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How Rude!
Research suggests that rudeness at the workplace can be detrimental to productivity and teamwork, and can even be dangerous sometimes. HR needs to create a better corporate culture -- which often means starting at the top -- as well as offer training on business etiquette and tips on controlling stress.
With money tight these days, companies are more concerned than ever about getting as much productivity as possible from employees. So consider this tactic: Eliminate rudeness in the workplace. Rude behavior causes mistakes, hurts cognitive skills and team building, and makes employees less productive, according to an article in the British Medical Journal by Rhona Flin, a professor at the University of Aberdeen in the U.K. Whether it's a manager being rude to a subordinate, colleagues being rude to one another or someone simply watching two co-workers being rude to one another, it can have negative effects, says Flin. Lou Kennedy, a business-etiquette consultant in Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas, has seen it first-hand at her client companies. "Rude people cause stress for other people," she says. "Rude people aren't good listeners. Rude people are interrupters. Rude people generally already have their minds made up." For some, rudeness can even cause a physical reaction. "It causes an inner-stress level that people may not even be aware of -- you just suddenly get that tight feeling," says Kennedy. Another study, this one published last year in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, suggests an even scarier thought: Those exposed to rudeness are more likely to exhibit negative, even dangerous behavior. Amir Erez, professor of management at the University of Florida, and Christine Porath, professor of management at the University of Southern California, asked participants to think of as many uses for a brick as possible. Those groups exposed to rude behavior came up with some bizarre answers -- such as breaking a window, hitting someone in the head or even sinking a dead body in a river. The study also showed that people exposed to discourteous behavior can hurt employees' ability to think creatively, solve problems and work together as a team. In the BMJ article, Flin also argued that workplace incivility can be especially damaging in healthcare facilities, where "all staff require high levels of attention and memory for task execution -- for example, [anesthesiologists] remembering to administer drugs or nurses counting instruments." "If incivility does occur in [medical workplaces] and affects workers' ability to perform tasks, the risks for ... patients -- whose treatment depends on particularly high levels of mental concentration and flawless task execution -- could increase," she says. In general, it is often managers who are the culprits for rudeness at work, say experts. "What the top person does affects everyone," says Kennedy. "If people at the bottom are seeing lack of courtesy and respect, innuendos, arrogance, entitlement -- they think, 'That's how I need to behave to get ahead.' " It can also drive high-potential employees away. "I also have had people ... say to me, 'If that's the way management behaves, I'm not interested in becoming a manager [at this company],' " says Kennedy. Erez says that, while some believe rudeness will be a motivator for co-workers or subordinates, it actually produces the opposite affect as it impairs critical thinking and cognitive skills. "It reduces people's ability to think!" Erez emphasizes. And it doesn't help that it's glorified on TV either, such as the boorish Donald Trump on The Apprentice or the brash Dr. Gregory House on House. The best way for a company to prevent these difficulties, says Kennedy, is to make sure courteous behavior is modeled from the top down. Leaders should also be aware of how employees throughout the company behave. "HR acts as buffer or police" between a worker who is upset with the behavior and the worker who exhibits the behavior, she says. "It's their job to look at the problem," she says. "Look at the person that has been brought to the attention of HR and speak to person who has offensive behavior ... [and take action by] offering training on stress or business protocol." Of course, creating a corporate culture where employees are overly polite and never offer criticism won't increase productivity either, but Erez suggests a happy medium can be reached by making sure employees and managers are only stern when necessary. "Negative feedback is much more effective when it comes from background of politeness," he says. "If you're being rude to people all the time, people stop paying attention to you. But from time to time you need to be angry, and it can be much more effective."
July 29, 2010 Copyright 2010© LRP Publications |
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© Copyright 2010 LRP Publications. All rights reserved.
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