The Price of Incivility

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MOTIVATING PEOPLE

The Price of Incivility
by Christine Porath and Christine Pearson
FROM THE JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2013 ISSUE

R

udeness at work is rampant, and it’s on the rise. Over the past 14 years
we’ve polled thousands of workers about how they’re treated on the job,and 98% have reported experiencing uncivil behavior. In 2011 half said

they were treated rudely at least once a week—up from a quarter in 1998.

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The costs chip away at the bottom line. Nearly everybody who experiences workplace
incivility responds in a negative way, in some cases overtly retaliating. Employees areless creative when they feel disrespected, and many get fed up and leave. About halfdeliberately decrease their effort or lower the quality of their work. And incivility
damages customer relationships. Our research shows that people are less likely to buy
from a company with an employee they perceive as rude, whether the rudeness isdirected at them or at other employees. Witnessing just a single unpleasantinteraction leads customers to generalize about other employees, the organization,and even the brand.

We’ve interviewed employees, managers, HR executives, presidents, and CEOs.
We’ve administered questionnaires, run experiments, led workshops, and spoken
with doctors, lawyers, judges, law enforcement officers, architects, engineers,
consultants, and coaches about how they’ve faced and handled incivility. And we’vecollected data from more than 14,000 people throughout the United States andCanada in order to track the prevalence, types, causes, costs, and cures of incivility atwork. We know two things for certain: Incivility is expensive, and few organizations
recognize or take action to curtail it.

In this article we’ll discuss our findings, detail the costs, and propose someinterventions. But first, let’s look at the various shapes incivility can take.

Forms of Incivility
We’ve all heard of (or experienced) the “boss from hell.” The stress of ongoing
hostility from a manager takes a toll, sometimes a big one. We spoke with a man we’ll
call Matt, who reported to Larry—a volatile bully who insulted his direct reports,
belittled their efforts, and blamed them for things over which they had no control.
(The names in this article have been changed and the identities disguised.) Larry was

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rude to customers, too. When he accompanied Matt to one client’s store, he told theowner, “I see you’re carrying on your father’s tradition. This store looked like sh–then. And it looks like sh– in your hands.”

Matt’s stress level skyrocketed. He took a risk and reported Larry to HR. (He wasn’t
the first to complain.) Called on the carpet, Larry failed to apologize, saying only thatperhaps he “used an atomic bomb” when he “could have used a flyswatter.” Weeks
later Larry was named district manager of the year. Three days after that, Matt had aheart attack.

The conclusion of Matt’s story is unusual, but unchecked rudeness is surprisingly
common. We heard of one boss who was so routinely abusive that employees andsuppliers had a code for alerting one another to his impending arrival (“The eagle has
landed!”). The only positive aspect was that their shared dislike helped the employees
forge close bonds. After the company died, in the late 1990s, its alums formed a
network that thrives to this day.

In some cases an entire department is infected. Jennifer worked in an industry that
attracted large numbers of educated young professionals willing to work for a pittancein order to be in a creative field. It was widely accepted that they had to pay theirdues. The atmosphere included door slamming, side conversations, exclusion, andblatant disregard for people’s time. Years later Jennifer still cringes as she remembers
her boss screaming, “You made a mistake!” when she’d overlooked a minor typo in aninternal memo. There was lots of attrition among low-level employees, but those who
did stay seemed to absorb the behaviors they’d been subjected to, and they put
newcomers through the same kind of abuse.

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Fran was a senior executive in a global consumer products company. After several
quarters of outstanding growth despite a down economy, she found herself
confronted by a newcomer in the C-suite, Joe. For six months Fran had to jump
through hoops to defend the business, even though it had defied stagnation. She
never got an explanation for why she was picked on, and eventually she left, not foranother job but to escape what she called “a soul-destroying experience.”

Incivility can take much more subtle forms, and it is often prompted bythoughtlessness rather than actual malice. Think of the manager who sends e-mails
during a presentation, or the boss who “teases” direct reports in ways that sting, or
the team leader who takes credit for good news but points a finger at team members
when something goes wrong. Such relatively minor acts can be even more insidiousthan overt bullying, because they are less obvious and easier to overlook—yet they
add up, eroding engagement and morale.

