I’ve had the great fortune of getting to know Mary Freer when we coached together in a global, virtual leadership program. I follow her work closely and when I read her blog post below written in late 2021 for her audience in Australia, I knew our community at The Bailey Group would benefit from her story. So, we’re sharing it as a guest blog post.

You can read more about Mary and her Compassion Revolution at the link below.

When I was in my forties, I worked in one of the most dysfunctional teams I have ever seen. The stress was on constant boil and the policy was ‘blame and run’. During this time, I developed an inflammatory auto-immune condition, so I approached the CEO about some changes to my hours. He said, without a moment’s hesitation, ‘If I’d known you were going to get sick, I never would have employed you.’

Later that day in a moment of l’esprit de l’escalier, I heard myself respond, ‘If I’d known you were going to make me so sick I never would have taken the job.’ Staircase wit is always clever, but at the time I said nothing, my face flushed with fury and I felt hot tears well up in my eyes. Then I went home and wasted hours rehashing the conversation. This is what most people do. We toss and turn in bed at 3am replaying the same old mix tape.

Rudeness, bullying, blaming, snide remarks, criticism, exclusion, racism, homophobia, transphobia and so many other destructive practices have a measurable impact on our experience of work, the quality of our performance and the resilience of our mental and physical wellbeing. The impact of workplace behaviours have been studied and the evidence is powerful. When we are treated disrespectfully or rudely, we disengage from our work. It may not happen overnight but it will happen.

In a workforce study by Professor Christine Porath at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business that covered 18 separate industries in the United States, only 33% of workers felt fully engaged in their work. Fifty-one per cent were disengaged and 16% were actively disengaged. Perhaps even more telling, 25% admitted to taking their frustration out on customers. This impacts directly on your bottom line. Porath put forward a proposition that this mirrors what is happening in other countries, including Australia.

I have seen this play out repeatedly in workplaces all over Australia. If you think your staff are reluctant to come up with solutions or are low on creativity and innovation, it might be time to check how psychologically and physically safe your workplace really is.

There are also both short and long-term outcomes of witnessing incivility in the workplace. Incivility can be spread, like a virus, and contaminate even the bystanders’ behaviour over time. I coach lots of CEOs and entrepreneurs and I see this holding back their progress regularly. It doesn’t matter if you build houses, design apps or fly planes. If you work in a rude and dismissive environment, you will not be operating at your most creative or innovative level. All functioning of the brain depends on your internal state. As we move from one internal state to another there will be a shift in the parts of the brain that are dominant. Bruce Perry in his co-authored book, What Happened To You? has measured the way our brain moves from abstract to reactive thinking as we move from calm to fear. Our available IQ goes from 120-100 when we are in a calm state to 90-70 when we are fearful and 80-60 when we experience terror.

Maybe you think that while all this is true, it’s not like this where you work. Healthcare is the area where I do most of my work. A recent study covering seven Australian hospitals found that ‘unprofessional behaviour’ is highly prevalent among hospital workers, with 39% of those surveyed reporting weekly or more frequent incivility, bullying, discrimination and harassment by co-workers. These behaviours have a direct impact on patient safety, healthcare delivery and staff wellbeing.

Researchers Prof Amir Erez and others set out to determine what patients experience when staff speak rudely to each other in a healthcare setting. They found that dismissive and uncivil behaviour has a direct and negative impact on patient outcomes.

Prof Erez and his colleagues at Florida University set up a simulated study where twenty-four NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) teams participated in a training simulation involving a preterm infant whose condition acutely deteriorated due to necrotising enterocolitis. Participants were told that a visiting expert on Team Reflexivity in Medicine would observe them. Teams were randomly assigned to either exposure to rudeness or control. The videotaped simulation sessions were evaluated by three independent judges (blinded to team exposure) who used structured questionnaires to assess team performance, information-sharing, and help-seeking.

Participants were told that they were going to be observed via a webcam. The Control Teams heard a voice recording played at the beginning and the observer said, ‘Thank you for letting me observe you and please commence when you’re ready.’ They commenced the simulation, diagnosing and treating the infant. About 10 minutes later, the observer interrupted them to say ‘Please keep going. I’ll continue to observe you.’

The Rudeness Teams heard the voice of the observer say, ‘I’m new to your country but from what I’ve seen so far, I hope I don’t get sick, because I really don’t trust this healthcare system.’ At 10 minutes, he interrupted them to say, ‘None of you would get a job in my department.’

Erez analysed the results after these different interactions with the observer and what he found was predictable but frightening. Where staff were spoken to rudely by the observer, it accounted for about 56% of the errors that they made. It wasn’t that the other team always got everything right but the teams that were spoken to rudely had a much higher rate of error. There was poor team diagnostic and procedural performance that included incorrect diagnosis, incorrect medication requests and dosage, and poor team cohesiveness which impacted on communication when it was critically needed.

Reading that piece of research was the moment where I felt the shove between my shoulder blades. Up until then, I’d thought that when we were rude to each other and when we treated each other in a dismissive way, it was bad for staff wellbeing (and it is). But when I read Erez’s research, I realised it is much bigger than that. This behaviour kills people. I realised that people could go into hospital, relying on healthcare workers to look after them and to make them well, and that they could die at the expense of this behaviour. We need to be careful how we speak to each other.

When I was a small child, I believed that all the words you ever speak live on forever, continually circling the globe in ever-increasing waves.

I would imagine that certain words were attracted to another and would form large clusters together somewhere in the sky. Kind words would create a slipstream and harsh and degrading words were like thick tar that clogged everything up. Words were not biodegradable, they had shape and presence and they were felt by others. If we spoke harsh or cruel words they would form a type of environmental pollution and everyone would suffer. This story I created about words had a big impact on me and to this day I tend carefully to the words I speak.

If words do carry weight, what words might you choose to carry and exchange with others?

Mary Freer’s new book Compassion Revolution: Start Now* Use What You Have* Keep Going* is available on Amazon. You can read more about her work at freerthinking.com.au