What is wrong with your team you wonder? So-and-so is passive aggressive. Someone else is a mean behind-the-back gossip. It seems like someone is always on the outs and you are getting tired of all the drama. As a manager, how do you stop rude team behavior before the entire division turns toxic?
More likely than not you’ve experienced rude behavior from those around you. Behavior such as someone using their cellphone in a movie theater or a person cutting in line at the grocery store seems obvious that the offenders are oblivious to people around them. Sure, these examples of rude behavior are unfavorable, but they’re easy to move on from. After you leave the theater or the grocery store, the rudeness is no longer an issue and you can move on with the rest of your day.
Unfortunately, when rude team behavior extends to the workplace, it causes a negative ripple throughout all levels within the company. A boss who rolls his hand encouraging his employees to talk faster demonstrates rude behavior. A manager who doesn’t take her eyes off the computer screen during your entire conversation demonstrates rude behavior, too. They set the tone for the entire office. Their rude team behavior actually gives others the permission to act poorly, too.
Rude team behavior is contagious in workplaces. With sloppy group norms of behavior and no enforcement of better behavior, rude behavior becomes normal.
After leaders are rude to their employees, employees start acting rudely toward one another with financial repercussions. Rude behavior disrupts productivity and employee engagement. Talented employees who know their skills are marketable eventually leave due to the hostility and incivility rude team behavior encourages.
The financial impact of Incivility costs about $14,000 per employee in lost productivity and work time. For this reason, employers can’t afford to sweep bad behavior under the rug. The solution for disrupting this cycle is addressing the broken culture norms behind it. From a TIGERS® perspective there are measurable principles of high functioning teams that correct the issue quite easily.
The TIGERS 6 Principles™ correct rude team behavior in the workplace
What is necessary to build and ethical, quality-focused, cooperative, productive and highly successful working group of people? This is a question I asked before enrolling in my advanced degree in Organizational Leadership at Gonzaga University. In order to answer the question, I studied current research in Business, Education and Psychology group dynamics.
Out of this Meta analysis, six principles emerged. They are trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk resolution and success. The six principles form the acronym TIGERS®.
Once these principles emerged, the next task was to see if they are measurable within group behavior. I wrote a survey and with the help of Gonzaga’s psychology department four years later and after two independent evaluations, the results were conclusive. Not only could each of the six principles be measured within team behavior, they could also prescribe team interventions and training that would transform adequate work groups into exceptional ones.
Of the six TIGERS principles, behaviors that correct genuineness, empathy and trust also correct rude team behavior. The key is measuring the group’s dynamic to determine what actions to take and which leaders to coach for the best measurable return on training and workforce development investment.
TIGERS® group norm facilitation corrects rude team behavior in the workplace
TIGERS® Success Series and licensed TIGERS consultants offer group behavior norm facilitation that teaches leaders and employees the behaviors that build agile and high performance organizations. With a growing number of qualified consultants in the United States and Canada, group behavior norm facilitation engages employees and leaders to identify explicit behavior that builds a constructive workforce. Once developed, the productive group behavior norms are easy to identify and measure going forward.
This frees managers to actually grow the business rather than dealing with repeated drama with all the financial ramifications mentioned above. When the results produce cost savings or productivity improvements that enhance the organization’s bottom line both hostility and incivility are minimized.
TIGERS Manager as Facilitator Training measurably corrects rude team behavior
A strong workplace culture is created through intentional strategies modeled by employees throughout every level of the organization. This means that manager buy-in is essential for a workplace culture to be successful.
One way to get leaders on board and invested is by offering training that actually gets organizational work done within the training design. The TIGERS Manager as Facilitator Training™ improves cooperation among employees and departments for high performance results.
The bottom line is that building high performance employee teams does not evolve by chance. It requires intention and commitment on the part of leaders to facilitate group dynamics the right way. Managers who are good facilitators bring people together to work toward solutions, and as a result, groups accomplish more with high levels of commitment and accountability.
The TIGERS Workforce Behavioral Profile™ offers three surveys in one to assess existing group cooperation and high-performance team behavior, as well as to offer actionable and measurable strategies to improve and track progress in the areas that require attention.
TIGERS Workforce Behavioral Profile identifies rude team behavior facing department teams
So where do you start? Randomly requesting training or team building is like throwing mud on a wall and hoping it will stick – even after it dries. The TIGERS Workforce Behavioral Profile™ pinpoints where to start for maximum return on investment. It then offers you the advantage of tracking behavior change over time.