The Costs of Incivility
Many managers would say that incivility is wrong, but not all recognize that it has
tangible costs. Targets of incivility often punish their offenders and the organization,although most hide or bury their feelings and don’t necessarily think of their actions
as revenge. Through a poll of 800 managers and employees in 17 industries, welearned just how people’s reactions play out. Among workers who’ve been on thereceiving end of incivility:• 48% intentionally decreased their work effort.

• 47% intentionally decreased the time spent at work.

• 38% intentionally decreased the quality of their work.

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Page 5 of 17• 80% lost work time worrying about the incident.

• 63% lost work time avoiding the offender.

• 66% said that their performance declined.

• 78% said that their commitment to the organization declined.

• 12% said that they left their job because of the uncivil treatment.

• 25% admitted to taking their frustration out on customers.

Experiments and other reports offer additional insights about the effects of incivility.
Here are some examples of what can happen.

Creativity suffers.
In an experiment we conducted with Amir Erez, a professor of management at the
University of Florida, participants who were treated rudely by other subjects were
30% less creative than others in the study. They produced 25% fewer ideas, and theones they did come up with were less original. For example, when asked what to dowith a brick, participants who had been treated badly proposed logical but notparticularly imaginative activities, such as “build a house,” “build a wall,” and “builda school.” We saw more sparks from participants who had been treated civilly; theirsuggestions included “sell the brick on eBay,” “use it as a goalpost for a street soccer
game,” “hang it on a museum wall and call it abstract art,” and “decorate it like a pet
and give it to a kid as a present.”

Performance and team spirit deteriorate.

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Survey results and interviews indicate that simply witnessing incivility has negative
consequences. In one experiment we conducted, people who’d observed poor
behavior performed 20% worse on word puzzles than other people did. We also foundthat witnesses to incivility were less likely than others to help out, even when the
person they’d be helping had no apparent connection to the uncivil person: Only 25%of the subjects who’d witnessed incivility volunteered to help, whereas 51% of those
who hadn’t witnessed it did.

People are less likely to buy from acompany with an employee they
perceive as rude, even if the rudeness
isn’t directed at them.
Customers turn away.
Public rudeness among employees is common, according to our survey of 244
consumers. Whether it’s waiters berating fellow waiters or store clerks criticizingcolleagues, disrespectful behavior makes people uncomfortable, and they’re quick towalk out without making a purchase.

We studied this phenomenon with the USC marketing professors Debbie MacInnis
and Valerie Folkes. In one experiment, half the participants witnessed a supposedbank representative publicly reprimanding another for incorrectly presenting credit
card information. Only 20% of those who’d seen the encounter said that they would
use the bank’s services in the future, compared with 80% of those who hadn’t. And
nearly two-thirds of those who’d seen the exchange said that they would feel anxious
dealing with any employee of the bank.

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What’s more, when we tested various scenarios, we found that it didn’t matter
whether the targeted employee was incompetent, whether the reprimand had beendelivered behind closed doors (but overheard), or whether the employee had done
something questionable or illegal, such as park in a handicapped spot. Regardless ofthe circumstances, people don’t like to see others treated badly.

Managing incidents is expensive.
HR professionals say that just one incident can soak up weeks of attention and effort.
According to a study conducted by Accountemps and reported in Fortune, managers
and executives at Fortune 1,000 firms spend 13% percent of their work time—theequivalent of seven weeks a year—mending employee relationships and otherwise
dealing with the aftermath of incivility. And costs soar, of course, when consultants or
attorneys must be brought in to help settle a situation.

Managers at Fortune 1,000 firms spend
the equivalent of seven weeks a year
dealing with the aftermath of incivility.
What’s a Leader to Do?
It can take constant vigilance to keep the workplace civil; otherwise, rudeness tends
to creep into everyday interactions. Managers can use several strategies to keep theirown behavior in check and to foster civility among others.

Managing yourself.
Leaders set the tone, so you need to be aware of your actions and of how you comeacross to others.

Model good behavior.

