IT’S NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL. OR IS IT?
Small things.
Over time.
Can become.
Big things.
Notice anything funny about the list in the image above? It’s the periods at the end. of. every. bullet. in. a. bulleted. list. And it’s a real rule I encountered when I did a research project inside a large research and development organization. One of the strangest things I heard, and I heard it several times, was that periods had to be placed at the end of every bullet in a list. No regard for whether or not the bullets were actually sentences, or if it made sense, it was just required.
Hearing this made me say, “tell me more!” Remember, I’m a social scientist. I saw the logical answer; that this organization had a compulsive drive for high quality work. Being a research organization, it was understandable. They dealt with lots of data and ensuring consistency and attention to detail was critical. This was the story that leadership told themselves and others.
While the story management told themselves was true in one way, this peculiarity actually pointed to something deeper that was very clear to those lower in the organization. Somewhere along the way, a director had been chided in a meeting for a typo on a slide he was presenting. The director used a period on one bullet but not another. Another time, miscommunication happened because a group presented the director’s preliminary findings as final. The experiences of these managers were brought back to the teams they managed in the form of well-meaning rules requiring multiple layers of proofreading and approvals before anything was shared outside the group.
Idea sharing in the organization came to a dead stop. Stovepipes around functional areas were reinforced. Fear and bureaucracy flourished.
These issues were basically the unintended consequences of what could be chalked up to “bad manners” by leadership. In organizational research it’s called incivility; “rude, condescending and ostracizing acts that violate workplace norms of respect, but otherwise appear mundane”(1). Uncivil acts appear mundane and that’s the problem. Research reveals that uncivil acts disproportionately affect people from underrepresented groups and contribute to lower job satisfaction, more health issues, absenteeism and turnover for everyone.
Here’s a list of behaviors you’ve probably experienced, seen (or, let’s be honest, done) at work (or home) recently.
Put someone down or was condescending
Paid little attention to someone’s opinions
Made rude comments about someone
Ignored or excluded someone
Made jokes at someone’s expense
Yelled, shouted, interrupted, or swore at someone
Let’s practice recognizing and redirecting incivility. Period.
P.s. If you’re a nerd like us and you want to read the real stuff and challenges to it, here’s one of the references. Email us if you want more!
1: Researching Rudeness: The Past, Present and Future of the Science of Incivility by Cortina, Kabat-Farr, Magley and Nelson, 2017