Incivility in the workplace can take many forms, from verbal abuse and harassment, to manipulation to acts of violence. 1.4 million employees experience it each year.
It has tremendous costs, as well. According to Dr. Rajashi Ghosh, an Assistant Professor of Human Resource Development for the School of Education at Drexel University, incivility costs the U.S. economy $23.8 billion each year. And academic environments are not immune.
On this week’s podcast, I will air an interview with Dr. Ghosh , who was the author of a recent article on the “incivility spiral” in mentoring relationships, which was published in a special issue of Advances in Developing Human Resources, which she also co-edited. In this article, Ghosh examined how different acts of incivility between mentors and mentees can devolve into negative relationships.
With mentoring programs being one of the popular ways that we seek to develop up-and-coming professionals, Ghosh recommends that institutions (and their Human Resource Officers) provide structured approaches, including codes of conduct for mentors and mentees, better orientations for both sides of the relationship about roles, boundaries, and conduct, formal processes for reporting inappropriate behavior, and better follow-up from HR and management.
Drexel will host a Human Resource Development Symposium September 17, “HRD’s Role in Addressing Workplace Incivility and Violence. Online registration is now closed, but if you are interested in attending e-mail Dr. Ghosh at rg429@drexel.edu expressing your interest in being on the waitlist.
We’ll also talk about my upcoming webinar on Creating a Killer Résumé on BigMarker, a new free webinar service, Hiring for Hope events, and I’ll take your comments and questions on dealing with incivility in the workplace.
When people around you at work are being negative, it’s tempting to join in, but the result could be a toxic work environment thats difficult to climb out of. What can you do to keep from being dragged down into that dark place? And what should you do to remove negativity from your life and the workplace?
We’ve probably all had those moments when co-workers gripe and moan about things they don’t like in their work environments, but there’s something different and kind of insidious about work environments where negativity is tolerated. They can eat at you, and leave you with some undesirable options: join in and get dragged down, or avoid joining in and possibly become marginalized.
Friday at 11 am ET, I will be talking with Sally Marks, author of Erase Negativityand Embrace the Magic Within, about ways that people can avoid negativity and toxic communication at work. Please join me and call in with your questions and comments about dealing with toxic work environments and overcoming negativity. The Guest Call-in number is (347) 989-0055, and Skype users can also call in via the Skype “S” Click-to-Talk Button from the Episode page, once the show is live.
Developing positive relationships is one of the biggest challenges professionals face when starting a new role or moving into a new work environment. When you are new, you don’t know what norms have been established, who will be helpful (or who won’t), and you’ll likely find yourself wondering when to share information and perspectives, when to keep your mouth shut, and how to evaluate potential relationships.
Since many new faculty and staff are beginning to test the potentially treacherous waters as “new fish” in the ponds of academia, the timing seemed right to get some tips and perspectives on how to establish positive working relationships and keep from being eaten alive.
Andy Curran, an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati’s Clermont College, encourages new staff to make themselves available, ask for advice from senior employees, and avoid being confrontational. He credits his ability to get along with others for his success in getting promotions and tenure during his 11 year career.
Getting information and perspectives from new colleagues may require some trial and error, so Joe O’Connell, Coordinator of New Student Programs at Arizona State University tries to tailor his conversations with people to their likes and dislikes. “For example,” O’ Connell explains, “if someone likes short, direct e-mails, then send them short, direct e-mails. They will be more receptive to your communications.”
Marlene Caroselli, a corporate trainer, keynoter, and author of 61 books, teaches a course on developing relationships at work. She advises new staff to “invite collaborative, cooperative dialogue. “This may be difficult,” she says, ” But it almost always works. Invite the person who is overly critical of your plan to join you in making it better. It’s natural to be defensive, but we’re asking you to put defenses and fences aside. Instead, form a partnership with your biggest critic and work together to strengthen your plan.”
Dr. Laurel Clark, President of the College of MetaPhysics, tells people to be “self-reflective” in their approaches to conflict. “Instead of blaming a co-worker for a conflict, look to see the part that you play in it and how YOU can cause change,” implores Clark. “If only one person changes, (and that person can always be YOU), then the dynamics of the relationship change even if the other person doesn’t.”
Please join us and call in with your tips, questions and comments at 11 am ET this Friday, August 26, tweet them to @hiedcareercoach or e-mail sean@higheredcareercoach.com The call-in number is (347) 989-0055. I’ll be tweeting additional quotes and advice from our guests on Friday as well.
In higher education, as in any industry, credentials and certifications are sought after by professionals hoping to get an advantage over their competition. In an interesting post that entered my tweet stream on Friday, Kenny Silva explored the weight we often place on credentials in the hiring process, in contrast to potential. This is especially pertinent at this time of year, when the academic year is beginning, and the hiring season slows to a crawl.
Back when I was working at Penn State, I often found myself in the awkward position of filling a vacancy or two late in the summer. In part, this was due to the area being mostly populated by upper-class students and returning staff. The priority spots in our large residence hall system were to make sure that the first-year areas were adequately staffed first. When approximately half of your 14,000 students are first-year students, and about 4500 of those live in one area, you must have priorities.
Working with first-year students is, in general, more exciting to many staff, because, well…they need you in a different way. It’s more validating. Upperclassmen don’t get in nearly as much trouble, and mostly, they want to be left alone to do their own thing. So there were several occasions when someone left or was transferred to a new area or got promoted when we had to fill a vacancy post-haste and pronto, and many of the more highly credentialed new hires had already been placed. These are the times when it is especially important to look for potential.
