MM5271 Chap.9 Incivility, Social Support and Forgiveness
Incivility, Social Support and Forgiveness
Why rudeness belongs in a wellbeing course
Disrespect at work is usually small: being talked over, left off a thread, answered with sarcasm.
Christine Porath has tracked how often employees say they are treated rudely at least once a month, and the figure climbed from 49 percent in 1998 to 62 percent in 2016. She links the rise to faster, more digital and more culturally mixed workplaces, where a put-down is easier to send and harder to read correctly.
The topic pairs incivility with microaggression, social support and forgiveness, so the unit moves from what goes wrong between people to what helps them recover and what lets a damaged working relationship continue. It also asks you to look at your own habits, not only other people's.
The costs sit where nobody is looking
Most targets of incivility do not complain.
They lose time replaying the incident, steer around the person responsible, trim their effort and let their commitment slide. Porath estimates that when a senior employee leaves, replacing them can cost roughly twice their annual salary, and people who resign over mistreatment rarely name it as the reason. Customers notice too: many say they are less willing to buy from a firm whose staff they see being rude to one another.
Energy-draining relationships weigh on performance far more heavily than energising ones lift it, which is why a single hostile colleague can undo a lot of goodwill elsewhere in a team.
Surveys of staff, rather than complaint counts, are the only way to see this.
Community as a protective resource
Porath and Sublett describe community as people who look out for one another's welfare, and they found that its presence goes with higher engagement, greater thriving and a stronger wish to stay.
Their cases are deliberately practical: employees teaching one another skills, teams cooking or eating together, shared rituals for remote colleagues, and treating recovery during intense periods as a joint project with a buddy for accountability.
For a wellbeing proposal, community-building is attractive because it is cheap, visible and easy to pilot, but it works as a buffer; it does not neutralise a manager whose own behaviour is the source of the strain.
Pair it with action on that source, and measure both so the proposal can show which one moved the numbers.
Leaders as a source of the problem
Robert Sutton asks senior people to consider that they may be the cause. Power tends to narrow attention to one's own goals, and overload, lack of sleep, constant hurry and phone habits make almost anyone curt.
Self-assessment is unreliable here, since far more people report witnessing bullying than admit to it. His remedies include recruiting honest critics, reducing the distance between the boss and everyone else, cutting unnecessary meetings, and apologising properly when things go wrong: admitting the fault, owning it, explaining it and changing.
An apology repeated without change, or handed to a deputy to deliver, protects the leader rather than the people who were hurt. Forgiveness, in this account, follows repair instead of replacing it.
Choosing a healthier next employer
The destructive leadership case closes by asking what a mistreated employee should carry into the next job.
Mita Mallick gives three warning signs a candidate can investigate: a careless or pressured hiring process, the way current staff describe the team, and evidence that people leave faster than they arrive.
Each phrase an interviewer uses can be probed with a follow-up question about headcount, pay, direction or development, and reposted vacancies and short tenures can be tracked with job alerts and conversations with former staff. Treating the hiring process as a reference check on the employer turns a painful episode into a practical skill, and gives a reflection journal something concrete to report.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Everyday incivility and how often employees report it
- 02
Microaggressions as patterns that appear only when counted
- 03
Hidden costs: withdrawn effort, turnover and customer spillover
- 04
Sense of community and social support as a buffer
- 05
How rudeness spreads through teams and leaders
- 06
Apology and forgiveness as the route to repair
- 07
Responding to a time-off request after a destructive episode
- 08
Spotting a toxic prospective employer before accepting an offer
Worked example · free
An exit that names the culture
- 3Name the behaviour as incivility and identify the hidden costs already visible.
- 3Specify the repair the account lead personally owes.
- 2Propose a support measure for the juniors and explain its limit.
- 2Add one prevention step for future hiring or measurement.
Key terms
- Workplace Incivility
- Low-intensity disrespectful behaviour at work, such as ignoring, undermining or publicly belittling a colleague. Its harm comes from accumulation rather than from any single act.
- Microaggression
- A brief slight, often unintended, that signals disregard for a person or their group. Individual instances look trivial, so the pattern usually becomes visible only when it is tracked.
- Sense of Community
- The experience of belonging to a group whose members share concern for one another's welfare. At work it is linked to greater engagement, thriving and intention to stay.
- Social Support
- Help, care and encouragement people receive from colleagues, supervisors and others around them. It cushions strain but does not remove its source.
- Rudeness Contagion
- The tendency for incivility to spread from person to person, so that someone treated rudely becomes more likely to treat the next person rudely.
- Destructive Leadership
- A pattern of leader behaviour that harms subordinates or the organisation, such as bullying, public humiliation or disregard for employees' personal time.
- Workplace Forgiveness
- A harmed person's decision to let go of resentment towards a colleague and allow the working relationship to continue. It is far more likely when the offender has offered a genuine apology and changed.
Incivility, Social Support and Forgiveness FAQ
How common is rudeness at work?
Very common, and rising in the long-running surveys by Christine Porath. By 2016 a clear majority of respondents said a colleague treated them rudely at least monthly. Causes she suggests include isolation from remote working, cultural friction from globalisation, and digital messages that make put-downs easy and tone easy to misread.
Because each episode is minor, organisations tend to underestimate how widespread it is until staff are asked directly.
What is the difference between incivility and bullying?
Incivility is low in intensity and often ambiguous in intent: a curt email, an interruption, being left out. Bullying is persistent, targeted mistreatment, often by someone with power over the victim. Porath notes that abusive behaviour does deeper damage than milder slights, so remedies should scale with severity.
Both erode performance, and small incivility left unchecked can harden into a culture where more serious abuse is tolerated.
How can I tell if a company is toxic before I accept a job?
Treat recruitment as evidence. Warning signs include pressure to accept an offer within a day, interviewers who arrive late or check their phones, and job descriptions that shift mid-process. Probe vague reassurances about small teams or flat structures with questions about headcount and pay.
Look for roles that keep being reposted, check how long past holders stayed, and message former employees, while remembering online reviews over-represent very good and very bad experiences.
Does social support at work actually reduce stress?
Research on community at work suggests it does. Employees who feel part of a caring group report noticeably lower stress, more engagement and a greater likelihood of staying. One accounting team that paired colleagues for mutual accountability during an intense busy season worked fewer hours for the same output and kept almost everyone afterwards.
Support has limits, though: it softens the effect of a hostile relationship rather than cancelling it.
What makes a workplace apology effective?
Robert Sutton lists the elements: admit what you did wrong, take full responsibility, give an honest account of why it happened and commit to behaving differently. The offender should deliver it personally rather than sending an intermediary. Frequent apologies for the same behaviour are a warning sign, since they suggest apology has replaced learning.
A sincere apology followed by visible change is what makes forgiveness a reasonable response rather than a demand.
Assessment move
For one working week, keep a two-column log: in one column record every small slight you receive or witness, and in the other every one you commit, such as interrupting or glancing at your phone while someone talks. Ask a trusted classmate or colleague to tally one of your habits independently. In a reflection journal, compare the two tallies, name the pressure behind your own lapses and describe one change you tried.
If you choose incivility for the individual project, turn the log categories into the hidden-cost argument you present to management.
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