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What is the leadership behavior that’s most important to employees?
We’ve all had moments at work when the stress of a deadline or the pressure of a project got the better of us. Suddenly you snap at an employee or a teammate. And before you know it, the pressure shifts, engulfing the whole office. Leaders are human beings, but it is their responsibility to set a tone of civility and respect in their office, because without it you may find employees are less willing to go the extra mile… or they may quit altogether.
Christine Porath is an author, speaker, and associate professor of management at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Her work related to incivility and its effects have been featured worldwide in over 500 television, radio, and print outlets. Her new book is Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace. I recently interviewed Christine for the LEADx Podcast, where we discussed the correlation between a productive workplace and a respectful one. (The interview below is lightly edited for space and clarity.)
Kevin Kruse: What would be your advice to someone who feels like they chose a certain career and it’s just not where their heart is?
Christine Porath: I think it really comes down to answering the question, “Who do you want to be, and do you believe in what you’re doing professionally?” If you feel like you follow the right path for yourself, then I think it makes it a whole lot easier not to have regrets and to trust your instinct that you did the right thing, even though you may pay for it in different ways.
Kruse: Why do you feel that this issue of respect and civility in the workplace is so important? Why is this a business topic?
Porath: I think because it’s so costly. I think these are hidden costs, usually, and what happens is when people don’t feel valued, when they don’t feel respected or appreciated, they don’t give as much. A lot of this may be intentional. Over two-thirds of people will cut back their efforts. Eighty percent of people will lose time worrying about it; 12% of people say they’ve left jobs because of one incident of this. I think, in general, there are just a whole slew of costs to organizations when people aren’t feeling respected.
In experiments, I found that people can’t focus as well. They aren’t as attentive to information. Cognitively, they function much slower even in terms of memory and processing, and this is true for witnesses as well, so it really is contagious, so the costs add up very quickly. So that’s the main reason that I think organizations need to focus on it. And those that do, I believe, will have a competitive advantage because unfortunately, it’s very prevalent and it’s on the rise.