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In one of our surveys, 25% of managers who admitted to having behaved badly said
they were uncivil because their leaders—their own role models—were rude. If
employees see that those who have climbed the corporate ladder tolerate or embrace
uncivil behavior, they’re likely to follow suit. So turn off your iPhone during
meetings, pay attention to questions, and follow up on promises.

One way to help create a culture of respect and bring out your employees’ best is toexpress your appreciation. Personal notes are particularly effective, especially if theyemphasize being a role model, treating people well, and living the organization’svalues. Doug Conant, a former CEO of Campbell Soup, is well aware of the power of
personal recognition. During his tenure as president and CEO, he sent more than
30,000 handwritten notes of thanks to employees.

Ask for feedback.
You may need a reality check from the people who work for you. A manager at
Hanover Insurance decided to ask his employees what they liked and didn’t like about
his leadership style. He learned that it really bothered them when he glanced at his
phone or responded to e-mail during meetings. He now refrains from those activities,
and his team appreciates the change.

Employees won’t always be honest, but there are tools you can use on your own. For
example, keep a journal in which you track instances of civility and incivility and notechanges that you’d like to make.

Pay attention to your progress.
As Josef, an IT professional, learned more about incivility, he became aware of his
tendency to disparage a few nasty colleagues behind their backs. “I hadn’t thought
about it much until I considered the negative role modeling I was doing,” he told us.
“I criticized only people who were obnoxious to others and shared my criticisms only

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with people I trusted and in private, and somehow that made it seem OK. Then I
started thinking about how I was just adding to the divide by spreading gossip andcreating ‘sides.’ It was a real eye-opener, and I decided that I wanted to set a better
example.”THIS ARTICLE ALSO APPEARS IN:

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Within a short time Josef noticed that he
was logging fewer occasions when hegossiped negatively and that he felt better
about himself and his workplace. “I don’t$24.95 ADD TO CART

know whether anyone else would notice a

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fair and supportive—but I know that I’vechanged,” he said. “And there’s anotherbenefit for all of us: I’m seeing lessincivility around me. I think that speaking up when colleagues or subordinates are
rude can really make a difference. It puts them on alert that somebody is watching
and cares how everyone is treated.”Managing the organization.
Monitoring and adjusting your own behavior is an important piece of the puzzle, but
you need to take action across the company as well.

Hire for civility.
Avoid bringing incivility into the workplace to begin with. Some companies, includingSouthwest Airlines and Four Seasons, put civility at the fore when they interview
applicants.

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It’s useful to give your team members a say about their prospective colleagues; they
may pick up on behavior that would be suppressed in more-formal interviews.
Rhapsody, an online subscription music service, conducts group interviews so that
employees can evaluate potential teammates. It has been known to turn down
applicants who are strong on paper but make the team uncomfortable in some way. In
one case, a team considering two applicants felt that the apparently stronger one
lacked emotional intelligence: She talked too much and seemed unwilling to listen. So
the company hired the other candidate, who has worked out very well.

Taking Civility Global

Only 11% of organizations report

Research about cross-cultural
relationships tends to yield highly detailed
laundry lists of dos and don’ts. Popular
recommendations typically focus on
nonverbal considerations such as theproper depth of a bow, how to position
your feet so that you don’t show the solesof your shoes, or the number of kisses thatare appropriate when greeting. Some ofthese guidelines are useful, but many are
outdated, and most are not transferablefrom one culture to another.

considering civility at all during the hiring
process, and many of those investigate it
in a cursory fashion. But incivility usuallyleaves a trail of some sort, which can be
uncovered if someone’s willing to look.
One hospital had a near miss whenbringing on a new radiologist. It offered
the job to Dirk, a talented doctor who came
highly recommended by his peers and had
aced the interviews. But one assistant in

We suggest a more universal approach.
Simply put, the key is civility. Learning
how to read behavior and to react
respectfully across cultures has
tremendous payoffs. The same skill set
applies wherever in the world yourbusiness takes you.

the department had a hunch thatsomething was off. Through a network of
personal contacts, she learned that Dirk
had left a number of badly treatedsubordinates in his wake—information thatwould never have surfaced from his CV. So

Before you go:

the department head nixed the hire,

Reflect on your own culture

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and especially on the stereotypes, biases,
and idiosyncrasies that others may lookfor in you.

