A Vote for Civility
Curious about how to foster civility in today's divisive world? Join me as I share a personal story from my first voting experience in 1984, which sparked a lifelong appreciation for civic engagement and respectful dialogue. As we face Election Day 2024, the heightened political climate underscores the importance of psychological safety and mutual respect in the workplace. Managers and supervisors, this episode is a must-listen for you—find out how you can be pivotal in creating an inviting and respectful work environment, regardless of differing personal views.
Links and Resources from the Episode:
Click here for SHRM's free Civil Conversations Kit
Click here for SHRM's website
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
"A Vote for Civility"
Original Publish Date: 11/5/2024
Host: John Broer
John Broer: All right, welcome back to all of our friends out there in the Bosshole Transformation Nation. This is your host, John Broer, on this special Election 2024 edition of the Bosshole Chronicles. Wait, don't get freaked out. We're not going to be talking about the election. We're just going to be talking about what's on a Tuesday and today happens to be election day. Let's start to talk about civility because I think that's on everybody's mind. We're going to talk about it in the context of the workplace, and what do managers and supervisors, what role do they play in terms of civility and helping to create a more inviting, safe and civil workplace? So let's jump in.
The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode. It's so good to have you here joining me today, and I wanted to make this a special episode, since it is election day 2024. And I actually get very excited about election day.
As an American citizen, the privilege of being able to vote is something that I do not take lightly and I think a lot of Americans take it very seriously simply because you know, we live in the longest existing constitutional republic in human history, which is really amazing to think about, and in a few years we're going to celebrate our 250th anniversary of our republic. When you think about the millions of lives that have been sacrificed, the families that have given the ultimate sacrifice on the altar of freedom, just to quote Abraham Lincoln, it is an amazing privilege and, at the same time, this season of campaigning and the election brings out a level of incivility that has really been building, I think, for a long time, and I don't believe. Quite frankly, either side, if you will and there seem to be many different sides, but either side can claim that they hold the high ground on civility. But I want to look at it in the context of the workplace and, of course, this is not a political podcast, nor will it be. I'm just using today as a conduit to be able to talk about civility in the workplace and the responsibility that managers and supervisors have to create a workplace that is safe, that is transparent, but also maintains a perspective on what we do in the workplace and how we can function in the workplace. Even though people come into the workplace with many different perspectives and thoughts and opinions about whether it's an election or any kind of subject or topic within society, the manager sort of holds that very unique responsibility of creating an environment that helps us focus on really why we're there at work but, at the same time, showing that respect and compassion and understanding for our colleagues that are around us. What's really kind of interesting right now is you're hearing people talking about well-being and a mental health crisis as a result of this election.
I personally would like to think that our republic is strong enough that it can, no matter what the result is, that it is strong enough to be able to weather a shift, because it's really built and designed that way a shift in political parties, a shift in terms of topics and issues that we face when it comes to election year. Because guess what, on November 6th Wednesday, we all got to get up and go back to work, don't we? It's very easy to get caught up in all of the rhetoric and the opinion and the spin that takes place, but I've always just said look, we live in an amazing place, we have been blessed with this constitutional republic and I believe it will weather whatever happens on the 5th, but I do know that on the 6th we all got to get up and go back to work, and when we go to work and I'm speaking to our managers and supervisors out there how do we embrace the idea of creating an environment where, again, there is a degree of psychological safety that people can come in and, even though they may have very differing views, we can do our work in a way that is still effective? We can look at each other and respect each other as colleagues, even though we may be looking at life or have a worldview that is very different from one another. I'm going to walk back a little bit in terms of just some very fond memories that I have of election years. By the way, 2024 represents the 40th anniversary of the first year that I got to vote. It was back in 1984 that I got to vote in my first presidential election, and I remember that because it was Ronald Reagan's second term. I was so excited about being able to vote, and so this represents four decades that I've been able to vote, whether it's in the presidential election or the midterms or locally and locally is more important, actually, but to be involved in the process, because if you want to make a change in your community, in your country, then you have to exercise your right to vote.
