Why being respectful to your coworkers is good for business | Christine Porath

Summary

The transcript highlights the profound impact of civility on professional success and personal well-being. It underscores how respectful, considerate actions uplift others and enhance performance, while incivility can lead to stress, decreased motivation, and errors. Through research and examples, it demonstrates that civility in leadership fosters better engagement, health, and productivity. The message is clear: treating others with respect and kindness not only benefits individuals but also boosts organizational performance, creating a positive, effective work environment.

Takeaways

• 🤔 The question 'Who do you want to be?' is pivotal in defining one's professional success as it influences how one interacts with others.
• 🙌 Respecting and valuing others through one's actions can either uplift or demoralize them, significantly impacting the work environment.
• 😡 Incivility, which includes disrespect or rudeness, can manifest in various behaviors and is subjective to the individual experiencing it.
• 🏥 The speaker's personal experience with a father affected by work-related stress highlights the real-life consequences of incivility.
• 🎓 The speaker's academic exploration into the effects of incivility on performance and well-being was initiated by personal encounters with a rude work environment.
• 📊 Research findings indicate that incivility can lead to reduced motivation, increased worry, and even job loss among affected individuals.
• 📉 Incivility is costly for organizations, with Cisco estimating a loss of $12 million annually due to uncivil behavior.
• 👀 Witnessing incivility can also negatively impact performance, suggesting that the effects of rudeness are contagious.
• 🧠 Even exposure to rude words can impair attention and decision-making, emphasizing the pervasive influence of incivility.
• 🚑 The impact of incivility extends to critical fields like healthcare, where it can lead to fatal mistakes due to decreased team performance.
• 🤯 Despite the evident costs, incivility persists due to stress and misconceptions about the perceived benefits of being uncivil or abrasive.
• 🏆 Long-term success is not attributed to uncivil behavior; in fact, it is often the downfall of executives, as shown by research.
• 🌟 Civility pays off, as it fosters leadership qualities and is linked to better performance and being viewed as warm and competent.
• 💡 Small acts of civility, such as smiling, listening, and acknowledging others, can significantly improve interpersonal dynamics and organizational outcomes.
• 📝 The story of Campbell's Soup Company's turnaround under CEO Doug Conant illustrates the transformative power of civility and respect in the workplace.
• 🌐 Civility is a choice that can be practiced in all aspects of life, from work to home and online, to create a more positive and productive environment.

Q & A

What is the main question addressed in the script?

The main question addressed is 'Who do you want to be?' and how this question influences professional success through daily actions and interactions with others.

How does the script define incivility?

Incivility is defined as disrespect or rudeness, including behaviors like mocking, belittling, teasing, telling offensive jokes, and texting during meetings.

What were the key findings from the study on incivility conducted by the speaker?

The study found that incivility leads to decreased motivation (66% reduced work efforts), lost time worrying (80%), and employee turnover (12%). Additionally, witnesses to incivility also experienced decreased performance.

What impact did incivility have on a biotechnology firm, according to the script?

In a biotechnology firm, employees who were seen as civil were twice as likely to be viewed as leaders and performed significantly better.

What example does the script provide to illustrate the severe consequences of incivility in a medical setting?

The script describes a situation where a doctor shouted at a medical team, leading to a wrong medication dosage being administered, resulting in a patient's death.

Why do some people believe incivility persists in the workplace?

People believe incivility persists due to stress and the concern that being civil or nice may make them appear less leader-like or effective.

What research findings does the script mention regarding the long-term success of uncivil individuals?

Research by Morgan McCall and Michael Lombardo found that the number one reason for executive failure was an insensitive, abrasive, or bullying style. While some uncivil people may succeed temporarily, they often sabotage their success in the long run.

How does civility affect an individual's perception in the workplace?

Civility leads to individuals being seen as warm and competent, friendly and smart, which enhances their likelihood of being viewed as leaders and performing better.

What simple actions can make a big difference in promoting civility, according to the script?

