“Work as a Team to Remove the Cookies” – Create Engagement by Discouraging Incivility

We have a problem with incivility in our country. We even hear the President of the United States appealing for it from Congress and from the public while conducting political debates.

A 2011 study by Blessing and White (a management consulting company) reports only 31% of employees are engaged. Employees who are not engaged or especially those who are actively disengaged will have a higher likelihood of exhibiting inappropriate or uncivil behaviors. This means that 69% of the employees in the average organization might exhibit discourteous behaviors.

A University of Michigan researcher (Lilia Cortina and her colleagues from two other universities) found that 71 percent of workers (1,100 surveyed) had experienced workplace incivility in the previous five years. The incivility was from coworkers and superiors.

The problem of incivility in the workplace is compounded by our tolerance of it. We teach what we allow and we are allowing it more and more. We need to change this. What do we do?

Like most of you I wanted to lose a few pounds. My first strategy was to eliminate all sweets. This is a huge challenge for me for a number of reasons including my wonderful wife is a great cook and she is Italian. These two factors combine into a large family with lots of birthdays and anniversaries and she shows her appreciation and love for family members by baking.

The very first morning of my new “diet” my wife made two dozen chocolate chip cookies. The smell filled the house. They are my favorite. Do you think I broke my diet pledge? You bet I did. I asked, “What harm could one cookie cause?” I ended up eating four.

Which strategy will work best to help me lose some weight? Take a seminar on how to be more disciplined or remove the cookies from the house? Improving discipline is always useful to ensure better behavior but removing the cookies is the most effective strategy.

Which is the best strategy for leaders who wish to remove incivility from the workplace? Should leaders continue to try to change the individuals who demonstrate incivility or should they remove the real root causes of the outbursts and frustrations?

How does incivility play out in the work place? How do it manifest? In my experience rude behaviors most often occurs because someone is upset that they can’t do their job with pride. It is not because the person was born a jerk. Everyone gets frustrated and some of us behave poorly. They act out. They say things they regret. They damage relationships. All they really wanted was to be able to do their job to the best of their ability but something got in the way. Something triggered a negative reaction.

One of my clients has an employee who is demanding and a high driver. He easily confronts people and often offends them because he is so demanding and wants to look good. He wants to do the best for his clients. His co-workers get offended. Certainly, his style is rough and some even say it’s obnoxious. Yet, he is not purposefully mean. He is driven to perform and he has little patience for what he calls “incompetence” of others. He defines incompetence as events when he doesn’t get the information he needs to do his job or when he can’t provide the very best service for his clients. His style stinks. His motivations and intentions are good. His communication method is damaging. His motivation to provide quality service is strong.

What should a manager do with this person? Sure, improvements in his communication will help. Coaching will help. But is the real root cause of his incivility communication style? Or, is the real root-cause poor hand offs of information within the processes that fail to deliver the information he needs?

The poor performing processes and the poor hand offs are the chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen. If the cookies weren’t in the kitchen I would not have broken my diet. If the hand off of information was optimal, there is no reason to misbehave. Which is better? Remove the reason or improve his style? This is the choice leaders must make. If you keep the dysfunctional processes and incomplete hand offs there will always be a high probability of incivility.

The answer of course is both. I just find it useful for everyone in the organization to work as a team to remove the real root causes of the dysfunction. I find it most useful for everyone to get the “cookies out of the kitchen.” Any effort to reduce poor behaviors in the workplace must include a two pronged approach. Help with coaching for improved communication style but remove the root causes. We need both to protect the motivation and engagement of employees.