Teams from the University of Florida, Indiana University, and other universities across the U.S. and Israel recently conducted five eye-opening studies about rudeness, uncovering that even mild instances of this behavior can significantly impair employees' performance. This could have potentially life-threatening consequences in critical fields like health care.
"Many workplaces treat rudeness as a minor interpersonal issue," said Amir Erez, Ph.D., W.A. McGriff, III Professor at the University of Florida Warrington College of Business. "Our research shows that it's a major threat to productivity and even safety. Organizations should treat it as such."
Erez and his fellow researchers, who published their findings in the Journal of Applied Psychology, evaluated teams in various settings (including a medical simulation) and found that exposure to rude behavior dramatically reduced team functioning. Surprisingly, the impact of rudeness was disproportionate to its intensity. In one study, relatively mild rude comments from an external source accounted for 44% of the variance in medical teams' performance quality.
The studies also discovered that rudeness functions as a social threat, triggering defensive responses in team members. This causes individuals to become less prosocial and more selfish, hindering the cooperation and coordination essential for effective teamwork. Specifically, teams exposed to rudeness showed reduced information sharing and workload sharing, which are two critical components of team performance. In medical settings, this translated to poorer execution of lifesaving procedures.
[...] With this in mind, the researchers recommend that organizations seek to implement solutions that help teams prepare for dealing with perceived threatening situations like rudeness. Training aimed at building team member resilience and mindfulness, for example, may better prepare employees for dealing with these situations.
"As our understanding of workplace dynamics evolves, our research underscores a critical point: in the quest for high-performing teams, sometimes the smallest courtesies can make the biggest difference," Erez said.
Journal Reference: Gale, J., Erez, A., Bamberger, P., Foulk, T., Cooper, B., Riskin, A., Schilpzand, P., & Vashdi, D. (2024). Rudeness and team performance: Adverse effects via member social value orientation and coordinative team processes. Journal of Applied Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001213
(Score: 5, Insightful) by YeaWhatevs on Wednesday September 04, @07:33AM (3 children)
To the study's credit, it talks about training for resilience as well. Unfortunately, this work will probably instead be used as justification for throwing out anyone with dissenting views.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 04, @10:33AM (1 child)
In many jurisdictions, firing somebody doesn't require justification. And pissing off your boss is pretty much always considered justification, regardless of whether your boss is right about anything or not. About the only exception is if your boss is demanding you violate legal requirements, and even then the best you can probably muster is pulling in some cash from a wrongful termination suit.
Also, if I am a boss with a team with, say, 7 people that get along great and 1 guy who is always butting heads with them, who all appear approximately equally productive, guess who I'm going to get rid of come layoff or re-org time?
Although some abrasive people really don't like this, getting along with both your boss and cow-orkers is part of your job. If you've gone about disagreeing with each other the right way, odds are actually pretty good you respect each other more rather than less after the arguments are had and you hammer out an agreement.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday September 04, @02:00PM
In most of the developed world, however, it requires justification and claims of harassment and targeted bullying are taken seriously.
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday September 04, @03:11PM
Nurses and hairstylist are the most drama estrogen filled lines of work. I fully understand what they're getting at, but most places aren't filled with 95%+ women. It's usually a more reasonable ratio.
And, yes just because Becky called Karen ass big, doesn't mean we should ban Republicans from work.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04, @08:01AM (2 children)
Like crossing the street! Are YOU a _survivor_, too?!?
Why the hell is *everything* about life or death now? There's no middle ground, there's no gray area, if you do *anything* wrong, you should be executed because you're certainly going to kill someone for it (at least eventually).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04, @08:12AM
Everything else is too obvious. Nobody will be surprised that workers productivity drops and quality is worse when people are rude. It's somewhat shocking that hospital staff (notoriously rude already) are more likely to kill people when faced with rudeness.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 04, @03:14PM
So technically it can have life-or-death consequences. If you already work in a field that involves life-or-death.
In other news water is wet
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday September 04, @10:47AM (1 child)
I have a suspicion that they forgot to survey the USMC for their research...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04, @12:47PM
I'm curious how many soyboys (and soygirls) there are in the USMC. I know the Navy and Air Force are infested with them, as is the Army.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday September 04, @01:28PM (5 children)
Years ago we partnered with another company for a project. They had a guy that was hella smart, knew it, and treated everyone else like dog poo on his shoe. The project fell through and a couple months later this guy was interviewing for a job with us. At the meeting we were all thumbs up on hiring him. Then the boss said "do you want to work with him?" and we were all "aww hell no, he's going into your group". He didn't get hired.