My earliest memory of the voting process my father took me to vote one Tuesday morning and a lot of you will not remember this. Some of you will, but it was one of those voting booths that you stepped into and it had this big crank that you pulled to the right and a curtain closed behind you and there were all these little switches on the wall. This is super old school voting, very analog, which was great, and I don't know if and I think some people are saying maybe we ought to go back to that. Some are thinking that that's more reliable, but it was really cool because it had all these little levers and the candidates and the issues were listed there and I thought at first it looked very confusing. But of course my father had, and my parents always did their research and they always looked very carefully at the issues, looked very carefully at the candidates and they would actually just flip those little levers and then he flipped it and when, then you would pull that lever back to the other side and the curtain would open and all of your votes would be tallied. That was it. And so he then took me to school and I thought, wow, this is really special. This is very important. This is something he is sharing with me. But what it instilled in me I was blessed with parents that helped me to understand the importance of this, that helped me to understand the importance of this, and from that point on, I was just really intrigued and I appreciated how critical that was.
And I was also having a conversation recently with a friend just about what's happening today in our society and through the media and social media and this vitriol, this rhetoric that is dark and is taking a turn. You know, during an election cycle, the rhetoric, the criticisms, the attacks, they get amplified and again it comes from every side. There is no one side or party that I think can lay claim to the higher ground on civility or truth or accuracy. And at the same time, when you start to think about what's happening right now, we are beginning to lose a sense of civility, and when I think about civility, I think about things like compassion and peacemaking and respect, and these are all things that we've talked about on the Bosshole Chronicles. We've had some wonderful subject matter experts on here to talk about those sort of things, but I've wanted to talk about civility and a rebirth, if you will, or a renaissance of civility, not just in our culture and our communities and within our families, because elections and this sort of stuff should not divide people. Ultimately, what we should be doing is coming together, and I think that will happen again at some point. But I really wanted to dig into this idea of civility and what is the manager and supervisor's role in creating an environment where there is a higher degree of civility in the workplace, because this stuff can spill over into the workplace and, let's face it, it does.
A lot of you listening out there, you know that there have been conversations in the workplace about politics and candidates and issues and all this other stuff. I have no problem having those conversations, but I also realize that there are people out there that may have very, very different views than I do, and I go back to something that it was Voltaire said, the French philosopher and writer. Voltaire said that I may not agree with what you say or believe, but I will defend to my death your right to say it and believe it. I'm paraphrasing a little bit there. I'm also recalling back into the 1980s when I got to start voting, Ronald Reagan was the president and the Speaker of the House was Tip O'Neill, and Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan were famous for butting heads and disagreeing, I mean vehemently, on specific issues that had to do with the country. But there were always the stories that at the end of the day that Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill could get together and have a cocktail, have a scotch, and sit down and be very civil and understand that even though we disagree strongly with each other. I respect your right and I acknowledge your right to feel that way. I will defend that right and at the same time we can sit down and have civil discourse and dialogue and relationship even though we disagree.
Now I think some of you would say boy, we're so far past that. I don't think so. I do believe that the intensity has been amplified a lot when it comes to the mainstream media and our social media. Ultimately, I think we make those decisions individually and our supervisors when it comes to this kind of stuff spilling into the workplace potentially, and incivility starting to infect our organizations.
Now I want to point everybody to some research that's been done by the Society for Human Resource Management, and that organization is called SHRM, and we've actually cited a number of different SHRM resources over the years in the Bosshole Chronicles. SHRM has proven to be a great resource for us and we always encourage our listeners whenever we cite something, to go check it out. So go to the SHRM website and look at their information on civility and incivility. Look at their information on civility and incivility. As a matter of fact, it was back in December of 2022. Go look at our previous show with Dr Alex Alonso. He is the Chief Knowledge Officer from the Society for Human Resource Management and he was talking about the work that they do their research.
But this information I'm going to share with you today is their research on their civility index. The reason I'm sharing this is because our managers play such a critical role in maintaining civility and calm in the workplace. In their study, as a matter of fact, they found that 62% of US workers agree that a manager has ignored acts of incivility in the workplace. So, again, we don't want our managers and supervisors to drift into the boss hole zone and when they recognize, we certainly don't want them to be a source of incivility. We want them to be in a position to help advocate for a civil workplace.
Let me just give you a little bit of background on this. At the start of 2024, SHRM actually created this Civility Index to gauge the understand trends in civility within US society as well as the workplace. So what they started doing back in May of 2024 is a pulse survey to measure civility within the workplace and since May of 2024, there has been a 17.4% increase of incivility within the workplace. And they are saying within the workplace there are about 140,000 acts of incivility every minute. So since May of 2024 till August of 2024, there was actually this increase in incivility.
