What works: The power of nice

Tom Terez, writer for Workforce Magazine

Tom Terez’s e-mail over flows with tales of Snapes and snipers and other workplace vipers. What works better than mean? Nice. And he’s got the stats to prove it. Kenny Moore could win the Nobel Prize for being nice. Inspired by Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch, a children’s book that shows how simple kindness can transform lives, he began giving flowers to people in the workplace. The arrangements would arrive anonymously, with a thank-you balloon and a note: “Don’t ever think your good efforts go unnoticed. From someone who cares.”

Flowers went to males and females throughout Keyspan, where Moore is corporate ombudsman and director of human resources. People started buzzing about the mystery, and wherever they arrived, the flowers added joy to the workday. One manager even followed suit and sent flowers to congratulate a colleague on her promotion.

If only we could clone Kenny Moore and sprinkle his like throughout the work world. Being nice is powerful stuff, and here’s why: (1) The alternative stinks. Who wants to spend eight or more hours a day in a den of incivility? (2) When people have to deal with low-grade incivility and high-grade bullying from colleagues, their work suffers big-time. (3) The bottom line suffers, too.

Over the years, I’ve received an increasing number of calls and e-mails from people who can’t stop venting about their non-nice bosses and coworkers. “My manager is riding her broom again,” wrote one person. “This guy I work with is just like Snape,” wrote another, referring to the Harry Potter character who’s an expert potion-mixer and schemer. Yet another went on and on about the small daily indignities inflicted upon him by his boss. “He never lets anyone speak up at meetings. When I tried, he plastered a smile on his face until I finished. Then he asked, ‘Are you done now?’ What a jerk.”

Admittedly, there’s nothing nice about calling someone a witch, a Snape, or a jerk. And that’s part of the problem. Call it negative reciprocity. When people are on the receiving end of someone’s incivility or bullying, they want to dish it back. You wanna slam my idea? Alright, Einstein, let’s see what happens the next time you come up with something. You forget to send me that advance report? Fine, guess who just got deleted from my distribution list?

According to various studies on the subject, people are deeply concerned about our behavior toward one another. In a 1996 poll conducted by U. S. News & World Report, 89 percent of respondents described incivility as a serious problem; 78 percent said it had worsened in the past 10 years. Another study, concluded this year by the research group Public Agenda, found that four out of five Americans think that the “lack of respect and courtesy» has become «a serious problem and we should try to address it.”

In the workplace, incivility can spiral down into outright bullying. Included in this category are verbally harassing someone on a regular basis, withholding resources to guarantee failure, and spreading stories to undermine a person’s reputation in the workplace. One credible study, conducted by two researchers from Wayne State University, found that one in six workers in the sample group had suffered through destructive bullying in the past year.

On the one hand, it’s tempting to tell people to buck up and just deal with it. You’ve heard the rallying cries: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. To which I say: hogwash. Show me one credible study that shows that pushing people around is good for their psyches and good for long-term productivity, and I’ll personally sit down and eat every page of this magazine.

The only studies worth their salt say just the opposite. One of the best is from Christine Pearson, a management professor at the University of North Carolina’s graduate business school. She did in-depth research involving 775 people who had been on the receiving end of incivility at work. These employees had been demeaned in e-mails, falsely accused of trying to undermine projects, verbally taken apart by their bosses, and so on. (We’re not talking sexual harassment, racial discrimination, bullying, or workplace violence—just low-grade lousy behavior. ) The aftershocks went right to the bottom line.

28 percent lost work time trying to avoid the instigator.

53 percent lost work time worrying about the incident or future interactions.

37 percent reported a weakened sense of commitment to their organization.

46 percent thought about changing jobs to get away from the instigator.

12 percent did change jobs—to avoid the instigator.

To a large extent, fixing the problem begins with a brutally honest look in the mirror. In the Public Agenda study, 41 percent of the respondents fessed up and said that they’re at least occasional instigators of incivility in their workplace. That’s a promising statistic, in a way. It shows a level of awareness that’s necessary to start making things better.

Where are you in all of this? Are your actions creating a kinder workplace, an environment where all people are treated with deep respect day after day? Or are you among the 41 percent who are making things a bit rough for your coworkers? If you take time to think about it—if you rewind the tape and mentally replay some of your interactions with people—you’ll make big discoveries about yourself.

From there, you can decide on one or two things to do differently. For starters, be less inclined to give advice and more inclined to seek it. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Resist the urge to jump to conclusions about people and their motives; go to the source and get the facts. When things go wrong, avoid the blame game. It’s the system that usually fails, so fix the system, not the people.

Go out of your way to say thank you. If you’re overdue in showing gratitude, make up for lost time. When credit and compliments come your way, spread them around to all who helped. If you tend to send e-mails to colleagues who are an easy walk away, give the computer a rest. Get up, walk over, and have a no-tech conversation.

Gandhi was the ultimate nice guy, and he had it right: We must be the change we wish to see in the world.

Workforce, January 2003, pp. 22-24