The secret to success is to never run from hard work. A brisk walk usually suffices.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 04, @01:51PM (3 children)
In my 20 years of experience in the tech world, I have never encountered a guy who treated everyone around him like crap and was actually as smart as he claimed to be or his bosses believed him to be.
For example, one guy I worked with was regularly late in the mornings, but the boss kept him on believing he was a genius on the spectrum. And then he broke production, so the boss asked me to start doing some basic testing on his stuff before allowing it to be released. And then he handed me something that he claimed was production-ready which immediately broke the build. As in, he hadn't even tried to run it once before saying it was perfect. He was fired shortly thereafter.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 04, @05:51PM (2 children)
There's all kinds of smart, and dumb.
You can get a lot out of some "smart" people by putting guard rails on them. Don't trust your "genius on the spectrum" to make decisions like "is this ready for production?" Obviously, he doesn't know how to evaluate simple questions like that - but you probably have other people and processes who _can_ make that simple call pretty accurately.
Back in my bullpen filled with PhDs - we couldn't really trust any of them end-to-end with... anything. But, if we translated requirements from the customers into things they could do, then translated their results back to the customers, they were pretty good guys to have around.
Myself? I work best with an active test department. I'll throw stuff in the development branch without thorough checking and 9x/10 it will work as intended. The test team catches that other 1x/10 and I don't waste my time doing inadequate under-documented testing on all 10 changes - I just work back and forth with test on the one that had an issue and move forward at considerably better speed. There's also such a thing as "flow" and obsessive thorough testing has its own flow, while development has a different flow, and trying to switch between the two "doesn't flow".
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 04, @10:34PM (1 child)
This alleged-genius's code was not particularly good, either. No innovative algorithms, no elegant designs, nothing resembling good testing. It was run-of-the-mill business code, the kind you'd expect out of a decent developer for a non-tech Fortune 1000 company.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 04, @11:05PM
So, his real talent was impressing your management... That has value too, but it's harder to harness when the "impressive guy" is also an insufferable jerk.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday September 04, @03:16PM
I've been in that position. Working at a place just barely making it, putting in 110%, get stuck with people just dicking around. Pissed me right off. Some places should fail. But why punish the good worker when he looks for other work just because he was disgruntled? Seems short sighted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 04, @01:34PM
MIT in general, but there in particular
Poster children for inflated ego tech bros and the "hacker" culture spread from
there to infest the rest of the country.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 04, @03:39PM (1 child)
Rudeness is a human trait. It has survived all this time, so it must have some value to humankind. Natural selection has allowed that trait, among others, to survive, and to thrive. Why? How? Apparently, it can have value, at least sometimes. Obviously, the jerk who is full-time hard-core rude to everyone around him is probably disruptive, and contributes little if anything to a team. You probably know him or her as a bully. On the other hand, a little rudeness can shake things up, and make people think. Assertiveness training almost requires that you be rude sometimes. https://positivepsychology.com/assertiveness-training/ [positivepsychology.com]
Seriously, just saying 'no' can be seen by many as being rude.
I guess what I'm saying is, if everyone is a door mat, and everyone gets walked on, then your team probably isn't getting much done in real life. Many SN members have told tales of domineering bosses who had to be put in their places. Sometimes, you've just got to be rude, or question your own sanity.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 3, Informative) by loonycyborg on Wednesday September 04, @05:28PM
Rudeness can be reaction to stress or crisis. It also puts other people in crisis mode as OP study shows. But constant work in crisis mode is unsustainable and rudeness as default action to everything is something we should work to fix in ourselves if we exhibit it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 04, @07:32PM
I've been in the toxic dysfunctional workplace, where every deed is criticized and ridiculed, and everything is seen as crap even if it is good stuff. The metrics are totally unrealistic, absurdly so, or entirely absent. All they have to go on is gut feelings, and their gut tells them that everyone is a slacker, a liar, a cheater, an incompetent, and a nark and traitor. Management thinks everyone has to be constantly prodded and micromanaged, and threatened and accused, to keep them scared into working harder and not making trouble. It doesn't help that they made the most miserable hiring decisions imaginable, employing debunked business psychology, those infamous gut feelings, and even covert bigotry to reject all the best job applicants. Yes, these workplaces crashed and burned, hard.
To use a car analogy, seems this article is talking about tuning race cars to go a little faster, be a little more reliable, and just plain better, when the highways are clogged with polluting wrecks that barely managed to get on the road before breaking down and leaking out a huge slick of oil.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Friday September 06, @04:54AM
Ships have customs of courtesy to keep everyone united against their common enemy, the sea.