And one of the other things that they do is they actually calculate what the cost is, the cost of incivility. And one of the other things that they do is they actually calculate what the cost is. The cost of incivility in the workplace, according to SHRM, is over $2 billion and this is the collective daily loss by US organizations from reduced productivity and absenteeism due to incivility. So it's not sort of this esoteric issue of people being uncivil to one another. Incivility in the workplace is actually costing American businesses, according to SHRM, over $2 billion a year. So what can managers and supervisors do to help remedy and rectify this and move it in the right direction? All right, we need to break the cycle of incivility, and because what happens is when people experience incivility, they tend to be uncivil toward others.
One of the other things that SHRM did is they were thinking up what are the issues, what are the things that are actually, as they say, fueling the fire of incivility within the workplace here in the United States? There were five that they identified specifically. One of them was disagreements on social issues. Well, wow, that is at the heart of what's going on right now within our election cycle. There are generational gaps, which we've talked about. You know, we have five different generations in the workplace right now. That's just a normal dynamic with any workforce that continues to evolve. The third one that they list is the direction of the US society. I don't think that would shock anybody. Here's a big one political viewpoints. So the incivility one of the components that's actually fueling this is our political viewpoints that are permeating the workplace and being vocalized. And then another one is racial or ethnic differences. So within the workplace, it's become a reflection or a microcosm of what's happening in society, and so these things are infiltrating the workplace.
So what can managers do? Okay, what can managers hope to do when it comes to managing and mitigating the level of incivility within the workplace? Would go to the SHRM website, shrmorg, and, again, a membership to SHRM is not expensive. They have something called the SHRM Civility Starter Kit, so, again, you can search for that. I can't put the link in there because I'm a member of SHRM. I can't put the link in there, you have to go and actually get it.
But they talk about five steps for encouraging civil conversations at work. And so, again, managers, supervisors, we're doing this, we are teeing this up for you, because you can be a catalyst for good and a catalyst for civility within the workplace. Again, one of the things that SHRM talks about is that they believe that civility is a cornerstone of workplace culture that allows people and businesses to thrive. A lack thereof means that we are going to struggle in performance and our relationships can be broken, and that, of course, is not something that we want to have happen. So I just want to run through these five steps really quick and you can go in and get the details.
But the five steps to encourage civil conversations at work? Number one is to educate yourself and, as they say, it is crucial to equip yourself with knowledge and the understanding of the current state of civility and incivility in both the workplace and society at large. I think I would. I mean again as a manager, I wouldn't want to try to tackle society's ills and the challenges we face in society, but what can I control? I can control or I can oversee and help to facilitate discussions around civility in my workplace, within my team. So you can go in and download this civility index. They have a. You know, shrm has a great infographic that walks through the same statistics that I shared with you, but they talk about in step one and educating yourself is that civility is a business imperative. A lack of civility in the workplace leads to lower job satisfaction, less innovation, higher likelihood of people leaving and higher turnover. So right there, educating yourself and having conversations around it.
Step two is to establish shared understanding of civility, creating a common language within your team, within your organization, of what civility looks like. So if you go back to September, you will find a wonderful two-part episode with Joyce Chen, who is from the Conscious Leadership Group, and she talks about the 15 commitments of conscious leadership, and we get from this organization the idea of what are behaviors that are above the line and below the line, and so civility obviously is going to be, and the components of civility are going to be, the things that are above the line. So that would be a great reference to create a shared understanding of civility within the workplace, for example, asking each team member to share their thoughts on what constitutes civil behavior and uncivil behavior in a work setting. And by doing this together we can create that common ground, those expectations and understandings that can help us work together more effectively. Number three is establish and foster team norms for mutual respect. So what does this look like? Well, it means again involving team members in setting those norms of what civil and uncivil looks like and then maybe even evaluating some of the existing norms to ensure that they align and foster mutual respect and psychological safety. Now, you know, at Real Good Ventures, if you've got a team that is struggling, we have the capacity to measure psychological safety within a team, and that's actually a really good place to start, because some of the norms that just happen automatically within a team that's why they're called norms may actually foster uncivil behavior or a degree of incivility, and so talking about that helps to define these norms. We will actually fall below the line just to draw on point number two and these norms. We want to reinforce these on point number two, and these norms. We want to reinforce these. These are good and these help us to be civil to one another. So establish those norms for mutual respect.
