“A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.” – Bill Watterson
The first incidence of rudeness on the earth recorded in the Bible can be found in Genesis Chapter 4. After God accepted the sacrifice of Abel and rejected that of Cain, the latter killed the former. God asked Cain: “Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain told a liar and showed great disrespect to God. What happened to Cain? Read the rest of the story in the biblical book of Genesis.
In simple terms, rudeness indicates lack of respect for other persons. Rudeness denotes incivility, misconduct, deviance and shameful behaviour. It shows lack of workplace decorum and courtesy. Rudeness is part of the unpleasant and ugly workplace culture which affects employees, customers and perhaps the community. Rudeness is inappropriate, indecent and offensive.
According to the findings by Christine Porath and Amir Erez in their write-up: How Rudeness Takes Its Toll – Can Civility Lead to a Spiral of Aggression and Tarnish a Culture? –
In Australia a recent study suggested that rudeness is experienced frequently and that it leaves a memorable and confronting impression on the mind (Phillips & Smith, 2004). In England former Prime Minister Tony Blair asserted that lack of respect was one of the top problems facing the United Kingdom (Rice-Oxley, 2006). It seems that Blair and other international leaders, such as former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard (Stephens, 2004), believe that an uncivil environment has a negative effect on people – even if they’re just ‘around it’. (Emphasis mine)
Rude behaviours
People will have what they consider as rudeness and what they view as respect. For some, speaking loudly, interrupting when others are conversing and showing facial dramatic expressions do not constitute rudeness. Some persons may consider being addressed without their titles disrespect. Others may feel disregarded when their direct reports call them by their first names. We grow up within different cultures, socialize in different ways and are trained in different educational institutions.
Wherever we find ourselves, I think we should be polite, courteous and respectful. Rudeness will cause companies to lose big and small customers as well. If rude behaviours permeate organisations, their corporate reputation will be affected. Consequently their market share will drop.
Let us look at what people will consider as rudeness.
- Use of insulting words on employees whether by a manager or a non- manager.
- Despising employees and discrediting the contributions of colleagues.
- Refusing to take reasonable instructions from a supervisor, manager or team leader.
- Displaying snobbish attitude towards a colleague or customer.
- Passing a ridiculous remarks concerning a staff, service provider or customer.
- Unnecessary interjections or interruptions in the conversations among colleagues.
- Passing frivolous comments at office functions.
- Making or receiving personal calls while serving customers.
- Polishing one’s face while serving customers or while customers are waiting to be served.
- Chatting whiles others are waiting on you to serve them.
- Ignoring the concerns of customers.
- Refusing to respond to the emails of customer enquiries.
- Deliberately delaying a customer who corrected you for wrong doing.
- Shouting on staff and customers.
- Fighting with staff or customers.
- Quarrelling with staff and customers.
- Giving cheeky answers to customers’ making enquiries.
- Impolite responses to customer’s calls on the phone. (Failure to apply telephone courtesy.)
- Making disparaging remarks about a customer’s or staff’s physique.
- Exhibiting funny gestures towards clients.
- Looking down on customers or staff.
- Refusing to respond to greetings from customers, visitors or staff.
- Impolite gesticulations.
- Falsely accusing staff or customers.
- Call people names and laugh at them.
- Speaking with hostile tone.
- Being physically disruptive. (Throwing things around when angry or kicking things while a leader or employee is speaking to you.)
- Communicating or serving a customer without any eye contact.
- Rushing customers to speak very fast.
- Making a staff or customer feel that he knows nothing or he is very ignorant.
This list is not exhaustive though but gives a good idea about rude behaviours.
Effects of rudeness
Rude behaviours can be counterproductive, demotivating and detrimental. Such behaviours can lead to division in the organisation and cause psychological harm to people.
From their research work, Trapped By A First Hypothesis: How Rudeness Leads to Anchoring published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Professor Trevor Foulk (from the Maryland Smith Research Management and Organization) and his team observed how the experience of rudeness saps a lot of peoples’ psychological resources and narrows their mindset or perspective. The research revealed that “In simulations, we’re finding that mortality is increased by rudeness. People could be dying because somebody insulted the surgeon before they started operating”.
Rudeness negatively impacts on employees output and spurs on negative emotions in organisations. It can create anger and generate retaliating spirits.
In his article titled Managing Disrespectful Employees, Sean Peek observed that “Employees who are disrespected by their co-workers feel more comfortable treating others the same way, which ends up creating a toxic workplace, research has found”. Such a toxic organizational atmosphere hinders the nurturing and maintaining good interpersonal relationships and brings down team spirit. Disrespectful staff can undermine their team members and lead to the creation of bad models for others to emulate.
This bad conduct of rudeness can cause an organisation to lose some of its best team players. Such best performers may not leave the organisation alone but may pull along other star employees and prominent and influential customers. These will affect the fortunes of the organisations and lead to plummeting of profits.
