Many of you have told me over the years that swearing on the job is one of the best stress-alleviating methods. Well, now you can find solid support for your position in new research that shows that swearing does help alleviate pain.

Scientists from Britain’s Keele University had student volunteers place their hands in a bucket of ice-cold water while swearing repeatedly. They then repeated the exercise using a harmless phrase instead. Turns out subjects were able to keep their hands submerged in the icy water for longer when repeating the swear word.

So should we indeed accept and maybe even encourage swearing in the workplace as a legitimate tool for dealing with those days when you really do need effective relief from all that craziness?

Well, here’s the problem: while you might enjoy a healthy dose of stress-alleviation when you utter those juicy swear words, your actions might be causing pain for those around you. They might find it stressful, offensive and poisonous. It will likely interfere with their concentration and performance.

In that balancing act that every organization has to do between its people’s `freedom to’ (i.e. your freedom to express yourself) and the `freedom from’ (i.e. someone else’s freedom to perform at their best and be shielded from offensive disruption), the `freedom from’  will always trump the `freedom to’.

So what about the benefits swearing? Well, you can always utter profanities and shake your fists in the air in the privacy of your car or home. At work, you’re better off using other stress-reducing practices.

We’re here to help, anytime.

Last time, we looked at all the not-so-effective ways for dealing with an incivil boss.
So what does work? Well, my advice is probably similar to what your grandmother could have told you:

• Muster the courage to speak up constructively (the boss is probably not even aware of the impact of her behaviour).
• Set clear boundaries, gradually and gracefully.
• Take good care of yourself, because when all is said and done, you are all that you’ve got.
• Replace your habitual Velcro with a Teflon-inspired existence so that you can allow things to slide right off you.
• Remain mentally in your own business rather than meddling in theirs.
• Remind yourself that this is just a job, it does not define you.
• Take the issue to someone who has potential influence, because there’s a good chance that with a bit of competent coaching this boss’s behaviour can be turned around.

But what if, you may ask, despite your best efforts, nothing changes?

Well, then, it’s time to polish the dust off your résumé and go find a better workplace, where you can safely park your talent, body and soul.

We’re here to help, anytime.

If you are managing someone who is an abrasive leader, or if you are a manager who was told that you are abrasive – we are always here to help with a (free) perspective or input. 

So what if it’s the boss who is the uncivil one?

Well, here are the top eight, time-honoured mistakes you may want to make if you wish to embark on a journey into self-induced misery:

1. Get even, give them some of their own medicine. They shot your idea down?  Shoot theirs right down too when they’re not around to notice. No hellos? Ignore them right back whenever possible. If you follow this eye-for-an-eye method, you’re certainly well within what researchers have found: incivility tends to be followed by retaliatory mini-aggression, which then spirals into increasingly intense aggressive behaviours.
2. Nurture your Velcro-like self. Take everything the boss does to heart, run every interaction over and over in your mind, never letting go, forgetting or forgiving. Keep yourself mentally in his business (what he does or says) instead of sticking to your own business (i.e. the things you actually happen to have control over).
3. Chain yourself to your seat. Persuade yourself that you have no options, or that you are not marketable, or that you’ll never find such a good benefit package elsewhere. This will make you stay in the job long after you should have left.
4. Get an ulcer. Allow the stress to get to you. Ignore those tight neck and shoulder muscles, the sleepless nights, the weight gain, irritability and pounding headaches.  You may also need to go on stress leave if things are bad enough.
5. Keep mum. Don’t speak up, don’t ask for change, be fearful of the consequences. Let the situation – and your resentments – continue to fester.
6. Have an all-out outburst. When you’ve had finally enough of the situation, give the boss (or someone else in power) a piece of your mind. A highly irritated voice, an angry tone or a victim stance can be particularly useful in leading you nowhere in a hurry. But hey, at least you’ll have that smug sense that you finally stood up for yourself.
7. Avoid organizational channels that could actually help. Persuade yourself that organizational channels that may have the potential to change the situation are going to be totally ineffective in your case. After all, your boss has so much clout! Continue to stew in your misery and lovingly nurture your victim position.
8. Inform all your friends and family how terrible your boss and the company are. Rather than speak up directly or use appropriate organizational channels, launch your personal ad campaign. Tell everyone about your suffering and make sure to give both the boss and your company a bad name wherever possible. Good places to do so are movie line-ups, social gatherings and of course your doctor’s waiting room, where you’ll be spending lots of time anyway due to your recurring stress symptoms.  Research suggests most people who experience incivility at work employ this very strategy.

