Insulted by Incivility

According to the 2012 U.S. Agency For International Development Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey Results more than 70% of federal employees feel that under-performers are not being managed effectively.   When asked to respond to the statement “in my work unit, steps are taken to deal with a poor performer who cannot or will not improve” only 27.9% responded positively.

Underachievers in any system can be a challenge, and even more so in highly regulated and unionized environments.  Is it simply that privacy issues preclude the disclosure of corrective or disciplinary actions, or have we created a culture where it is safer to avoid the hassle of dealing with the problem directly?  The price paid is not simply an unfair distribution of the workload; many problem employees are not just under-producing they are un-pleasant.

The January-February issue of the Harvard Business Review quantifies the cost of brutish employees in The Price of Incivility.   Among the many alarming results of their 14 year study authors Christine Porath and Christine Pearson found that abusive behavior reduces work time and effort by almost 50%.   The most frightening aspect is not the frequency of inconsiderate behavior (half of those interviewed said they were treated rudely a least once a week) but the pervasiveness.  We not only vividly remember being disrespected, we tend to generalize those experiences to other members within the group.  One bad customer experience can shape the perception of an entire organization; and the story of one mistreated employee can taint the reputation of an entire workplace.

Imagining that underperformers are purely the responsibility of managers is to underestimate the impact that our fellow team members have over their peers.  We are evolutionarily hard wired to be sensitive to the social standards established in our environment.    There are a portion of these underperformers who lack aptitude and others who would benefit from additional training; but the vast majority of abusers are not just under-skilled but uninspired.

There are no quick fixes, easy solutions or smoking guns in this problem.  No one is faultless and no one is entirely at fault either.  Some of the most talented, committed and inspired people I know work within government systems.   I have also met some absolutely frightening employees that seem to feel they are not just entitled but morally obligated to make the lives of others (especially management) as difficult as possible.  There are also managers who earn discontent by treating their employees like mindless robots.   But in virtually every case these are not people problems but process problems.   Blaming people does not improve the problem – changing process does.  This process is not found in manuals but displayed in the cultural expectations we place on each other.  Changing the culture begins with changing awareness.

Ideas in Action:  Dealing with discourtesy can be broken down into those who are deliberately disruptive and those simply unaware.

Today I will address Unconscious Incivility:

Understanding the emotional impact our behaviors have on others is not something we are all born with.  Some are gifted with strong empathetic skills but fortunately for the rest of us EQ can be learned.  Proven to be one of the most important skills we bring to the workplace, EQ is found in 90% of all top performers, while the same quality is only present in 20% of those performing at the lower end of the spectrum.  EQ is also the only one of our three core characteristics (the other two being personality and IQ) that improves with education.[i]

Increasing EQ is a process of changing our mental circuitry by becoming more aware of and comfortable with our emotions.  The challenge is that we often lack the language to adequately express our emotions.  The solution can be found in hospitals where instead of asking patients to communicate their pain level in words, they use pictures.

In the world of our emotions words are evolutionary newcomers. Illustrations communicate more effectively than words and are a key to increasing emotional awareness.  Applying this same processes to the workplace, imagine what you would learn from a guided discussion about this single illustration (right).

Who are the de-energizers in your organization?

Is there some policy or cultural norm that is sucking the energy out of your team?

Don’t feel like you are up to an open discussion?  What would you learn if you used this image as part of a caption contest?

Curbing incivility does not require a direct assault but simply a culture aware that
peak performance is a process powered by peers not policies.