Rudeness, which creates a toxic working environments does not promote effective communication. It affects collaboration, cooperation and coordination. It breeds ill feelings, humiliation and psychological discomfort. It leads to moodiness and tension. Daniel Goleman had this to say: “Groups perform better when they foster a state of internal harmony. Such groups leverage the full talent of their members…But the single dimension that mattered most was the human element-how members interacted with each other and those the team connected with. Several competencies of star performers are rooted in the basic human talents of social coordination…”
Pouring of insults on employees and denigrating staff can result in fear and committing of many mistakes on the job. It can cause employees to withdraw and isolate themselves and also create inferiority complex in them when they are looked down upon and despised.
Those found guilty of displaying rudeness may be warned, punished or dismissed.
It must also be noted that where rudeness operates and prevails, employees may hide information from rude colleagues or delay the releasing of information to them and thereby affecting job performance.
The canker of rudeness breeds hatred and bitterness in work organisations. It stifles cordiality, building of bonds and rapport, team performance, sharing of ideas and professional knowledge.
Compounding incidents of rudeness in an organisation may also cause stress.
How to handle rudeness
It is not only staff of the middle and lower echelons who must respectful. All employees and appointees, including Chief Executive Officers and Members of Boards or Councils are expected to be respectful, pleasant and professional. All must be explicitly made aware of this.
A toxic work environment with rudeness must be transformed into one, where respect for one another is upheld, as it creates a positive work culture. Management must not underrate the leaven of rudeness. It must not be allowed to be embedded and grow within the work culture.
“Never respond to rudeness. When people are rude to you, they reveal who they are, not who you are. Don’t take it personally. Be silent.” – Unknown. This is a good advice. But it does not apply in all cases.
Ideally, every work organisation must put in place a code of conduct to regulate the behaviours and attitudes of employees. The code must be shared for every staff to have a copy. Staff must be reminded of the content of the code of conduct at their internal training sessions, departmental staff meetings, staff durbars and in the newsletters. This will help in restraining and controlling rudeness. Sanctions must be well spelt in the code and enforced.
Respect for people must be a standard in every working institution. Workers must understand the importance and benefits of respect as it creates a good working environment for collaboration and sharing of ideas. They must appreciate one another, treat staff, service providers and customers with dignity, listen to the opinion of others, avoid rubbishing the ideas and views of others and speak with kindness and patience. Through these, employees may be motivated, work can be done faster, communication will be more effective, and innovative solutions can also evolve.
If there is the need to give a feedback on a rude behaviour, do that at the appropriate time because responding in the heat of a display of rudeness might not solve the problem. Calmness may be a better option.
Concerns of those who feel disrespected, disregarded, bullied, ignored, abused or harassed must be noted by a manager/team leader and investigated if necessary. The guilty staff can be invited, advised and warned to desist from such conduct. A record must be kept if necessary.
Employees must be humble, esteem self-respect and respect for others and also learn to appreciate the culture and views of others.
Senior management executives must not encourage (directly or indirectly) their relations or favourites in the organisation to misconduct themselves. They must also not shield them from being disciplined and sanctioned. If some employees feel they are “untouchable”, then they may continue to be rude.
Senior managers, managers and team leaders must refrain from insulting their direct reports. They should stop embarrassing and disgracing them at seminars and meetings. An encouragement for them to overcome their challenges or weaknesses and excel is good. Giving them support and helping with some effective or pragmatic strategies are better.
An inspiring story
‘How can leaders demonstrate respect to win employees and gain returns? Doug Conant, the former CEO of Campbell’s Soup, serves as a great example. When Conant assumed leadership in 2001, the company had lost half market value, sales were declining, the business was collapsing, and there had been a series of layoffs. The company’s toxic environment prompted a Gallup manager to describe the company’s engagement as “the worst [he had] ever seen among the Fortune 500.” Conant turned things around in large part by showing employee’s respect. During his tenure as CEO, he wrote more than 30,000 individualized notes of thanks to his 20,000 employees. He took every opportunity to connect with people and make them feel valued. And the results showed. By 2010, employees were setting all-time performance records, including out-pacing the S&P by five-fold.’ (Christine Porath – Half of Employees Don’t Feel Respected by Their Bosses)
Conclusion
Please, listen to some words of wisdom:
** “Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” – 1 Corinthians 5:6
** “Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.” – Johann W. Von Goethe
** One writer also noted that “workplace rudeness stinks”.
** “If you are rude, cynical, habitually sarcastic or pessimistic, your life options are going to be very limited.” – Bryant McGill
** “Rudeness can destroy collegiality and teamwork, extinguish negotiations across countries or parties, obliterate sportsmanship and safety, and encourage aggression, crime and deviance.” – Christine Porath and Amir Erez