The TIGERS Workforce Behavioral Profile™ offers three surveys for each department being assessed. We know in our 30 years of group development experience that team transformation doesn’t occur over night. With proper training and workforce development interventions, strategic follow up is required to ensure that training transfers to improved skills and attitudes. This takes both time and intention. Six months to a year after interventions and training are delivered, a second survey can be taken to assess change in rude team behavior and identify the next steps for work group improvement. When the results are correlated with changes in the department balance sheet, return on investment can be calculated.
The TIGERS® six principles of trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success are research-based and validated. The six principles are anchored by positive behaviors that separate high performing groups from those that are not.
These six principles enhance the success of your own organizational vision, mission, and values by strengthening cooperative team behavior that impacts group relationships, roles and goals. The six principles also shorten the time new teams spend in the stage of team growth called Storming. This is the stage filled with team conflict, misunderstandings, performance hesitation and false starts that cause so many new teams to falter.
Rude team behavior take away
Showing up late, checking phones during meetings, gossiping about coworkers and passively dismissing others’ ideas are just a few examples of rude team behavior in the workplace. However rude behavior shows up in your workplace, it point to a deeper issue — sloppy group norms of behavior without enforcement of better behavior.
While ignoring the bad behavior might seem like a good solution, it actually causes hostility and incivility to flourish. It spreads from one team member to another. Instead, executives must address rude behavior head-on to create a respectful work culture for all employees. When group norms of behavior are known and endorsed by employees at all levels of operation, behaviors improve when enforced.
TIGERS® consultants can facilitate this transformation or we can teach your own team members to facilitate behavior improvement organization-wide.
The six principles of trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success are research-based and validated, and they are anchored by positive behaviors that separate high performing groups from those that are not. These six principles enhance the success of your own organizational vision, mission, and values by strengthening cooperative team behavior that impacts group relationships, group roles and goals, as well as shorten the time new teams spend in the stage of team growth called Storming. This is the stage filled with team conflict, misunderstandings, performance hesitation and false starts that cause so many new teams to falter.
Showing up late, checking phones during meetings, talking about coworkers to non-HR team members and passively dismissing others’ ideas are just a few examples of rude team behavior in the workplace, and they all point to a deeper issue: sloppy group norms of behavior without enforcement of better behavior. While ignoring the bad behavior might seem like a good solution, it actually allows for the bad behavior to flourish and spread from one team member to another. Instead, leaders need to address the bad behavior head-on to create a respectful culture for all employees. When group norms of behavior are known and endorsed by employees at all levels of operation, behaviors improve when it is enforced.
TIGERS can facilitate this transformation or we can teach your own team members to facilitate behavior improvement organization-wide.
Care to dig deeper into this conversation about rude behavior in the workplace?
We found the following articles and resources to deepen your learning:
- How Lousy Bosses Erode Trust, Respect and Retention in your Workplace
- Why You Can’t Afford to Ignore Rude Behavior – Workplace Incivility Costs You More Than You Think
- TIGERS Manager as Facilitator Training
- Download a sample TIGERS Workforce Behavioral Profile™ report.
Copyright TIGERS Success Series, Inc. by Dianne Crampton
About TIGERS Success Series, Inc.
TIGERS® Success Series provides a comprehensive, multi-pronged and robust system for improving both your work environment and profitability.
We specialize in training your managers in group facilitation methods that build workforce cooperation and high performance team dynamics. Scaled to grow as your organization and leadership performance grows, our proprietary Team Behavior Profile and Management training workshops are based on the six principles we have found to be the right mix to make this happen.
The TIGERS 6 Principles are Trust, Interdependence, Genuineness, Empathy, Risk and Success. Born from our many years of business, psychology, and educational group dynamic research, and subsequent four years of independent evaluation, we instill and sustain behaviors that improve work group performance and talent retention for measurable ROI.
TIGERS serves committed leaders who desire enhanced cooperation among departments, teams, managers and individual employees. This heightened level of cooperation leads to improved revenue, purpose, commitment and impact. Employees quit companies because they don’t get along with leaders and co-workers. Work culture refinement and behaviors that build strong relationships erase this trend in fully measurable ways.
For more information or to request a presentation to your group or association, call 1+877-538-2822.
