Beyond Toxic Behaviors: Creating Work Cultures of Everyday Civility

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Short Description

The increase in divisiveness, incivility, and vulgarity is sadly accelerating. The seeming acceptability of these bullying behaviors ranges from general acquiescence to toxic work cultures. Presenters will highlight research on toxic behaviors and everyday civility and share evidence-based practices and activities to create cultures of everyday civility using organizational, team, and individual strategies. This workshop will address issues and methods at three strategic areas of the organization: leadership, organizational values, and team systems. In small groups, participants will explore the impact of toxic behaviors in their organizations, team strategies to disruptive toxic actions, and a whole systems approach to creating a culture of everyday civility in their own organizational systems.

Detailed Abstract

Intense interest in civility (and its negative counterpart, incivility) has been growing exponentially in the past ten years. Throughout the world there has been increased concern with growing incidence of workplace abuse and its effect on employee morale, organizational performance, and personal well being (Kusy & Holloway, 2009; 2014; Pearson & Porath, 2010; Twale & De Luca, 2008; Walton & Cohen, 2007). Workplace bullying and mobbing has become of such serious concern that the British government has issued a white paper on policies and procedures to guide leaders. In the United States two former presidents have been called to co-lead the National Institute for Civil Discourse established in response to the shooting of an Arizona representative, Hon. Gabrielle Giffords, during a campaign stopover. After a decade of research (Rosenstein & O’Daniel, 2008) demonstrating unequivocally that 80% of medication errors were due to disruptive behavior by a staff member, the healthcare profession in the US has mandated that all accredited hospitals must have policies to deal directly with the perpetrator regardless of professional role or position.

Unfortunately, leaders in organizations have used performance management methods unsuccessfully to deal with “toxic” behaviors and restore civility to the workplace. Research has revealed that 94% of workers have worked with an abusive or uncivil person (Kusy & Holloway, 2009); 12% of these individuals quit their jobs (Pearson & Porath, 2010). Our own international work in this arena has led us to coin a term—“everyday civility”—to indicate that respectful engagement is not a product of a training program but something that needs to be modeled everyday by all stakeholders in an organization. Those who remain on the job are less committed to the organization and less productive. The Level Playing Field Institute found that 13 percent of those who reported “unfairness” and experienced humiliation as the primary factor, discouraged others from using their employer’s products; 27% reported that bullying resulted in their strongly discouraging others from taking jobs at their employer (Level Playing Field Institute, 2007). Because incivility and toxic behaviors quickly spiral throughout the culture of an organization (Andersson & Pearson, 1999), a “whole systems approach” to the problem of incivility must be initiated to be successful in rebuilding a culture of respectful engagement.

In this workshop we will address issues and methods at three strategic areas of the organization—leadership, organizational values, and team systems. Specifically, we will facilitate how ILA participants could engage:
• Evidence-based strategies for leadership engagement,
• The design of cultures built on everyday civility values, and
• Team strategies that emphasize a systems approach to disable disruptive actions and build respectful engagement in everyday operations.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, participants should be able to:

• Develop a broad understanding of how everyday civility and toxic behaviors impact organizational, team, and individual performance
• Apply a model of everyday civility to leadership practice and leadership development programs
• Design strategies to integrate everyday civility into their organization's performance management system
• Use a template that identifies the specific financial cost of toxic behaviors based on the independent variables of:
o Number of employees
o Average organizational salary
• Recognize the key ingredients for individual feedback and remedial coaching for individuals engaged in toxic behaviors from the following contexts:
o Direct reports
o Peers
o Bosses / leaders
• Leave the workshop with at least 3 new practical, concrete methods that ILA participants may engage with their clients or colleagues in this area.

Experiential Activities:

• Presenters will introduce the workshop by identifying key toxic behaviors and those systems that enable these behaviors to continue and be reinforced (15 minutes)
• In small groups, participants will discuss the impact of these toxic behaviors in their own organizational systems (10 minutes)
• In these same small groups, participants will calculate the financial cost of toxic behaviors in their own organizations systems in which they work or consult (10 minutes).
• In the large group, information will be shared from each of the small groups; facilitators will aggregate into themes and presenting challenges (10 minutes).
• In small groups, participants will design a whole systems approach to creating a culture of everyday civility in their own organizational systems (15 minutes)
• After large-group sharing of their small group work, the facilitators will lead a discussion on how to engage several templates for enhancing team and individual performance associated with everyday civility, as well as decreasing concomitant toxic behaviors (20 minutes).
• The facilitators will close the session with a synthesis of next steps from the work done today (10 minutes).

Sub Unit

• Business Leadership

Presenters

• Mitchell Kusy, Antioch University

• Elizabeth L. Holloway, Antioch University