Simple actions like thanking people, sharing credit, listening attentively, asking questions humbly, acknowledging others, and smiling can significantly promote civility.

How did Doug Conant turn around the performance of Campbell's Soup Company?

Doug Conant focused on high performance standards combined with civility. He led by example, handwrote over 30,000 thank-you notes, and emphasized the importance of daily respectful interactions (touch points) with employees.

Outlines

00:00

🤔 The Importance of Civility in Professional Success

The script discusses the significant impact of daily actions on professional success, highlighting the choice between treating others with respect or disrespect. It introduces the concept of incivility, including behaviors such as mocking, belittling, and texting in meetings, and emphasizes the consequences of making others feel disrespected.

05:02

🏥 Personal Experience and Early Research on Incivility

The author shares a personal story about their father's work-related stress caused by an uncivil boss and their own experience with incivility in their first job. This led them to study the effects of incivility, resulting in a study that revealed significant negative impacts on motivation, time, and job retention.

10:03

👩‍🔬 Investigating the Broader Impact of Incivility

Further research is described, showing that witnessing incivility also decreases performance. Experiments demonstrated that even exposure to rude words can impair attention and decision-making. The script highlights a tragic example in a medical setting where incivility led to a fatal error, emphasizing that incivility affects performance across various industries.

15:05

🌐 The Spread and Cost of Incivility

The spread of incivility is compared to a contagious bug, affecting emotions, motivation, performance, and interactions in various settings. The script details how incivility in medical teams led to poorer performance and communication. Despite its costs, stress and misconceptions about leadership lead to its persistence.

🚫 The Fallacy of Incivility as a Leadership Trait

Research by Morgan McCall and Michael Lombardo is cited, showing that insensitive and bullying behavior often leads to executive failure. While some uncivil individuals may succeed temporarily, civility ultimately pays off. Being civil includes small actions like smiling and listening, and it is linked to better leadership and performance.

💡 Civility as a Key Leadership Trait

Data from over 20,000 employees shows that respect is the most desired trait in leaders, surpassing recognition and opportunities for learning. The script outlines simple actions to foster civility, such as thanking people and acknowledging others, which can significantly improve organizational performance and employee engagement.

🏆 Case Studies on Civility in Leadership

The script shares examples of successful leaders like Patrick Quinlan and Doug Conant, who implemented small acts of civility to transform their organizations. Doug's handwritten thank-you notes and personal interactions significantly improved employee engagement and company performance, demonstrating the tangible benefits of civility.

✨ Conclusion: The Power of Civility

The script concludes with a call to action, encouraging individuals to choose civility in every interaction. It emphasizes that civility enhances productivity, creativity, happiness, and health, urging everyone to contribute to spreading civility in various spheres of life.

Keywords

💡Incivility

Incivility refers to disrespectful or rude behavior that includes mocking, belittling, teasing, offensive jokes, or texting in meetings. In the video, the speaker studies the effects of incivility on people, showing how it can lead to significant negative consequences like reduced motivation, performance issues, and even increased aggression.

💡Respect

Respect involves treating others with consideration and valuing their contributions. The video highlights that being treated with respect is crucial for employees, more so than recognition or feedback. Respect leads to better health, focus, engagement, and retention in the workplace.

💡Performance

Performance refers to how well an individual executes their tasks and duties. The video shows that incivility negatively impacts performance, with affected individuals cutting back work efforts, losing time, and making more errors. Conversely, civility boosts performance by creating a positive work environment.

💡Contagious

Contagious describes how behaviors and emotions can spread from person to person. In the video, incivility is described as a contagious bug, where exposure to rude behavior can negatively influence witnesses' performance and spread to others, affecting overall workplace dynamics.

💡Civility

Civility is the practice of showing respect and politeness towards others. The video argues that civility pays off by enhancing performance, leadership perception, and workplace environment. Small acts like saying hello, listening attentively, and sharing credit contribute to a civil atmosphere.

💡Work-related stress

Work-related stress refers to the physical and emotional strain caused by workplace conditions. The video recounts the speaker's personal experience with her father's stress due to an uncivil boss, leading to severe health issues. It illustrates how incivility contributes significantly to workplace stress.

