Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is incivility?

Incivility is the exchange of seemingly inconsequential inconsiderate words and deeds that violate conventional norms of workplace conduct.

One of the greatest challenges of incivility is that it is not an objective phenomenon. Rather, it reflects peoples’ subjective interpretation of actions, and how these actions make them feel. Incivility is in the eyes of the beholder. Sometimes the offense of incivility is intended, sometimes it is not. The incivilities listed below could be interpreted as intentionally offensive or not, depending on the participants and the context.

— interrupting a conversation
— talking loudly in common areas
— failing to return a phone call
— clearing email, texting or surfing the web during meetings
— showing little interest in another individual’s opinion

Aggression sends victims retreating, and violence leaves bruises, but the residuals of incivility are subtler, and as a result, more insidious. As anyone who has worked in an office knows, incivility doesn’t have to involve a lot of drama. It can occur when workers are simply disrespectful, inconsiderate, tactless, insensitive, uncaring or rude to one another.

Q: Why should I care about incivility?

It costs your organization big bucks – and it’s relatively inexpensive to curtail or correct. When incivility infests an organization, people reduce the hours, attention, and focus otherwise devoted to getting their work done. Incivility quashes creativity, initiative, and cooperation. Losses mount for individual targets of incivility, their coworkers, their teams, their leaders, their organizations at large, and even those who have offended them.

Q: Around my company I reward toughness. Isn’t being nice the stuff of powder puff organizations? Maybe it’s important in the HR department, but not for those of us on the line day to day.

We’ve got more than a decade’s worth of data that says you’re mistaken if you think there’s any organization out there that wouldn’t improve with increased civility. Civility isn’t about “being nice”; it’s about working with mutual respect. It’s not the stuff of tea parties; it’s about working hard, working tough, getting the most that you can out of your employees. Add more civility to the mix and you’ll find greater payoffs, including increased loyalty to the company and to you.

Q: Okay, let’s say you’ve convinced me that it pays to be civil. My concern is that others in my company will think I’ve lost my edge, that I’ve gone soft, that my new-found concern for how employees treat each other is just plain silly.

Ask for five minutes of their time. Brief them quickly on what incivility is, how it can fall between the cracks, and how dissatisfied most employees are with the way their companies manage it. Tell your colleagues how offenders are as opportunistic as Eddie Haskell when it comes to choosing their targets and their timing. Then bring in a few numbers, like how often people experience or witness incivility at work, how many leave, how many get back at their offenders and at their organizations. Make it a quick conversation. Then ask your colleagues to help you estimate how much these outcomes of incivility could be costing your company. Do you think they’ll still think you’re soft?

Q: Is there really never a time when it’s appropriate to be uncivil?

Right. Never. We’ll say this again, without qualification: Civility is more effective than incivility. Even when the world seems to be crashing around you. Perhaps especially then. The problem is that disrespectful behavior requires the target to listen through and beyond the disrespect. Targets have to struggle to concentrate when treated badly. They’ll lose focus trying to understand the incivility and how to respond. The emotional impact will further distract and short-circuit their ability to be effective. Incivility doesn’t shock people into better focus. It robs concentration, hijacks task orientation, and impedes performance.