"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
- Mahatma Gandhi
Many of the leaders I work with tell me they spend as much as 40 per cent of their time and energy managing the "fear factor." That's 40 per cent of their time dealing with the fear of being on the receiving end of verbal outbursts and negative actions by others. It is usually the leader with the most power who provokes the most fear. With leaders worried about outbursts and other nasty behaviour from those with even more power than they have, imagine the toll the fear factor must take on the people who wield substantially less power: everybody else.
Although many a CEO would espouse that they "challenge their people," many employees would argue those "challenges" feel threatening. The reality is simple -- employees blossom when challenged and wither when threatened. There is no data showing that anxious, fearful employees are more creative and productive, but there is data proving that employees in a threatening environment are less engaged, less loyal and for the most part miserable.
There are many sophisticated tools, such as Gallup's Q12 and Korn/Ferry's Talent Engagement Architect, to evaluate corporate culture. Numerous studies have emphatically concluded that a positive corporate environment directly impacts the bottom line positively. People adapt to their work environment and culture. They either thrive or slowly begin to die. Obviously, that shrinking of the human spirit affects not only people's work lives, but their lives in general, and, by extension, society as a whole. Lack of civility debilitates and destroys.
Researchers have been studying this for more than a decade, and it is long past time to put their findings into practice. In the 2003 Baltimore Workplace Study lead by the University of Baltimore's Jacob France Institute and the John Hopkins University, 83 per cent of workers report that it is "very important" to work in a civil environment. More than one-third of the respondents, 36 per cent, felt they had been the victim of uncivil workplace behaviour either "occasionally" or "frequently."
In my work as the CEO of a leadership institute, I've talked to people whose employers or supervisors have repeatedly belittled them during meetings, sent scathing e-mails about their work and/or "challenged" them by with-holding a promised bonus.
Those who have been targets of such bad behavior often become uncivil themselves. They spread gossip to deflect attention. They sabotage their peers. They call in sick and leave early. As reported in the Harvard Business Review, employees faced with incivility are likely to narrow their focus to avoid risks, and lose opportunities to learn in the process. Obviously this impacts their level of personal success and the success of the organization.
Civility is not a term we typically associate with corporate life or use to describe the everyday world in workplaces around the globe. But consider the potential impact on corporate culture, and society as a whole, if civility were not just expected, but championed by senior leadership.
Given that most people spend upwards of 40 hours a week at work, imbuing the workplace and corporate culture with civility would unquestionably have a ripple effect on our larger society. Key to a civil corporate culture and a civil society are strong interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence -- the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself and others. An increasing number of corporate hiring authorities say that hiring for emotional intelligence is now of equal importance to hiring for intellect.
Emotional intelligence is the bedrock of civil discourse not only within corporations, but throughout society.
Imagine what civility could bring not only to boardrooms, but to political discourse around the world. Liberals and Conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, will always disagree. But as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, we must learn to disagree without being disagreeable.
When the level of public discourse falls to the point where a national U.S. radio commentator calls a young woman a "slut" and a "prostitute" for saying that birth control should be covered under health insurance programs, and a Canadian cabinet minister tells Canadians that they're "with the child pornographers" if they disagree with his Bill C-30, it's time to recall Dr. King's words.
Recalling those words and acting upon them within the corporate environment would go a long way towards creating a more civil society. Corporate leaders have a responsibility to disagree without being disagreeable, to remove the "fear factor" in their organizations, and to use their influence to contribute to a civil society.
I am convinced that civility within corporate discourse is the best way to influence civility in our national and global discourse.
This post originally appeared in The Vancouver Sun.
Mary Prefontaine is the co-producer of the Corporate State Vancouver Summit on May 1, 2012 and the President and CEO of the Institute for Career Advancement Needs (ICAN) -- a non- profit leadership institute based in the U.S.
Art Markman, Ph.D.: When Do You Practice What You Preach?
There is no loyalty and there is no investment in employees.
The employers hold all the cards, as employees are beholden to them for pay, security, identity, retirement, health, life, dental and vision insurance and racking up time for vacation, illness and kids.
The biggest mistake is thinking your employer cares about you or that your co-workers are a sort of family. Corporations and businesses like to ensnare you with the idea of teamwork and dedication, but they only do this in one direction.
So, to all you young people out there: do your best to be entrepreneurs, consultants, specialists and to have a skill to fall back on, and don't ever work for someone else as your main and permanent career. Also, if you do hire anyone, please keep all of the above in mind and improve on this if you can. Thanks.
During those hours we are chattel with almost no legal protections. If we want to change that, well, what would it take?
It is not only a moral issue, you see: labor is a COMMODITY, and our person is incidental, labor is what allows commodities to be priced at all (there is nothing else in common between any commodity and another but labor time in that commodity).
Obviously, the lower the cost of production by labor of any commodity, the more competitive the employer is, only the catch 22 for the employer is that to sell, employees must be able to buy.
Therefore, this is very sticky stuff, and needs a lot of thought to properly work out.
P.S. Where libertarians fail is that they think supply and demand determines the cost of commodities, but that is not true -- supply and demand only accounts for FLUCTUATIONS in the price of commodities. The cost of LABOR time more than anything else decides the price of commodities.
If democracy is such a good thing politically, why do we let the corporate world act like tyrants when it comes to our economic well-being?
we NEED people like that in govt
no wonder we are in debt
govt has GSA meetings happening in every dept
You mean "senior" as in "Jesus" or "Confucius" or "Socrates" or "Gautama"?
After all, you ARE using the term "civility". You do know that that's quite something, right?
Here's how something that something is: everything.
And that's not a law. Or a clause which will keep you from getting your bonus if you don't act according to it. And which is made up by some fancy compensation consultant.
It's the truth.
You know, the kind of thing that'll set you FREE. And all of that sort of thing.
About time we get ourselves some truly "senior" leadership. About time we get to the point where "we are the champions... of the world."
You say I'm a dreamer? But I'm not the only civil one.
I also feel that this bleeds into society at large and that everyone could work on being a bit more positive and less threatening (or even perceiving things as more of an opportunity than a threat). This was a great read, thanks!
Please list these alleged leaders, who have been placed in positions of authority yet still suffer from uncontrollable social anxiety. Seriously, would you promote someone who is so terrified of others that it actually causes them to waste 40% of their productivity?
CEO's with these issues have to work on how they treat everbody.
A more humanly productive triad to employ is courage-neutrality-willingness (a.k.a self-initiation-non-attachment-engagement). Courage is the beginning of self-initiated behavior, of intrinsically motivated action. Neutrality enables people to be free from attachment to material outcomes or identification with labels and the associated either/or thinking that limits perspective and stifles creativity. Willingness is the energy field wherein open-mindedness opens up even further through reflective thinking and a widening concern for others.
Once a leader ceases viewing people as means to their ends and begins understanding people as ends in themselves, then he/she will be able to see the value in changing the triad upon which his/her approach to leading rests.
http://forprogressnotgrowth.com/2012/04/01/which-energy-fields-do-you-use/