dressing that permits them to treat each other rudely, sarcastically or in otherwise destructive ways. The “family” notion stops accountability at the door.

In the workplace, let’s keep the worthy parts of family (connection, support, informality) and decisively weed out the counterproductive parts. From a leadership perspective, practise extra care when you encourage people to think of the workplace as a family. Fostering close bonds amongst employees is laudable and useful. However, touting the family notion will lead to risky terrain in a hurry. It can inadvertently erode people’s sense of safety.

‘I know my colleagues’

People claim that knowing their colleagues’ sensitivities enables them to decipher which lines not to cross. The truth is this belief is used to allow them to say and do things that are offensive, uncivil and sometimes outright prejudiced.

An enduring example of the damaging results of this belief took place during a harassment session I facilitated several years ago at an organization I fondly came to think of as the Wild West. Incivility was rampant, along with many behaviours that would qualify as low-level harassment.

One of the participants in this session, a tiny, spirited female employee, referred in passing to the large-framed male sitting beside her as “fatso.” When I inquired about this, she explained he was her close pal and she had obtained his permission to call him fatso five years earlier, when he first joined the team.

I probed further, asking her whether that name may have made him uncomfortable. She replied that she knew her friend very well and, therefore, she knew exactly which lines not to cross. I decided to seize the moment and turn it into a learning opportunity — I asked the man whether he was comfortable being called fatso. A long pause ensued and then he said: “No, I’m not comfortable at all. In fact, I don’t like it one bit and never did.”

Thinking that you know your colleagues’ sensitivities is an illusion. In fact, you know very little about your fellow co-workers — even those you’ve worked with for many years.

So, when in doubt, cut it out.

‘We have the right to vent’

You may have noticed that people hold onto their right to vent as if it were one of the Ten Commandments. They use it to justify uncensored bad-mouthing of colleagues and managers behind their unsuspecting backs.

Employees and managers alike tell me that venting is a legitimate way to release steam. After all, there’s lots of stress in the workplace and when a colleague does something that’s frustrating or upsetting, the best way to handle it is by going to another colleague to express your authentic frustration. Doing so has a cleansing effect that enables them to return to their work relieved and relaxed.

Here’s my frank response: We are not machines that require the release of steam in order to operate properly. We are living organisms and our actions can cause much distress to fellow living organisms. In the workplace, if you’re frustrated with a colleague, it is incumbent upon you as an adult and professional to handle it in ways that do not involve spreading incivility and hurtful gossip. Need to vent? Do so at home with your husband, dog or friend. Or call your company EAP for professional help.

Prevent collateral damage

Damaging beliefs have a way of creeping up on you. Once they do, they blind your vision and lead you to behaviours that are hurtful and damaging. At your organization or in your team, it is crucial to leverage the human species’ unique capacity to critically examine beliefs. Once you do, you can enhance the quality of your workplace by encouraging people to replace these beliefs with more helpful ones.

CLICK HERE TO OPEN PDF OF PUBLISHED ARTICLE >>

Want to learn more? Have challenges to solve?  
Contact us now for your free, no-commitment consultation.

The post Three Beliefs That Will Sink Your Ship. appeared first on Bar David Consulting.

One thing is certain: people-leaders will inevitably be called upon to deal with respect-related situations.

Whether it is incivility, harassment, bullying, or any other counterproductive behaviour that disrupts the workplace, these respect-related situations are exceedingly challenging to diagnose — and equally difficult to handle successfully.

The stakes are high:  if handled incorrectly, the ramifications can be far-reaching for the leader, for the psychological health of employees, for productivity, talent retention, and morale.

We are thrilled to announce the launch of this unique program, designed specifically to share the golden standard strategies that really work. We know they work because we have tested these ideas over and over in the past decade, with numerous leaders in organizations of all sectors. This program provides the proven tools needed to successfully handle the seven most common respect-related challenges that leaders habitually encounter.

