Solution-Building™: The Rules, Part 5

At the end of the last entry in this series, I said we would look at how we implement:

Guideline Number 3:
Treat everyone in the group with courtesy and respect.

Like any such principle that involves finding a way to help people change basic behaviors, this can be a challenge. Let’s explore some possible approaches.

Most organizations I am aware of will make a claim of promoting an atmosphere of courteous and respectful behavior and have policies in place about such behavior in the workplace. They mean it, too. Research (I mentioned Christine Porath’s work recently) has shown that a workplace in which incivility–among other types of interpersonal stressors– is an issue, experiences lower morale and overall productivity. Unfortunately,  such parameters are difficult to assess since there is generally little data within any one organization for comparison. Assuming someone would actually think, or want, to try to make that comparison. 

In fact–again from my experience–this official policy seems mostly unenforced. For many reasons, it seems employees rarely file complaints, especially against someone senior to them. This is reasonable since there is a legitimate concern about retribution for complaints, despite concurrent anti-retribution policies in place in many companies. 

Sexual harassment in the workplace has been much in the news of late but rarely do we hear of the harassment of discourteous and disrespectful behavior. I am not saying or implying that such behavior is more important or worse than sexual misconduct. I do, however, believe it is more widespread and that sexual harassment/misconduct is part of the overall picture of discourteous and disrespectful behaviors. It contributes to an atmosphere of distrust that makes it difficult for employees to work together. 

So how do we deal with this? 

In the working group, the chair has to take a strong position that any such behaviors will not be tolerated and be prepared to challenge them when and if they arise. In fact, ideally all members of the group need to agree to this. The chair also needs to have the ability to recognize the difference between legitimate disagreement about a topic, which can sometimes become heated without turning nasty, and truly discourteous exchanges. She also needs to watch for the point at which the somewhat blurry line between disagreement and discourtesy is crossed and take appropriate action.

To a great extent, the success of this effort to improve decision-making and both morale and productivity through maintaining an atmosphere of courtesy and respect needs to come from the top of an organization. Employees naturally follow the lead of the senior management team as well as their immediate supervisors. The best way to assure that standards of courtesy and respect are followed is for these senior managers to display them at all times. They need to make it very clear that the policies around such behaviors are to be followed and that repeated violations will result in consequences to the violators. 

This may not be easy given that many senior managers have risen to their positions in the very work climate that I am describing: discourteous and disrespectful; an atmosphere in which each individual competes with others for recognition and promotion, an atmosphere in which the scramble to the top is what is important and looking better than others seems to be more important than actually generating better results. 

While this may be a bit of an overstatement, it is the way it seems from the outside and from my own direct observation and experience in both large and small companies. It seems to be something we can call by a name borrowed from physics: the standard model. In order for Solution-Building to work for the best results, that model needs to be reevaluated. 

When a person rises into the senior management ranks, he (or she) becomes responsible for much more than his own rise to authority. His behavior affects many more than just those in his immediate department and becomes a model for many other to emulate. If he is rude and uncivil, others will feel they have permission to do the same. After all, he rose in the ranks that way, didn’t he? Of course, not everyone is ambitious and wants to rise; there are many who simply want to do a good job and receive what they consider a sufficient paycheck. However their behavior on the job reflects in many ways that of the senior managers. It is also affected by such behavior, as the research shows: the likelihood of lower morale and reduced productivity, absenteeism, fewer hours actually spent working, etc. 

Uncivil behavior can take many forms, including the obvious things we have discussed (insults, blamethrowing, gossip, backbiting, sexual harassment, and others) as well as things like overuse of strong language and engaging in unexpected and unpredictable actions. All of these and more have a dampening effect on employees, especially when demonstrated by managers. I have worked in a couple of small companies in which it was hard to hear as much as a sentence that did not contain multiple repetitions of the f-bomb, which was pretty useless as a communication tool as well as indicative of a rather limited lexicon. That wasn’t the only term that mere decades ago was considered inappropriate, either. Such language is still offensive to many, especially when it seems to be a sole mode of expression. All of these behaviors contribute towards the negative effects of uncivil behavior discussed earlier.

What to do about this? 

Courtesy and respect can be demanded in small groups if (and maybe only if) the leaders of these small groups are given, or take, sufficient authority to make it a part of the decision-making process.

But it also requires support from senior managers. This may well require that the research I wrote about in the previous column be studied by those senior managers as well as everyone else in a company. This could be the first step but it will also require that managers and employees adopt civility as a part of their work behavior. I suspect that although both groups need to endorse and express the behavior, it may be more likely to be successful if started from the bottom and move up.

Next: Guideline number 4.