In my time as Assistant Director, I cared more about potential than credentials, and honestly, I still do, because, for the most part, my least credentialed staff were easiest to work with, related better to students, and were more motivated to prove themselves. I always appreciated that perspective, because I have always had to prove myself.
I was the last male resident assistant hired at Clemson during my junior year, and they put me on the top floor of a building where no one ever went unless they had a reason to be there. I went in knowing they expected me to fail and that I had a lot to prove. I made the most of it and went on to win programming awards and have a generally good reputation on campus. Eventually, I made Student Affairs my life’s work. Along the way, I met different mentors and colleagues who kept giving me chances. Like a “diamond in the rough,” polishing up my portfolio and earning credentials took some time.
When I decided to leave the university setting, I had to sort through the value of becoming credentialed as a certified coach, and recently, as a professional résumé writer. I worked with college students for 15 years, had a master’s degree already, and had been coaching young professionals and colleagues on their job search materials and strategy the whole time. I didn’t really think I needed a couple more pieces of paper to prove I could do this, but I got them anyway. I did so because that is the way our field works for some people, and I felt that the credentialing would remove some potential obstacles from my path.
Oddly enough, I can’t remember a single time I’ve been practicing when a client even asked about my credentials. Instead, they ask, “How can you help me?” and “What benefits will I see from working with you?” And they weigh these against other options, many of which are free or available at a lower cost. I end up working with many of people who inquire, and when I don’t, I know that I haven’t distinguished myself in the right way, or shown the value of the relationship. When I do get a new client, it’s because they believe I can help them, and because we connected as people who potentially could work well together.
As Silva points out:
“Our ability to succeed in any endeavor, whether it’s a business or non-profit, is dictated by potential, not credential. It is only potential energy that can be tapped into in order for us to push forward. If you don’t hire the right people to bring that potential energy into your business, you will not move forward.”
I’ve always told my student leaders aspiring to go straight into student affairs that the time period we are currently in, from mid-August to the end of September, is a great time to look for a job, if you work hard to show your potential. Time and again, this worked for me as a supervisor, and I got some great staff members out of the deal.
If you still have staff vacancies, do yourself and the universe a favor: take a chance on a candidate you have a good gut feeling about. Look for the “diamonds in the rough” and help them learn to shine!
Until this week, Greg Meyer was the Customer Experience Manager at Gist. In part 3 of a 4-part interview with writer and career coach Sean Cook, Meyer talked about managing your reputation using Social CRM tools. Meyer began a new job at Assistly earlier this week.
I give career advice to college students, both in my private practice and with a small school here in Georgia, Wesleyan College, and talk to them about what they put out on social media, especially on Facebook. You know, college students think they are tricky. They’ll set up one for their mom and dad and for employers to look at, and then they’ll set up a second one, where they post their party photos and talk to their friends about drinking and whatever else.
What I think is interesting is that tools like Gist can confound that, because all of the relational data allows it to see the related e-mail addresses under which they registered and to kind of “mine” that data in some ways. And so I’ve shown job seekers kind of how to do a “social media audit” using Gist, where they can kind of see that what they think they aren’t putting out there, they still are. So I talk to people about using privacy filters wisely. The other thing is “Don’t think you can really get away with anything these days, because the network is almost becoming self-aware, because of tools like this.”
=I would say in response to that is that we honor the privacy controls set by the browser. So if you have locked things down on Facebook or other web service, we wouldn’t see that. And we’re not mining private data. We’re only mining public data. So your advice about having them understand that anything they put online could be seen by someone else is good.What I usually tell people who read newspapers is that if you don’t want to show up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, then don’t post it. If they don’t read newspapers, and don’t want to read it on TechCrunch, then don’t post it. If you are owning your own brand and understanding that when people do a search on Google, or do a search on these other services, that they are going to find you, then that gives you additional power, because you can say, “this is what I want to present.” And if all my social media waypoints are saying the same thing, then it’s going to ring true, and people are going to have a consistent view of me. That’s probably the best defense you have against being seen in the wrong way.
And, as far as having your friends post pictures of you that you would rather not like them to post, I can’t help you with that.
Yeah, there are some people who couldn’t make their friends stop, no matter what. I think that’s a point I always like to drive home. Some people have said to me “This really feels ‘Big Brother,’ and my thought is “it’s in the public stream.”
Yeah, it is really all out there, already, and tools like Gist, tools like Google Reader, tools like Rapportive or Xobni, or any of these other tools are just revealing things that search engines have really known for a long time and you can now search them all in one place. It’s out there, and you may just not realize it’s out there.
I think that in today’s marketplace, and today’s career marketplace, the truth is that it’s harder to spin things, because reputation management is a two-way street. What I tell job-seekers is that you can put anything you want out on the internet, as long as you are willing to stand by it, as how you are, or what you meant to put out there, or explain what your rationale was, or what your thinking was, and maybe even admit your mistakes if people don’t perceive it correctly or if it just wasn’t a case of good judgement.
Sure. You are the best person able to tell the story of you. So the better the story you tell, and the more consistent it is, the more believable it is.
I think that’s probably one of the best things to make people aware of: it’s not a private place. The internet is “public, in overdrive.” If you wouldn’t be doing it on your front porch, you probably shouldn’t be doing it on the internet.
Work with Sean. I help higher ed professionals take control of their careers with tailored services including resume and CV development, LinkedIn profile optimization and networking strategy, interview coaching, and one-on-one career guidance.
(Amazon aff. link), Dr. Laurel Smith, President of the 