The above tactics are very popular indeed. But as you may have noticed, they all lead to dead ends.

What should you do instead? Stay tuned….

Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or to ask about our services.

If you are managing someone who is an abrasive leader, or if you are a manager who was told that you are abrasive – we are always here to help with a (free) perspective or input. 

Ok, so you’re working with the incivil Mirella or Rick. And maybe there’s lots of other incivility hot spots in your workplace.

If you’re a front line employee working in an incivility-saturated workplace with little ability to influence, I’d suggest you polish your CV and take your talent elsewhere.

But if you happen to be a leader with some influence, or an HR or OD professional with some clout, following are a dozen things you can do. (you can find additional details in an article I just published in the HR Reporter magazine. Also, a summary of the previous four blog entries in the form of an HR Reporter article .Feel free to pass it on!)

1. Before acting, `get the vision’ — become clear on why and how you’ll tackle the problem.
2. Get all your leaders on board, reading from the same page.
3. Allot time and resources in advance, and assume it will take more effort than originally planned for.
4. Rethink your code of conduct and any other relevant policies.
5. Partner with the union – – together, your chances of creating lasting change are exponentially better.
6. Get leaders to model the behaviours you want to instill.
7. Separate ‘personality’ from ‘behaviour’ — people with obnoxious or abrasive personalities can set them free in their private lives. But in the workplace, it’s about courtesy, politeness and consideration.
8. Create Team Charters, allowing people to define together how they want to treat each other.
9. Make incivility a topic of conversation and debate, both formally and informally.
10. Embed incivility into organizational processes, from on-boarding right up to exit interviews.
11. Provide both leaders and employees with civility-specific training, so that people at all organizational echelons possess hard-core skills for preventing and tackling incivility.
12. Measure how the changes you’ve made show up in various organizational indicators.

Need help with challenges in your organization? Don’t hesitate to contact us. 

From a preventative perspective, the problem with incivility is that you cannot create effective organizational polices that will stop it from happening. A code of conduct requiring people to greet colleagues with a sunny `hello’ or avoid eye rolling would undoubtedly raise some eyebrows, and would be impossible to enforce.

And yet, if allowed to go unchecked, incivility can lead to the damaging results that Pearson and Porath have tracked. And you’re bound to see an increase in more serious undesirable behaviours, including harassment and bullying.

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll readily recognize that you too have been incivil, albeit unintentionally. Anyone of us may have excluded someone, engaged in gossip or used dismissive body language. Therefore, the place to begin is by looking at ourselves, reflecting on the possible effects of our actions, apologizing to the persons involved, cleaning the slate.

That still leaves us with two challenges: first, what to do if Mirella or Rick happen to be the person in the next cubicle, or your manager? Second, from an organizational perspective, how does one prevent and tackle incivility?

See you next week!

Need help with challenges in your organization? Don’t hesitate to contact us.

Mirella and Rick, with their rude behaviour, eye rolling and public humiliation, are no different than New York’s fare invaders and public drinkers. Their conduct breaks down basic norms of civility and courtesy.

