Culture Leadership Charge – The Cost of Rudeness

To what degree might rudeness impact team performance – and team member performance – in your workplace?

Rudeness and incivility is rampant in our organizations. A 2013 study featured in the Harvard Business Review found that 98% of employees reported experiencing incivility at work by bosses and peers. Individual reactions to incivility include:

• 48% intentionally decreased their work effort.
• 38% intentionally decreased the quality of their work.
• 63% lost work time avoiding the offender.
• 80% lost work time worrying about the incident.

What hasn’t been examined is how rudeness and incivility impact team performance.

A 2015 study did exactly that. It examined how rudeness impacts medical team performance.

This research used simulation-based experiments with neonatal intensive care teams. No humans were placed at risk during this study. The hypothesis was that “interrelating processes essential for collaboration are adversely affected when medical professionals are victims of others’ rudeness.”

In today’s three minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video series, I share the startling findings from this study and how to reduce the incidence of rudeness and incivility in your workplace.

This is episode seventy-seven of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a ~three-minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – Тихон Купревич. All rights reserved.