MANAGEMENT “Start with little actions. Be a role
model,” says Christine Porath, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace. “We find that civility spreads in social networks at work.” Above and beyond how one person deals with the toxic perpetrator, another factor can buffer incivility’s toxic effects: a sense of thriving. “If you do nothing else, be sure to focus on yourself, cultivating an internal sense of being energized, alive and growing,” says Porath. “In studies conducted across a range of industries, I have found that people who experience a state of thriving are healthier, more resilient and more able to focus on their work. When people feel even an inkling of thriving, it often buffers them from distractions, stress and negativity.”
“It very well could be that high-power people see the behavior and don’t perceive it to be a big problem, while lower- level people see it and perceive it to be extremely stressful.” –Maurice Schweitzer
In a study of six organizations spanning six industries, employees characterized as highly thriving demonstrated 1.2 times less burnout than their peers, Porath and Gretchen Spreitzer wrote in “Creating Sustainable Performance: Four Ways to Help Your Employees — and Organization — Thrive,” published in 2012 in the Harvard Business Review. High thrivers were 52% more confident in themselves and their ability to take control of a situation, wrote Porath in “An Antidote to Incivility,” published in HBR in
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2016. They were also far less likely to have incivility “drag them down a chute of negativity, distraction, or self-doubt,” she said. “One of my friends, a talented life coach, likes to ask people faced with adversity, ‘What are you going to make this mean?’ … How you interpret a situation is crucial. How much are you going to let someone pull you down? What useful lessons might there be for you in the situation?” According to Porath, research
shows that about 50% of our happiness is based on brain wiring; 40% stems from how we interpret and respond to what happens to us; and 10% is driven by circumstances like whether we have less power and whether we’re more or less dependent on the job or the offender. “In large part, you really do get to decide how you interpret incivility, the meaning you assign to it, and the stories you tell yourself,” says Porath. “You also get to control whether it makes you feel bad or not. It may not be realistic for you to ‘toughen up,’ but you can choose not to worry about what was said or done to you. If you’re thriving, you’re less likely to worry about the hit you took or to interpret words or deeds negatively. In fact, you’re more likely to craft an interpretation that validates yourself and your behavior.” One intriguing body of recent
research involves the concept of respectful inquiry: encouraging leaders to ask employees questions and listen intently to their answers. “It sounds simple and perhaps even obvious, but it’s a rare form of commanding others because it moves beyond merely being respectful and courteous. It involves relinquishing some control and thus is a huge sign that you trust other people,” says Wharton management professor Andrew Carton. “It’s empowering.”
Respectful inquiry is a
multi-purpose tool because it accommodates three basic needs that all people have: control, competence and belonging, argue Niels Van Quaquebeke and Will Felps in “Respectful inquiry: A Motivational Account of Leading Through Asking Questions and Listening,” published in 2016 in the Academy of Management Review. “This increases peoples’ sense of autonomy and meaningfulness at work,” says Carton, adding that although the idea is preliminary, it is thought-provoking and actionable. “This latter issue, an idea that is actionable, is important because it involves moving beyond simply imploring leaders to be more respectful and gives them a concrete suggestion on how to improve their organizations’ culture, one small step at a time,” he notes. Research shows that people are better able to improve at what they do when they are given feedback that involves a specific behavior – for instance, saying, “please try to be more punctual for our Monday meetings” rather than offering general guidance like “please try to be more conscientious.” This kind of concreteness is all the more important when it comes to soft skills, says Carton.
“It’s just people being themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and being told something isn’t quite right is enough to make them stop.” –Jody J. Foster
Although there might be a lot of
toxicity in the air right now, very few workplaces are irretrievably toxic, and most people want to do the right thing, says Jody J. Foster, assistant dean for professionalism at the Perelman
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