Part I
Fear
Chapter 1
Other people
After being in business for a number of years, many organizations are graced with the dubious honour of some kind of scandal: a punch-up, a torrid and highly visible liaison, a stapler chucked across the office in a wild rage.
Iâm not talking about those stories.
Iâm interested in low-level bad behaviour: those apparently minor frustrations that appear to be routine, possibly even sanctioned by a business. Take simple, old-Âfashioned lack of civility.
Rudeness
One evening I go to see the comedian Michelle Wolf at the Leicester Square Theatre in London. Sheâs vivacious, sharp and holds the crowd captivated. As I always make the mistake of thinking other people spring fully formed to greatness, Iâm surprised to learn that Michelle had a very different life before stand-up comedy: she used to work on Wall Street, first for Bear Stearns and then, after its acquisition, for JP Morgan.
Michelle has said of her experience there: âThe way that my job on Wall Street helped me [with stand-up] is that, in the corporate world in general, sometimes people are so mean to you for absolutely no reason, and you just canât take it personally. People used to yell at me all the time, right in my face, and you just learn that itâs not about you. That helps in comedy a lot.â
I suppose itâs helpful that corporate life gave Michelle the resilience required for the gruelling business of stand-up, but â Âseriously? Why did she have to learn this from colleagues â adults in a highly professional environment? What happened to common civility?
Workplace rudeness is on the rise: 96% of US employees have been subject to workplace incivility and 99% have witnessed it. Between 1998 and 2005 the number saying they were treated rudely once or more per week almost doubled.
A head of marketing at a consultancy tells me, âMy boss openly criticises people in the business, all the time. He regularly calls people stupid or demeans the junior members of my team when they present to him. He snaps things like, âif youâre just going to read out the slide, donât botherâ.â
Another executive took voluntary redundancy from a professional services firm after âbattlingâ a new boss, based in the US, who never met her face to face: âMy first ever encounter with him was when he phoned me up and was yelling down the phone. I still donât know what I had done wrong.â
Itâs crushing when you come to realize that rude people and bullies donât disappear when you leave the playground behind: you just about recover from the first bunch at school only to encounter them again in the workplace. In fact, the workplace is a bit like school: itâs the same, arbitrary Âthrowing-together of very different personalities. You all have to get along, but how will it pan out? Those hopeful that reason and justice will prevail are probably the same ones who used to get their lunch money stolen.
On occasion, you may suspect that people missed out on their true vocation of a career in the dramatic arts. A VP of Programme Management tells me, âI had a boss who would say things like, âweâre going to take a baseball bat to so-and-soâ, or yell that weâd all go to prison if something didnât get done. That was his actual terminology.â
Of course, not everyone is horrible: most people in a workplace are lovely. However, it only takes a few rotten apples to ruin someoneâs day. And an abrasive attitude spreads. Christine Pearson and Christine Porath, the authors of The Cost of Bad Behavior, are experts in how workers react when treated rudely. In one study, they found that 25% of managers who admitted to having behaved badly said they had been uncivil because their own leaders acted rudely.
Perhaps there is a leader further up the ranks who is unpredictably fierce, which keeps everyone on edge. Perhaps he is jovial for a moment of small talk before launching into a sudden verbal tirade, meaning that everyone is constantly nervous in meetings. âSports-related chat ⊠last nightâs restaurant ⊠ha ha!â Then â SLAM! âWhy havenât you made your numbers?â This kind of leader prides themselves on being terrifying except with a few inner-circle chums. Thatâs tough on everyone else, who soon finds thereâs no way to get through to them. That is, unless they invent a time machine, go back twenty years and somehow happen to be their best friend in college.
This stuff gives most sensible people a headache: it doesnât take any more time to be polite than it does to be abrasive, and bullying appears utterly superfluous to the business of making money. This means that most forms of rudeness are, quite simply, an unacceptable power play. Rudeness says: I am more important than you. I need this from you and I do not care about you â not even enough to be civil. Ouch!
Who hijacked my radical candour?
Why are these individuals tolerated? Sometimes, people are misusing the idea of constructive conflict, which has become a buzzword in management circles. Itâs one of those trendy, Âcounterintuitive things, like it being fine to fail as long as you fail fast. Robust dialogue, candour, radical honesty â call it what you will â the idea is that companies discard their fake harmony in favour of constructive challenge, to get things out in the open. Olann Kerrison, a VP for a financial firm, loves the concept. âI hate that culture of everyone nodding but no one actually agreeing,â he tells me. âIt makes a mockery of meetings. People are constantly kowtowing to each other, out of some misplaced desire to avoid conflict. Then, all the real decisions happen in the corridor afterwards, and others feel out of the loop.â
The problem with constructive conflict is not the rationale, which is unarguably sound, but the fact that it can get hijacked by abrasive people, or those with a political agenda of their own. The idea is that you critique ideas not people, but it appears that not everyone has got the memo.
One executive at an international media company tells me, âIâve seen some horrific deliveries of âfeedbackâ. In one example, the victim put the phone down, left his house for two hours to calm down and then booked a week off, because he couldnât bear to be at work. People have no idea of the damage they can do.â
A marketing director agrees, telling me of the time she saw a colleague openly criticized in a meeting: âHe struggled to work with me afterwards, because Iâd seen him humiliated. The problem is that the damage doesnât stay contained in that moment â thereâs an invisible ripple effect. People carry it with them.â
One executive in an accountancy firm felt that ripple effect for himself: âOnce, in a meeting, I challenged a difficult peer about something heâd done wrong, keeping it neutral like youâre supposed to. He lashed out with a personal attack. âYou did this and that? Iâm very disappointed in you.â He made it utterly personal and emotive â all to distract from the fact he had made a mistake.â
When misused, robust dialogue gives people carte blanche to launch into unguarded criticism, protected by their assertion theyâre âjust telling it like it isâ. Too often, someone is left blindsided by the very public criticism theyâve just received. This can also be a great way to wound people twice: first be rude to them and then, if they react, imply theyâre not strong enough to take honest feedback.
Before too long, you can almost forgive people for finding they miss their nice, fake harmony. After all, if your peers can verbally lash out at any moment, how safe is it to raise your hand or voice an idea?
Favourites
Abrasive behaviour sometimes goes unchecked because the perpetrator is a favourite of the boss, meaning theyâre protected â even if theyâre unpleasant or inept.
A scientist working in the pharmaceutical industry tells me an all-too-familiar tale over lunch one...