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the hospital would let him go right away,
which would raise a flag for potential
employers.

Become knowledgeable about
where you’re going.
Read about it in your favorite
genre—history, biography, fiction,international newspapers, and so on.
Learn basic expressions of civility such as“please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me” inthe language of your hosts. Watch movies
set in the locale. Ask people familiar withthe culture for briefings. But don’t believe
everything you hear: One consequence of
our fast-paced global world is thatbehavioral norms, like many other things,
shift rapidly.

Teach civility.
We’re always amazed by how many
managers and employees tell us that they
don’t understand what it means to be civil.
One quarter of the offenders we surveyed
said that they didn’t recognize their
behavior as uncivil.

People can learn civility on the job. Roleplaying is one technique. At one hospital

Adopt an open mind-set.
Plan to try out new ideas and behaviors.

Once you’re there:
Show respect.
Intent goes a long way, and most people
will be able to decipher your intentions
quickly, even across cultures.

Be agreeable
toward everyone you encounter.

in Los Angeles, temperamental doctors
have to attend “charm school” to decrease
their brashness (and reduce the potential
for lawsuits). Some organizations offer
classes on managing the generation mix, in
which they talk about differences in normsof civility and how to improve behavior
across generations.

Video can be a good teaching tool,

Remember that you may be
pricklier than usual,

especially when paired with coaching.

because you’re outside your routines.
Practice greater patience with others andwith yourself. Suspend judgment ofanything or anyone for as long as you can.

interactions so that they can observe theirFilm employees during various

own facial expressions, posture, words,
and tone of voice. It takes people a while

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Pay sharp attention.
Put your senses on alert: Listen andobserve more carefully. Focus not only on
what you hear and see, but also on thecontext of words and actions.

Venture outside your comfort zone
to learn more quickly.

Adapt your behavior to fit inas best you can—but don’t step over theline by trying to “go native.”

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to learn to ignore the camera, but
eventually they resume their normal
patterns of behavior.

After participating in such an exercise, theCEO of a medical firm told us, “I didn’t
realize what a jerk I sounded like.” To his
credit, he used the insight to fashion morecivil communication—and became less of ajerk. Another senior executive reported
that he’d always thought he maintained a

Catch, laugh about, and learn fromyour missteps.
Even significant faux pas are usuallyforgiven if accompanied by sincere
expressions of goodwill. One way to showthat you mean well is to attempt a few
words in the local language.

poker face, but the video revealed obvious“tells.” For instance, if he lost interest in a
discussion, he’d look away.

We recommend that after being taped,
people watch the video in three modes:
first, with both sound and image, to get an

overall sense of their demeanor; second, without sound, to focus on nonverbal
behaviors such as gestures, distancing, and facial expressions; and third, with only
sound, to highlight tone of voice, volume and speed of speech, and word choice.
People don’t take issue just with words; tone can be equally or more potent.

Create group norms.
Start a dialogue with your team about expectations. An insurance executive told usthat he’d talked with his team about what behaviors worked and what didn’t. By theend of the first meeting, the team had produced and taken ownership of concrete
norms for civility, such as arriving on time and ignoring e-mail during meetings.

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In one of our own workplaces, we’ve borrowed a practice from sports to take the edge
off and to help one another avoid falling into occasional abrasiveness. In our world,
incivility can flare up during presentations, because overly zealous professors may
vigorously interrogate colleagues and visiting professors in an effort to demonstrate
their own intellect. We warn colleagues who are engaging in this behavior by using
hand signals to indicate the equivalent of soccer’s yellow and red cards. The “yellowcard” sign (a fist raised to the side of the head) conveys a warning, letting theinterrogator know she needs to think about the phrasing, tone, and intensity of hercomments and questions. The “red card” signal (two fingers held up, followed by theclassic heave of the thumb) means she’s finished for the session—she’s been so
offensive, repeatedly and after fair warning, that she needs to be “ejected from thegame.” Faculty members have learned that when they get the red card signal, they
have to button it—no more today.