💡Leadership

Leadership is the ability to guide and influence others. The video discusses how civility is a critical trait for leaders, as it fosters respect and high performance among employees. Civil leaders are seen as both warm and competent, and their respectful behavior can drive organizational success.

💡Motivation

Motivation is the drive to achieve goals and perform tasks effectively. The video shows that incivility diminishes motivation, with a majority of people cutting back on their work efforts when treated disrespectfully. Conversely, respectful treatment boosts motivation and engagement.

💡Touch points

Touch points refer to daily interactions between leaders and employees. The video emphasizes their importance, noting that handling these moments with civility can make employees feel valued and respected. Effective leaders like Doug Conant used touch points to transform organizational culture.

💡Radical candor

Radical candor is a communication approach where one cares personally and challenges directly. The video suggests that civility includes giving negative feedback with respect, and radical candor exemplifies how leaders can maintain high standards while being kind and respectful.

Highlights

How you treat people defines your professional success more than any other factor.

Incivility includes behaviors like mocking, belittling, teasing, and texting in meetings.

Incivility can lead to serious work-related stress and health issues, as seen in the speaker's father's experience.

Studies show that incivility significantly reduces motivation and performance, with 66% cutting back work efforts and 12% leaving their jobs.

Cisco estimated that incivility was costing them $12 million annually.

Even witnesses to incivility experience decreased performance.

Incivility is contagious and can spread in any environment, including workplaces, schools, and online.

Exposure to rude words can affect cognitive functions, leading to longer decision times and more errors.

Incivility in medical settings can lead to life-threatening mistakes, as seen in the case of a medical team giving the wrong medication dosage.

Stress and the fear of appearing weak or less leader-like are primary reasons for incivility.

Research shows that insensitive, abrasive, or bullying leadership styles are the top reasons for executive failure.

Civility increases leadership perception and performance; those seen as civil are twice as likely to be viewed as leaders.

Respect is the most important quality employees want from their leaders, more than recognition or feedback.

Small acts of civility, like thanking people and listening attentively, can have significant positive impacts.

Doug Conant turned around Campbell's Soup Company by implementing civility and writing over 30,000 thank-you notes to employees.

Civility leads to more productive, creative, helpful, happy, and healthy environments.

Transcripts

Who do you want to be?

It's a simple question,

and whether you know it or not,

you're answering it every day through your actions.

This one question will define your professional success

more than any other,

because how you show up and treat people means everything.

Either you lift people up by respecting them,

making them feel valued, appreciated and heard,

or you hold people down by making them feel small,

insulted, disregarded or excluded.

And who you choose to be means everything.

I study the effects of incivility on people.

What is incivility?

It's disrespect or rudeness.

It includes a lot of different behaviors,

from mocking or belittling someone

to teasing people in ways that sting

to telling offensive jokes

to texting in meetings.

And what's uncivil to one person may be absolutely fine to another.

Take texting while someone's speaking to you.

Some of us may find it rude,

others may think it's absolutely civil.

So it really depends.

It's all in the eyes of the beholder and whether that person felt disrespected.

We may not mean to make someone feel that way,

but when we do, it has consequences.

Over 22 years ago,

I vividly recall walking into this stuffy hospital room.

It was heartbreaking to see my dad, this strong, athletic, energetic guy,

lying in the bed with electrodes strapped to his bare chest.

What put him there was work-related stress.

For over a decade,

he suffered an uncivil boss.

And for me, I thought he was just an outlier at that time.

But just a couple years later,

I witnessed and experienced a lot of incivility

in my first job out of college.

I spent a year going to work every day

and hearing things from coworkers like,

"Are you an idiot? That's not how it's done,"

and, "If I wanted your opinion, I'd ask."

So I did the natural thing.

I quit, and I went back to grad school to study the effects of this.

There, I met Christine Pearson.

And she had a theory that small, uncivil actions

can lead to much bigger problems

like aggression and violence.

