Live Stream: A question of manners: How being uncivil sets your company back by a few million dollars

The experience of seeingher father strapped to electrodes in a stuffy hospital room 22 years ago was heartbreaking, Porath tells us in her speech. But she realised that work-related stress would be even more taxing for her.

In her 15 minutes TEDTalk, an emotional Porath says the reason behind her father’s state was work-related stress. “For over a decade, he suffered an uncivil boss. And for me, I thought he was just an outlier at that time. But just a couple years later, I witnessed and experienced a lot of incivility in my first job out of college. I spent a year going to work every day and hearing things from co-workers like, ‘Are you an idiot? That’s not how it’s done,’ and, ‘If I wanted your opinion, I’d ask.’” This was enough for her to quit and embark on research the cause and effects of incivility.

During her graduation days, she met Christine Pearson, who believed that “small, uncivil actions can lead to much bigger problems like aggression and violence. Incivility affected performance and the bottom line.” Both launched a study, which revealed that incivility made people less motivated: 66 pc cut back work efforts, 80 pc lost time worrying about what happened, and 12 pc left their job. When these results were published, they started getting calls from firms. One was from Cisco, which pegged its cost of incivility at $12 million.

It is civility at workplace that has relevance like never before.

Porath tells us that incivility is a contagious bug and “we become carriers of it just by being around it.” If you thought, this is confined to the workplace, then you are wrong. “We can catch this virus anywhere -- at home, online, in schools and in our communities. It affects our emotions, our motivation, our performance and how we treat others. It even affects our attention and can take some of our brainpower.”

Hold on. It just doesn’t stopthere. For, it can happen “even if we just see or read rude words.” Such insights are offered by Porathand listening to it is a refreshing experience as we begin to understand why people behave the way theydo at work, where most of aprofessional’s time is invested.Listening to Porath, one might be inspired to reconsider the manner in which he or she comes across to others in a social context. And it’s only a matter of introspection that will lead us to making the right choices.