Incivility

• A reported two-thirds of U.S. workers experienced or witnessed incivility in their workplace over the past month, underscoring the critical need to foster spaces of respect and understanding.
• SHRM believes everyone can play a role in transforming workplaces to be more civil, one conversation at a time.
• With two major elections on the horizon in 2024 (United States and India), the world will likely see heightened tensions and polarizing viewpoints.
• SHRM 2024 research shows the disturbing trend of incivility in today's workplaces, ultimately impacting workplace wellbeing and employee retention:
  Two-thirds of U.S. workers (66%) experienced or witnessed incivility in the workplace over the past month.

• In fact, bullying at work affects up to 30% of workers over time.
• Manipulation and provocation also play a role in bullying dynamics, and cyberbullying has emerged as a new form of workplace harassment.
• However, in the workplace, incidents involving bullying, assault, sexual abuse or other forms of violence are typically addressed through internal investigations.

Workplace bullying results in real harms

• Targets of workplace bullying often experience serious repercussions, including stress and burnout, along with other diagnosed mental health issues and, in extreme cases, suicide.
• Bullying can affect physical health, with symptoms including sleep disturbances, cardiovascular diseases, body aches and pain, loss of appetite and headaches.

Personality traits of bullies and their targets

• Researchers find that bullies tend to have low self-esteem, problems with anger management and even personality disorders.
• Bullies often target people based on their appearance, behavior, race, religion, educational background, LGBTQ+ identity or because of perceived threats to their own career.
• There’s no hard-and-fast profile, but males tend to exhibit more of the traits associated with bullying.

Are you being bullied?

• Feeling constantly stressed, anxious or demoralized are signs that something isn’t right.
• Defending yourself against workplace bullying takes courage, but there are steps you can take to diffuse, distance and document what is happening to you.
• In the moment when bullying is occurring, focus on trying to keep your emotions in check and avoid being reactive.

If you feel threatened, calmly and politely stop the interaction by removing yourself in a nonthreatening way. As challenging as it can be, the key here is to stay composed and remain respectful.

How to respond to an ongoing situation

• Rehearse a bullying situation and practice how you would respond to help you get comfortable using emotional distancing and de-escalation.
• Be objective: Note the time and date, what happened, who was present, what was said and how it made you feel.
• Your organization should have policies and procedures to support you if you believe you are being bullied at work.
• By establishing policies against bullying and fostering open lines of communication, workplaces can create safer spaces that enhance the well-being and productivity of their employees.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Lippmann, a Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote a syndicated column on national and international affairs.
• He advocated a philosophy in which honest reflection on common experiences would lift citizens out of their parochial worldviews.
• A pundit is someone who offers commentary in the media on a particular subject area.
• I want to suggest that pundits support democracy when their combat is driven by ideas rather than tribal identities.

Pundit proliferation

• Mass media in the 1950s featured radio hosts who delighted in browbeating callers.
• The rise of a television pundit class in the 1960s established a new type of celebrity, thanks largely to William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line,” which ran from 1966 to 1999.
• Lippmann’s vision of the pundit as public intellectual sought to preserve “the traditions of civility” during the advent of broadcast media.
• The aspiration was hardly a source of inspiration for “The McLaughlin Group” and other shout shows launched in the 1980s.

Incentives to punch up

• Columnists cannot replicate the visceral experience of the shout shows, although the ability of readers to graze online heightens the incentive to punch up punditry.
• The term “pundit,” though, is derived from the Sanskrit word “pandrita,” meaning “learned.” Many pundits are not trained in journalism.
• As a scholar of political communication, I believe punditry is likely to become more specialized in catering to particular interests.
• This trend works against Lippmann’s principle of commentary that offers reflection on common experiences.

Pundits and democracy

• Commentary that oversimplifies policy disagreement erodes the trust that citizens have for each other, especially when opponents are belittled.
• Pundits contribute to democratic backsliding when they cultivate dystopian views of politics.
• The best example is the relentless negativity that characterized commentary on presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016.
• The authors reported that “political differences of opinion do not, in and of themselves, harm attitudes toward politics and politicians.

Supporting democracy

• Many political theorists insist that there is democratic value in heated commentary that calls out injustice.
• Media scholar Patricia Rossini suggests that in evaluating political expression, people should be concerned not so much about tone as tolerance.
• Audiences should also keep in mind the incentives of pundits, especially when commentators use their platforms to nurture relationships with politicians who undermine democracy.

Mike McDevitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• When employees hold political identities and perspectives that do not align with their co-workers, they perceive greater incivility from them, which can result in greater stress and burnout.
• Amid all this, bystander intervention has emerged as a key strategy for handling interpersonal conflicts.

The bystander’s dilemma

• Bystanders often experience moral anger toward those who they perceive as perpetrators and empathy for those they perceive as targets.
• These emotions, in turn, drive bystanders to support targets and penalize perpetrators.
• And this fear is not without merit; research has found that perpetrators often retaliate when individuals voice concerns about mistreatment.

• Even when bystanders do intervene, their actions can be ineffective, and, in some cases, counterproductive.
• Threatening messages are likely to be met with resistance from the perpetrator, who is then inclined towards self-protective action.

The perpetrator’s perspective

• This is especially the case when emotions are running high, making it difficult for individuals to consider alternative viewpoints.
• In such instances, perpetrators are likely to condemn intervening bystanders and may even react to them punitively.
• Talking to people in a safe setting and listening to different viewpoints can help perpetrators consider other perspectives.

• Powerful perpetrators tend to be less concerned about the social implications of their actions and are more likely to become defensive.
• In contrast, those with less power tend to be more dependent on others and, as a result, are more attuned to the expectations of their peers.
• It can be hard to convince such individuals to change their mind, unless the bystander has the power to impose change.

Strategies for effective intervention

Our research offers several practical recommendations for effective bystander intervention in the workplace:
Carefully consider the best time to intervene. Unless there is a clear risk to the target (and a safe way to meaningfully intervene), it is best to wait until emotions have cooled.
Intervene in ways that allow the other person to maintain their sense of being a good person and colleague. Focus on addressing their behaviour, not their personal attributes, values or beliefs.
Recognize that powerful bystanders and those trusted by the other person are more effective in eliciting constructive responses than those with relatively less power.

• As workplace tensions mirror global and social turmoil, the ability to step in, intervene and shape outcomes becomes ever more valuable, especially for vulnerable populations.
• The essence of bystander intervention is not just about stopping a negative act, but also about fostering an environment where respect, growth and collaboration thrive.

Sandy Hershcovis receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Brianna Barker Caza, Ivana Vranjes, and Zhanna Lyubykh do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.