Ochsner Health System, a large Louisiana health care provider, has adopted what it
calls “the 10/5 way”: If you’re within 10 feet of someone, make eye contact and smile.
If you’re within five feet, say hello. Ochsner has seen greater patient satisfaction andan increase in patient referrals as a result.

Reward good behavior.
Collegiality should be a consideration in every performance review, but many
companies think only about outcomes and tend to overlook damaging behaviors.
What behavior does your review system motivate? All too often we see organizations
badly miss the mark. They want collaboration, but you’d never know it from theirevaluation forms, which focus entirely on individual assessment, without a single
measure of teamwork.

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Zappos implemented a “Wow” recognition program designed to capture people in theact of doing the right thing. Any employee at any level who sees a colleague doing
something special can award a “Wow,” which includes a cash bonus of up to $50.
Recipients are automatically eligible for a “Hero” award. Heroes are chosen by top
executives; they receive a covered parking spot for a month, a $150 Zappos gift card,
and, with full symbolic flair, a hero’s cape. Even lighthearted awards like these can be
powerful symbols of the importance of civility.

Any Zappos employee who sees acolleague doing something special canaward a “Wow,” which includes a cash
bonus of up to $50.

Penalize bad behavior.
Even the best companies occasionally make bad hires, and employees from anacquired firm may be accustomed to different norms. The trick is to identify and try tocorrect any troublesome behavior. Companies often avoid taking action, though, andmost incidents go unreported, partly because employees know nothing will come of areport. If you want to foster respect, take complaints seriously and follow up.

Rather than confronting offenders, leaders often opt for an easier solution—moving
them to a different location. The result is predictable: The behavior continues in a
new setting. One manager told us that his department has been burned so often that it
no longer considers internal candidates for managerial positions.

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Sometimes the best path is to let someone go. Danny Meyer, the owner of manysuccessful restaurants in Manhattan, will fire talent for uncivil behavior. Gifted but
rude chefs don’t last at his restaurants because they set off bad vibes. Meyer believes
that customers can taste employee incivility, even when the behavior occurs in the
kitchen.

Many top law firms, hospitals, and businesses we’ve dealt with have learned the hard
way that it simply doesn’t pay to harbor habitual offenders, even if they’re rainmakers
or protégés. Whether offenders have caused multimillion-dollar lawsuits or been
responsible for the exit of throngs of employees, often the losses could have been
mitigated by early, resolute action. A senior executive of a highly successful company
told us recently, “Every mistake we’ve made in firing a questionable hire was intaking action too late, not too early.”

Conduct postdeparture interviews.
Organizational memory fades quickly. It’s crucial, therefore, to gather informationfrom and reflect on the experiences and reactions of employees who leave because of
incivility. If you ask targets during their exit interviews why they’re leaving, you’ll
usually get only vague responses. Interviews conducted six months or so later canyield a truer picture. Talking with former employees after they’ve distanced
themselves from the organization and settled into their new work environments cangive you insights about the violations of civility that prompted them toleave.Companies we’ve worked with calculate that the tab for incivility can run into
the millions. Some years back Cisco put together a detailed estimate of what incivility
was costing the company. It factored in its reputation as a consistently great place towork, assumed an extremely low probability of rudeness among its employees, andlooked at only three potential costs. Even in this exemplary workplace, it wasestimated that incivility cost $12 million a year. That realization led to the creation of
Cisco’s global workplace civility program.

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We close with a warning to those who think consistent civility is an extravagance: Just
one habitually offensive employee critically positioned in your organization can cost
you dearly in lost employees, lost customers, and lost productivity.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Christine Porath is an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School ofBusiness.

Christine Pearson is a professor of global leadership at Thunderbird School of Global
Management.

This article is about MOTIVATING PEOPLE
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Nancy Barcalow

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6 months ago

I could not agree more with this article. However, I have witnessed situations where "bullies" wereallowed to continue their behavior because they were responsible for increasing the company's
bottom line. The short-term financial gains of their behavior hid the long-term damage to other
employees and the company, and the disintegration of the corporate culture.
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