Think back to the last time someone at work was irritable with you. Maybe they uttered a phrase like the one above, or quite possibly something worse. It is obvious that having a colleague be rude to us damages our performance (however temporarily) but new research from the University of California suggests that other workers who only hear about this aggressive or rude behaviour second hand can be similarly affected. Our ability to perform creatively, memory recall and flexibility can all be affected by second-hand sniping.
According to this research being exposed to rudeness at work leaves us ruminating on the ‘injustice’ of the outburst, or thinking of how we can get our own back. This uses mental capacity, that we could otherwise put to more creative use.
So what’s the lesson here? Well if you are a grouch — count to 10 or bite your tongue if you want your teams to produce high quality, creative work. If you are exposed to a grouches’ outbursts, you can minimise the damage and stop yourself from ruminating with three quick techniques:
1. talk sense to yourself, think of your past successful experience with evidence of why you disagree with the grouch
2. realise the issue is external to you — your grouch could be in a bad mood for a hundred personal reasons, unconnected to you
3. understand this is a single occurrence — if your grouch accuses you of always being late for meetings, translate this into questioning your lateness on this one occasion: you can then decide how to respond without having to question everything about you and your work
Before you run this anti-grouch programme it is worth stepping back and checking if they do have a point. If you want to keep your employees involved and working productively cut out the grouching. Raise any concerns you have when you are calm and can focus on changing or improving performance rather than just venting your anger.