The fourth one is to promote a culture of civility. Now, this goes more broadly to the organization, but, for example, modeling respectful behavior. Always speak and act respectfully toward everyone, regardless of their role or opinion. This not only has to do with your words, but it also has to do with your non-verbal communication. People bring up certain topics or issues and you could get an eye roll or a grimace or a frown from somebody. You are conveying a lot more non-verbally than you are verbally. So for managers and supervisors, check yourself, not only your words, but also your non-verbals, in terms of how you react and respond to some of these more sensitive issues.
So once again, I go back to what Voltaire said, I may disagree with what you believe or what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to believe or say that I need to convey, verbally and non-verbally, that this setting, this conversation, can happen. And again you may decide that, listen, this is an important topic and I do want to discuss it with you. I'd like to set some time aside when I can be fully present to have this conversation. That can also be a way to create that civil discourse and a setting that is more civil in having those conversations. And the other thing for managers is be consistent. Actually for everybody is be consistent. Apply the same standards of civility to everyone, including yourself, in my guess. And we all know that there are biases that exist within the human dynamic. We tend to gravitate to people that think the way, behaviors, wiring, ideas and perspectives. And as managers and supervisors, I just think it's important to maintain a degree of neutrality Doesn't mean that you're abandoning your principles. It means that in the workplace, I want to create a setting that has a high degree of psychological safety, that demonstrates respect, peacemaking, compassion and civility consistently across the board. And so, again, that is where, for organizations, your leaders, your managers, your supervisors need to understand this and embrace it.
And then the final one. The fifth step is become a catalyst for civility. So I actually think it's very clever actually that Sherm actually published Cards Against Incivility. I don't know if any of you have played the game Cards Against Humanity it's very interesting and I will leave it at that, but Cards Against Incivility. And so these cards are actually available to be able to practice civil dialogue within your team. And actually SHRM does have a free tool it's called the Civil Conversations Kit and I'll put that link in the show notes so you could go and get that and that is something that you can get to start to create those civil conversations. So I give credit to SHRM because they have so many great resources.
But this is specifically talking about civility in the workplace and for managers and supervisors, and again, that's our focus here at the Bosshole Chronicles. I'm simply sharing this because it happens to fall on election day 2024, but my encouragement to our managers, our supervisors, our business leaders that listen to this podcast make civility a primary initiative in your organization. Make it something that we help our managers and supervisors understand how to foster and facilitate a workplace that reflects civility, that respects individual perspectives and at the same time just going back to what Joyce Chen said. There are things that are above the line that we want to encourage in our workplace, but there are things that are below the line that we will not accept, and we're not afraid to hold people to account when that happens. That distinction helps us to move in a direction that is going to be healthier, that is going to be better, and what I would like to see is and I've heard people saying well, you know, after election day, we're going to have some, it's going to be a mental health crisis and we're going to have people that are depressed and I'm thinking you know what? I hope that doesn't happen.
It is my hope and my prayer that on Wednesday we wake up, we go to work, we understand that our process is moving us in a particular direction, whether we like it or not. We are all committed as citizens of this amazing nation, but also, more specifically, people that work together. That we understand that we have a job to do and we're going to employ some tools that allow us to do that job and still have very differing perspectives, whether it's socially or politically, whatever that may be. That we can come together with mutual respect, compassion, peacemaking, civility and do this amazing work that we get to do every single day. Again, I think about Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill and, while they may have disagreed vehemently, being able to sit down and have that scotch or that cup of coffee and realize that ultimately they did have common ground and purpose. So I appreciate you listening into this. I hope you have an amazing day.
I hope our managers and our supervisors that are listening out there realize what an important role you play in creating an atmosphere and a culture within an organization that is positive and helpful and strong in terms of bringing people together and, going back to everything that we talk about here at the Bosshole Chronicles helping people find meaning and fulfillment in their work. And that starts with job fit and manager fit and then it moves to team fit and ultimately, culture fit. And when those things align and they absolutely can and we get to be in the business of helping organizations do that that is when you do truly find meaning and fulfillment with these amazing and different and diverse people with whom we get to work. Keep listening in everybody. Check the show notes for that link to that free tool. I will also put a link to SHRM's website so you can go look for their starter kit on civility and the info graphic that they have available and use that. Use it in good health, but, more importantly, for those managers out there, realize that you can be a catalyst for such amazing and good things. We are just here, in a small way, to help you stay on that path.
So thanks for listening, everybody, and we will see you next time on the Bosshole Chronicles. Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Bosshole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here, and if you have your own Bosshole story that you want to share with the Bosshole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. Again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. We'll see you next time.
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