We believed that incivility affected performance and the bottom line.

So we launched a study, and what we found was eye-opening.

We sent a survey to business school alumni

working in all different organizations.

We asked them to write a few sentences

about one experience where they were treated rudely,

disrespectfully or insensitively,

and to answer questions about how they reacted.

One person told us about a boss that made insulting statements like,

"That's kindergartner's work,"

and another tore up someone's work in front of the entire team.

And what we found is that incivility made people less motivated:

66 percent cut back work efforts,

80 percent lost time worrying about what happened,

and 12 percent left their job.

And after we published these results, two things happened.

One, we got calls from organizations.

Cisco read about these numbers,

took just a few of these and estimated, conservatively,

that incivility was costing them 12 million dollars a year.

The second thing that happened was, we heard from others in our academic field

who said, "Well, people are reporting this, but how can you really show it?

Does people's performance really suffer?"

I was curious about that, too.

With Amir Erez, I compared those that experienced incivility

to those that didn't experience incivility.

And what we found is that those that experience incivility

do actually function much worse.

"OK," you may say. "This makes sense.

After all, it's natural that their performance suffers."

But what about if you're not the one who experiences it?

What if you just see or hear it?

You're a witness.

We wondered if it affected witnesses, too.

So we conducted studies

where five participants would witness an experimenter act rudely

to someone who arrived late to the study.

The experimenter said, "What is it with you?

You arrive late, you're irresponsible.

Look at you! How do you expect to hold a job in the real world?"

And in another study in a small group,

we tested the effects of a peer insulting a group member.

Now, what we found was really interesting,

because witnesses' performance decreased, too --

and not just marginally, quite significantly.

Incivility is a bug.

It's contagious,

and we become carriers of it just by being around it.

And this isn't confined to the workplace.

We can catch this virus anywhere --

at home, online, in schools and in our communities.

It affects our emotions, our motivation, our performance

and how we treat others.

It even affects our attention and can take some of our brainpower.

And this happens not only if we experience incivility

or we witness it.

It can happen even if we just see or read rude words.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

To test this, we gave people combinations of words

to use to make a sentence.

But we were very sneaky.

Half the participants got a list with 15 words used to trigger rudeness:

impolitely, interrupt, obnoxious, bother.

Half the participants received a list of words

with none of these rude triggers.

And what we found was really surprising,

because the people who got the rude words

were five times more likely to miss information right in front of them

on the computer screen.

And as we continued this research,

what we found is that those that read the rude words

took longer to make decisions,

to record their decisions,

and they made significantly more errors.

This can be a big deal,

especially when it comes to life-and-death situations.

Steve, a physician, told me about a doctor that he worked with

who was never very respectful,

especially to junior staff and nurses.

But Steve told me about this one particular interaction

where this doctor shouted at a medical team.

Right after the interaction,

the team gave the wrong dosage of medication to their patient.

Steve said the information was right there on the chart,

but somehow everyone on the team missed it.

He said they lacked the attention or awareness to take it into account.

Simple mistake, right?

Well, that patient died.

Researchers in Israel have actually shown

that medical teams exposed to rudeness

perform worse not only in all their diagnostics,

but in all the procedures they did.

This was mainly because the teams exposed to rudeness

didn't share information as readily,

and they stopped seeking help from their teammates.

And I see this not only in medicine but in all industries.

So if incivility has such a huge cost,

why do we still see so much of it?

I was curious, so we surveyed people about this, too.

The number one reason is stress.

People feel overwhelmed.

The other reason that people are not more civil

is because they're skeptical and even concerned

about being civil or appearing nice.

They believe they'll appear less leader-like.

They wonder: Do nice guys finish last?

Or in other words: Do jerks get ahead?

(Laughter)

It's easy to think so,

especially when we see a few prominent examples

that dominate the conversation.

Well, it turns out, in the long run, they don't.

There's really rich research on this by Morgan McCall and Michael Lombardo

when they were at the Center for Creative Leadership.

