For most Senior Managers and their organisations, times are tough. So tough, in fact, that paying attention to internal relationships can seem an indulgence. But, it gets worse. There’s growing anecdotal evidence that some managers use today’s business pressures as an excuse to neglect staff or to be rude.

If the managers reporting to you do not evidence this problem that’s just great. If, on the other hand, even just one of them shows a pattern of incivility you have to take action. So, why the urgency? This toxic behaviour of incivility corrodes performance.

Professors Christine Porath and Christine Pearson set themselves the task of gauging the impact of incivility on performance. As they put it, ‘”To understand the impact of incivility on performance, we polled several thousand managers and employees from a diverse range of US Companies about their responses to rudeness at work.”  They learned that among those at the receiving end,

             48% decreased their work effort,

            47% decreased their time at work,

            38% decreased their work quality,

            66% said their performance declined,

            80% lost work time worrying about the incident,

            63% lost time avoiding the offender, and

            78% said their commitment to the organisation declined

 At a time when organisations have no resources to spare (people, goodwill, money), we can ill afford incivility by managers.