Grapevine – The Blog

‘Manners Maketh Man’

I was often told this by my grandmother. It seems manners do a lot more than that – or rather the lack of them is worse than you may have thought.

Here’s a study on the topic that may interest you by Dr Amir Erez at the University of Florida

He and his colleagues tested the impact of three scenarios involving rude behaviour on a series of tasks measuring creativity and memory skills. Their guinea pigs were 275 students enrolled in management classes at UF and the University of Southern California.

In one test a stooge student arrived late to an experiment. After the student had apologised, explaining another class had finished late, one group of students then witnessed the experimenter rudely criticise the student and say he was unprofessional. The control group just saw the student being told he was too late to take part and being dismissed.

A second set of students was sent to a room where they were expecting to take part in a test. A small sign that was deliberately easy to miss was posted on the door redirecting them to another room.

Some of the students were politely redirected by the person in the room. The others were told: “Can’t you read? There is a sign on the door that tells you the experiment will be in (another room). But you didn’t even bother to look at the door, did you? Instead, you preferred to disturb me and ask for directions when you can clearly see that I am busy. I am not a secretary here, I am a busy professor.”

In the last study the students were told just to imagine themselves in one of these situations.

The Impact

Compared to the control group, the students who were treated rudely, or even imagined they had been, had reduced problem-solving skills, helpfulness and levels of creativity.

Why Does This Happen?

Amir Erez, who carried out these studies, says it’s because your thinking skills are impaired, even when they are just witnessing the event. Even imagining it reduced performance and the willingness to be a team player.

“In all three studies, we found that relatively minor incidents of being rude to people influences their functioning. It influences their performance on creative tasks, and on complex tasks. It influences helpfulness and it was consistent across the three studies” he said.

Can It Really Be That Bad?

Yes. The reason for this is that just minor levels of stress have a big impact on how your brain works. It all goes back to what happens in your brain when you perceive a threat. Parts of your brain get shut down. This literally makes it harder for you to use your normal range of thinking skills.

The Link Between Emotions and Thinking

There is good reason for this. Emotions are in part there to tell you where to direct your attention and energy. If you feel threatened then your energy and attention need to be directed to reduce the threat. Not much is left for being creative, helping others or problem-solving.

Your Best Teacher

Remember when you were a student or at school? Who was the teacher you liked the most? What did you like about that person?

I’ve asked this question many times. Think of your own answer before reading on.

Most people will give a description talking about what the teacher was like: ‘Good fun’ ‘Enthusiastic’ ‘He made me feel excited about the subject.’ Or ‘We were always relaxed with him.’ Or ‘She made the subject really interesting.’

They will describe their feelings. Very few ever say ‘He had a really good way of explaining quadratic equations.’

Now think of your worst teacher. What did you dislike about him or her? Often people will tell me the lessons were ‘boring’. Or ‘He really frightened us.’

What’s Going On Here?

An often neglected skill of teachers is that of eliciting emotions. In other words, getting people into the right emotion to learn. Astonishingly, this has a greater impact than their knowledge of the subject.

You will know this if you have had a teacher who knew their subject inside out but was still boring. (I remember a few of those myself.)

‘Boring’ is the emotion that tells you that the task you are involved in is of no use to you and not worth putting energy into. That’s why it’s so hard to concentrate on something you find boring.

Your brain is telling you not to.

‘Interesting’ is the emotion that tells you it’s worth paying attention and expending energy on this topic.

It’s The Same With Managers

Managers need the skill to elicit the right emotions from their team so that the job gets done and people are able to use their brains most effectively.

It turns out that being rude or even allowing rudeness in their team is completely counter-productive.

I suspect very few are aware of just how damaging this behaviour can be. Well, let’s hope they are unaware of it – I’d hate to think managers were deliberately going round reducing the performance of their teams.

What Can You Do?

Have clear standards. Many organisations have values or capabilities or competencies and behaviours. Unfortunately they are often vague, woolly and open to interpretation. For example: ‘Act with respect towards your colleagues.’

You need to make sure that these are written down so that everyone can understand them and knows what they need to do in order to meet them.

People also need to know what to do if someone is not meeting the standards.

You need to help those whose behaviour is below the required standard.
First, be aware that people who behave like this are generally as unaware of their behaviour as they are of the impact of it. They will need some coaching or training. Often, just bringing it to people’s attention is enough, but other times people need more support.

Most importantly, those at the top need to set the bar. They need to lead by example in any situation.

It Can Be Tough

Yes, this can be very difficult, but just think of the benefits: increased creativity, problem-solving skills and teamwork. Who would say ‘No’ to that at the moment?