Civility -Is it important?

Does it feel as though politics, society and even our workplaces are becoming less civil?  Name calling, insulting labels, smart put downs and cruel comments seem to be on the increase.  Should we care?  Am I just being old-fashioned in looking for more civil interactions?

“Civility usually is demonstrated through manners, courtesy, politeness, and a general awareness of the rights, wishes, concerns, and feelings of others.”

Weeks, K. M. (2011) P 6 

Manners, courtesy and politeness do sound rather old-fashioned and may be prone to misinterpretation depending on culture and generational differences.

Civility’s nemesis – incivility - is defined as “Any self-centered behavior that is impolite, or boorish, or shows a disregard for rights and concerns of others.” (Weeks) P 7.

The data around the impacts of incivility is extensive.  In a workplace setting almost 99% of people say they have witnessed incivility.  80% of people report having wasted work effort worrying about the incivility, 78% report reduced organizational commitment, 48% reduced their work effort and 38% report having purposefully reduced work quality after witnessing incivility.

In experimental situations Christine Porath of Georgetown University found that two thirds of people withheld effort after the experiment set them up to witness incivility.  Over 50% of subjects were less effective on word problems and 28% were less creative in brainstorming sessions. In many of these experiments the incivility was witnessed prior to entering the laboratory so it can have a far reaching effect.

In real life workplaces the results can be critical.   In a study of 4500 medical personnel Porath said 71% reported medical errors after incidents of incivility, in 27% of cases these errors resulted in patient deaths.

Other workplace surveys show that, in addition to performance, individual well being can be impacted and intentions to quit increase.

Civility is important.  

These results show significant impacts for the individual and for the organisation. 

In the next blog we’ll look at the impact of incivility on our brains, consider the impact of culture on perceived civility and think about what leaders can do to create more civil workplaces.