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The Science of Incivility
An anonymous reader writes: Stress causes health issues — we've known this for years. But what's harder to figure out is what exactly qualifies as stress. It's easy to understand that working as an EMT or police officer can be stressful. But as medical researchers are beginning to learn, minor stress events common to all workplaces eventually add up — the cumulative stress from workplace incivility can have huge consequences for both health and performance. "A study published in 2012 that tracked women for 10 years concluded that stressful jobs increased the risk of a cardiovascular event by 38 percent. ... In [another] study, the experimenter belittled the peer group of the participants, who then performed 33 percent worse on anagram word puzzles and came up with 39 percent fewer creative ideas during a brainstorming task focused on how they might use a brick." Many people brush off efforts to be civil, saying they have too little time, or too much on their mind. But further studies have shown it takes very little — a smile here and there, or the occasional "thank you" — to have surprisingly strong effects on how people are perceived. The article argues that it's worth the effort, given the costs for failure.
The reasons for being people incivil seem rather petty. The most common reason I find myself getting short with people in working life is when they aren't listening or are otherwise ignoring reasonable questions and requests. Unfortunately a lot of people feel that if they blow someone off politely and then that person repeats the request or question in a more direct manner, that person has some kind of personality defect or "communication issue".
Typical conversation that is sure to end in problems:
I can't be the only one who has experienced this. Workplaces seem to be full of delicate snowflakes who either ignore any criticism of their work, and when they can't ignore it interpret it as 'incivility'. The article alludes to this though: it says there's often an inverse correlation between perceived politeness and competence. Perhaps people understand at some deeper level that people who are polite often don't get results, or don't tell it like it is.
There are other things that can make your life worse off, even though it might not seemingly cause any harm at all.
Feelings of negativity lead to negative health issues, namely being subjected to annoying, boring or outright enraging activities.
"Cringe-watching", the act of watching something you hate so much just to see how awful it is, has even been linked to health issues pretty damn well despite being a recent-ish thing.
But it just follows the same principle of being in a negative environment and having to do it regardless of your opinion or feelings.
On that note as well, boredom, boredom can lead straight to depression if you leave yourself in that situation for long periods of time.
Keep check of your overall mood every day. You'll probably be very surprised even if you thought you knew yourself.
All those negative and "neutral" feelings build up. Don't let them become the basis of your personality.
Get hobbies, make your job more fun, optimize how you work, do anything and everything to make your place of work better, everyone will benefit, including yourself.
It might seem fruitless, but things will tend to become better if everyone were to pitch in.
Even people that hate each other can open dialogue with each other in a calm environment and come to agreements.
It ain't no hippy dream, it can work. You just need to try.
Most people don't want to be dicks. They just do it out of necessity.
Doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, applies at all classes.
Something that has been in the news a few times is how some places are better to live than others.
I regularly see people from the USA strongly disputing this. How can anywhere possibly be better to live than the US? You have your Constitution, various amendments and some of you have a lot of money.
If this is right, perhaps it is to do with manners. So often your countryfolk seem brusque at best and just plain rude a lot of the time. This is definitely not all of you and not everyone in Denmark and Bhutan are amazingly polite at all times. What is evident though is that rudeness can be taken as a badge of honour in some places. In others politeness is seen as the target.
Example: A couple of years ago, I was taking part in a discussion about the treatment of transgender people. My attitude is that if someone has gone through all "that process", it is just good manners to call them what they want to be. This was taken by some that I am somewhere in the LGBTIQ... spectrum. I'm not. I'm straight white Northern European but also a (usually) polite Brit.
It would be interesting to compare where is supposed to be good and bad places to live with their local norms of politeness.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Not too long ago, a company spent US$100K or more to hire me and move me across the country to work for them. It was on a project I really believed in and wanted to make a serious contribution to. Unfortunately, my supervisor turned out to be a jerk, lacking in basic civility, and as soon as I could, I moved on. In principle, that company should be appalled, but in practice, they have no real monitoring to detect this sort of thing (and I'm certainly not going to tell them).
These days, when it comes to hiring, or being hired, I look for the basic ability to get along with people. Technical skill is a distant second. Lack of skill can be a problem, but jackasses are just boat anchors, dragging down the entire team.