They found that the number one reason tied to executive failure

was an insensitive, abrasive or bullying style.

There will always be some outliers that succeed despite their incivility.

Sooner or later, though,

most uncivil people sabotage their success.

For example, with uncivil executives,

it comes back to hurt them when they're in a place of weakness

or they need something.

People won't have their backs.

But what about nice guys?

Does civility pay?

Yes, it does.

And being civil doesn't just mean that you're not a jerk.

Not holding someone down isn't the same as lifting them up.

Being truly civil means doing the small things,

like smiling and saying hello in the hallway,

listening fully when someone's speaking to you.

Now, you can have strong opinions,

disagree, have conflict or give negative feedback civilly,

with respect.

Some people call it "radical candor,"

where you care personally,

but you challenge directly.

So yes, civility pays.

In a biotechnology firm, colleagues and I found

that those that were seen as civil

were twice as likely to be viewed as leaders,

and they performed significantly better.

Why does civility pay?

Because people see you as an important -- and a powerful --

unique combination of two key characteristics:

warm and competent, friendly and smart.

In other words, being civil isn't just about motivating others.

It's about you.

If you're civil, you're more likely to be seen as a leader.

You'll perform better, and you're seen as warm and competent.

But there's an even bigger story about how civility pays,

and it ties to one of the most important questions around leadership:

What do people want most from their leaders?

We took data from over 20,000 employees around the world,

and we found the answer was simple:

respect.

Being treated with respect was more important

than recognition and appreciation,

useful feedback,

even opportunities for learning.

Those that felt respected were healthier,

more focused,

more likely to stay with their organization

and far more engaged.

So where do you start?

How can you lift people up and make people feel respected?

Well, the nice thing is, it doesn't require a huge shift.

Small things can make a big difference.

I found that thanking people,

sharing credit,

listening attentively,

humbly asking questions,

acknowledging others and smiling

has an impact.

Patrick Quinlan, former CEO of Ochsner Health [System],

told me about the effects of their 10-5 way,

where if you're within 10 feet of someone,

you make eye contact and smile,

and if you're within five feet,

you say hello.

He explained that civility spread,

patient satisfaction scores rose,

as did patient referrals.

Civility and respect can be used to boost an organization's performance.

When my friend Doug Conant took over as CEO of Campbell's Soup Company in 2001,

the company's market share had just dropped in half.

Sales were declining,

lots of people had just been laid off.

A Gallup manager said it was the least engaged organization

that they had surveyed.

And as Doug drove up to work his first day,

he noticed that the headquarters was surrounded by barbwire fence.

There were guard towers in the parking lot.

He said it looked like a minimum security prison.

It felt toxic.

Within five years, Doug had turned things around.

And within nine years, they were setting all-time performance records

and racking up awards, including best place to work.

How did he do it?

On day one, Doug told employees

that he was going to have high standards for performance,

but they were going to do it with civility.

He walked the talk, and he expected his leaders to.

For Doug, it all came down to being tough-minded on standards

and tenderhearted with people.

For him, he said it was all about these touch points,

or these daily interactions he had with employees,

whether in the hallway, in the cafeteria or in meetings.

And if he handled each touch point well,

he'd make employees feel valued.

Another way that Doug made employees feel valued

and showed them that he was paying attention

is that he handwrote over 30,000 thank-you notes to employees.

And this set an example for other leaders.

Leaders have about 400 of these touch points a day.

Most don't take long, less than two minutes each.

The key is to be agile and mindful in each of these moments.

Civility lifts people.

We'll get people to give more and function at their best

if we're civil.

Incivility chips away at people and their performance.

It robs people of their potential,

even if they're just working around it.

What I know from my research is that when we have more civil environments,

we're more productive, creative, helpful, happy and healthy.

We can do better.

Each one of us can be more mindful

and can take actions to lift others up around us,

at work, at home, online,

in schools

and in our communities.

In every interaction, think:

Who do you want to be?

Let's put an end to incivility bug

and start spreading civility.

After all, it pays.

Thank you.

(Applause)