Plus, the program introduces participants to Sharone Bar-David’s proprietary Bad Behaviour @ Work Severity Continuum. This model helps participants confidently and with poise (yes, it can be done!) navigate their way through ambiguous situations and complex realities.

The program is offered in a keynote version and a training version.

Contact us to discuss how this new program can assist you.

The post Bar-David Consulting Launches New Program, “How on Earth Do I Handle This?” appeared first on Bar David Consulting.

(Published in Canadian HR Reporter Magazine, March 14, 2011)

You’ve seen it many times — rude, insensitive and disrespectful behaviour by colleagues or managers. It has an eroding effect on individuals, teams and organizations. It hurts commitment and leads to decreased work effort and performance. Classic incivility behaviours include gossip, social exclusion, dismissive body language such as eye-rolling, berating others in public and skipping basic social niceties such as saying, “Hello.”

Incivility flies under the organizational radar — it is strongly felt but rarely addressed. When it’s allowed to persist without organizational intervention, it creates the impression no one cares and, over time, becomes embedded in the culture. It’s also accompanied by a rise in harassment and bullying, stress levels and absenteeism and disruptions in customer service.

Here are some ideas for successfully tackling incivility:

Have the vision. Before acting, become clear about why you want to tackle incivility and how, specifically, it will happen. Without this determination, don’t even bother, because changing the prevailing culture will require significant resolve and focus.

Leverage the values. If the organization’s values include ones that are relevant, such as respect and community, figure out how to leverage these in everything you do.

United we stand. Every leader within an organization needs to be on the same page. Without a uniform approach, courageous leaders who do take action could face isolation and resistance.

Model or else. Leaders from the top-down need to demonstrate the very behaviours employees will be required to follow. 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.

Separate personality from behaviour. True, people’s personalities can’t be directed but an organization has both the right and responsibility to require people to be civil. People can be obnoxious or abrasive in their private lives, not at work.

Rethink the code of conduct. Formal policies are limited in their ability to create civil workplaces. Incivility is ambiguous and hard to pinpoint. Therefore, policies that attempt to prescribe body gestures, social inclusion and the like are bound to be ineffective. A comprehensive civility strategy requires an organization to update its code of conduct to reflect its expectations and commitment.

Create team charters. Every work unit should commit to terms established in its own team charter, in which people together decide how they want to treat each other. It’s crucial to revisit and revise these team charters on a regular basis to ensure they are living, breathing documents.

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. Have teams commit to working on one specific civil behaviour for one week or one month, then discuss it, learn from it and decide on the behaviour to practise next — then repeat the cycle.

Dedicate the time. Making the change will require time and intensity. Don’t let this become yet one more project that launches with a splash and ends with a whimper. Allot time and resources in advance and assume the initiative will take more effort than originally planned.

Partner with the union. In unionized environments, bring the union on board. Together, the chances of creating lasting change are exponentially better.

See it, name it, act on it. Leaders need to promptly call people on uncivil behaviours. This requires two distinct skills — the ability to accurately diagnose incivil behaviour and the courage to comment on it, sometimes even in public.

Embed incivility into organizational processes. References to incivility should be woven into all organizational processes, beginning with pre-boarding and onboarding, through performance appraisals, ongoing supervisory conversations, salary discussions, 360-degree feedback and exit interviews.

Provide training. Provide both leaders and employees with civility-specific training. Leaders will need to learn how to model it themselves and how to call people on their behaviour. Employees will benefit from learning how to contribute to the creation of a civil environment, where everyone is free to perform at their best.

Measure. Measure how the changes show up in various organizational indicators. In terms of employees, is there 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. Look for higher rates of customer satisfaction.

Broken window theory is a criminological theory that helped reduce crime in neighbourhoods across North America. It asserts when a neighbourhood window is broken, you had better fix it swiftly, otherwise, crime rates in the neighbourhood will rise, simply because people assume no one cares. Applying this theory to workplace incivility means actively keeping incivility at bay to protect an organization from more serious risks, as well as from the effects of incivility itself.

CLICK HERE TO OPEN PDF OF PUBLISHED ARTICLE >>

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