Are we all becoming ruder at work?

Are you experiencing curtness, snapping or barked missives from your co-workers or managers? Are you yourself, in fact, sometimes guilty of being brusque in the office? If so, you or your team may be part of a worrying increase in discourteous behaviour towards colleagues.

A recent study by the American management consultancy company Gallup found that increased levels of stress is manifesting in good old-fashioned rudeness in the workplace. It supports 2022 research by Christine Porath, a professor of management at Georgetown University, which concluded that 76 per cent of workers experience incivility at least once a month.

Management expert Laura Ashley-Timms who, through her organisation, Star Manager, regularly works with companies to improve their leadership and productivity, is not surprised by this finding. “I see it linked to genuine overwhelm at work,” she says. “If people are shorter tempered, they are probably overwhelmed—it's a stress response. I don't think we are intentionally going around just being rude to each other, I think that sometimes when things happen, we are responding badly.”

To her, this impoliteness is also born from an increased level of disengagement in the workplace. With more of us experiencing high stress levels, it is natural to assume that a next step may be a sort of self-protective ambivalence—a retreat from caring about what feels like an insurmountable workload. In that space, a curt or careless approach to co-workers may unintentionally emerge.

“Right now, we are seeing the highest levels of disengagement that I have ever come across in my career; some companies are seeing as much as 90 per cent disengagement,” she says. “When you really passionately care about something, you think a little bit harder about how you might respond. I think the two come together: this massive disengagement and this massive stress level is affecting the way we are sometimes speaking to each other.”

This rudeness manifests in myriad ways but has varying degrees of potency depending on who is displaying it and to whom. If your manager is not minding their manners, it can be hugely destabilising. But how can you address it? Timms recommends honing a special set of skills to combat an issue greatly compounded by a hierarchical imbalance. “When you learn how to utilise the power of questions, you can use it to manage up really effectively.” She advises approaching managers with enquiries as opposed to accusations. Though this can seem tricky, encouraging your boss as delicately as possible to consider the impact of their actions can force a reckoning far more sustainable than simply declaring their behaviour unacceptable.

The power of questions is that it forces the perpetrator to interrogate the consequences of their behaviour. “It means they can learn in that moment to sort of take a breath and stop and think, actually, what's driving that behaviour?” Ashley-Timms says, adding that often tone and behaviour is unintentional and a result of contexts beyond the workplace. “You have to remember that they're not always like that. Maybe something's happened outside of work. Maybe they've been spoken to badly. Maybe they've been let down by a major client, or maybe they just lost a sale. If something's going on, sometimes the approach can be to ask to help with whatever this contributing issue might be.”

Ultimately, we’re all human beings, and getting to the heart of someone’s feeling can really help to diffuse a situation. “Even the best managers can have a bad day,” says Ashley-Timms. “Responding as a human being rather than as a subordinate can mean everything. Try and meet them where they are.”

But what if you yourself are the manager? Or indeed, if you have noticed or had it pointed out to you, that you are behaving rudely? What tools of self-regulation must you employ? They key, Ashley-Timms believes, is self-awareness.

“You need to learn to recognise that behavioural trigger,” she says. “Perhaps you're exhausted, or you might have done an all-nighter because you've been up with your children; there could be lots of different reasons why you might be short-tempered at work and not having your best day, but it is important to notice when these lead to you snapping at someone. Once you're noticing it, have a pause; instead of speaking, take a breath and ask a question instead. That invites someone else to contribute and take the space in that conversation.”

As with so many things, honesty is, once again, the best policy. A bit of humour doesn’t hurt either. “You can call yourself out,” she observes. “Say, I'm really sorry, I am being really short tempered, I don't mean to be quite so snappy right now. Explaining your perspective—that you’re tired, under pressure—goes a long way. When you do that, not only do you become more human and understandable to your colleagues, but you can also lighten the mood a little. Admitting that you're not having your best day can be a gamechanger.”

Ultimately, diffusing rudeness at work is not just a must for safeguarding the wellbeing of the workforce, it also is an imperative for productivity and talent retention. As Ashley-Timms notes: “Studies prove that over half of us will leave a job to get away from a poor relationship with a manager or bad behaviour at work.”

This article first appeared in harpersbazaar.com/uk in August 2024. 

Feature Image: Erin Simkin

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