These behaviours have been coined `workplace incivility’ and have in the past decade been the subject of intriguing research. Researches Christine Pearson and Christine Porath polled several thousand managers and employees from a diverse range of U.S. and Canadian companies about their responses to rudeness at work. They found that these behaviours have significant effects on individuals, teams and organizations. They report that “targets of bad behaviour get angry, frustrated, even vengeful. Job satisfaction falls, performance plummets and some employees leave”. Of those who stay,

• 48% of people affected by incivility decreased their work effort,
• 47% decreased their time at work, and 38% decreased their work quality,
• 66% said their performance declined,
• 63% lost time avoiding the offender, while 80% lost work time worrying about the incident,
• And – get this! – 78% said their commitment to the organization declined!

None of this, of course, is good news for the organization. And yet, incivility is alive and well in every workplace. In the course of my work with a wide cross-section of organizations I’ve conducted my own informal polling, which confirms that incivility is rampant; there is not one workplace where people are not intimately familiar with its manifestations and effects.

The fact that the Mirellas and Ricks of our world may not necessarily be doing this intentionally, or the fact that it is their `personality’ that causes them to behave in these ways, does not make it less of a threat to the organizational fabric.

And it certainly doesn’t make it easier for those folks who have to work alongside these people day in and day out and are at a loss as to how to handle their behaviour!

So what can be done? Stay tuned….

Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or to ask about our services.

What if vandals broke a window in one of your neighbourhood buildings, and it took ages before it was fixed? And what on earth, you may wonder, does this have to do with Mirella and Rick, whom you met on this blog last week?

Well, Broken Window Theory is a criminological theory adopted by New York’s mayor Rudy Giuliani in his quest to create better quality of life for New Yorkers, who were plagued by rampant crime in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  Simply put, the theory stipulates that if a neighbourhood building’s window is broken, it needs to be fixed immediately. If not, people will assume that no one cares, and, over time, crime rates in the neighbourhood will rise due to a shift in people’s perception of the prevailing social order.

Giuliani began enforcing the law against a range of seemingly minor infractions, all of which until that time had been considered inevitable irritants associated with life in a big city. The police began tackling subway fare evaders, public drinkers, urinators, and “squeegee men”. Over the next decade, New York experienced a sharp decline in crime rates that was attributed to the city’s new policy of Broken-Windows Policing. Following Giuliani’s success, Broken Window Theory was implemented in other communities, with similar results.

Can you guess how this theory might be relevant to Mirella and Rick?

Stay tuned….

Need help with challenges in your organization? Don’t hesitate to contact us. 

Mirella has one of those thorny personalities that make people go out of their way to avoid interactions with her, on a work-related basis or otherwise. Grumpy and moody, she’ll give people the `silent treatment’ for no apparent reason. Her morning greetings are reserved for a select few, while others are noticeably excluded. On occasion, she’ll announce, “don’t bug me or ask me for anything today, I’m in a crappy mood”.  Her eye rolling habits are legendary. And she is a malicious gossiper and rumour monger.

In another department, Rick the supervisor has accumulated some bad habits of his own. He berates employees in public for the pettiest reasons. He is notorious for curtly shooting down any idea that doesn’t meet his approval, and doesn’t hesitate to claim credit for other people’s work. Much like Mirella, Rick can walk by people as if they didn’t exist. And he sees nothing wrong with barging into meetings unannounced, without  the faintest apology.

Chances are that you’ve encountered these types of behaviours and seen how taxing they can be on a work environment.  And chances also are that you felt helpless in dealing with them despite a nagging feeling that there’s something fundamentally wrong with this picture. It all seems so slippery and ambiguous and it’s easier to just do nothing.

Stay tuned for the next few blog entries (they’ll come to you once a week or so), where I’ll share with you some of the dilemmas, intriguing research and solutions for such situations!

(PS the following came in from one of you right after this blog was published: “I can’t wait for the conclusion for this one. I work with Mirella –  she is actually a combination of Rick and Mirella”.)

Feel free to contact me anytime. 

If you are managing someone who is an abrasive leader, or if you are a manager who was told that you are abrasive – we are always here to help with a (free) perspective or input.