Civility Isn’t Just Being Polite: It's Building A Better Workplace

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This week we are talking about civility in the workplace. And at that point, you would think that. Great. This is gonna be a solo episode for Chrissy. I am gonna stick around. She's probably gonna talk more. You definitely wanna listen to her more. But I'm at least gonna stick around, so you should too. Stay tuned.

Have fun.

She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it' need the business fix.

Buckle up. Buckle up, people.

As soon as I thought of that.

I'm like, do solo episode camp.

When it comes to civility in the workplace, I thought, huh, what are you saying? That you're probably better to speak about civility than I am?

Maybe. But I have a very distinct line. And then I'm like, penguin with a machete and choose violence.

I 100% can see that.

You're like, God help me. Never find that line.

Yeah, 100. Well, that's first off. Yes. The second piece to that is, though, is that from my perspective on that, you have a wonderful way of cutting through the. While still dealing with it, whereas I don't deal with it. Yeah, you're. You're like, oh, we'll push this off to the side. We'll do the thing. And I'm just straight machete.

It's been a lot of work. I've done a lot of professional development around that.

I know. Have we talked about professionals? We have a few times that I. I know. I. I know, I know. I could use some work on this. There's the. The thing that I like is we have in our banter prompt here to talk about digital bravery where someone was being bold. Right? Yeah. No, we're not. We're not doing that. What we are going to talk about is, even though there may be some issues with them right now, there was a sherm. Some research that came out from them that said over 43% of office tension is being fueled by political differences. You've never seen anything like that, have you, Chrissy?

Never.

No, never. Not at all. That there is 63% more acts of incivility. Ooh. And I could see. I. In many ways, I can see this and I can.

Back in the office.

Yeah, back in the office. I can see it. Plus, I also feel like there's things that people would have brushed off years ago that now people are taking to heart, so.

Oh, absolutely.

I can see. Let's say 7% of this is one. 7% is the other. I know that's 14%, but sure, offense.

Is an office sport. My God.

I'm usually the one offending people in the office. That's. That's the. That is the only difference. So, I mean, to me, this. This is obviously your jam to an extent.

Or my anxiety. Yeah. Maybe both.

I know it's going to be a little bit of both. How do you move past just being polite? This is. See, as soon as we said that, you knew, like, Josh is out of this. He's just going to ask a couple of questions and shut. Like, how do you get past just politeness and build that culture where civility, like, it's a core performance standard? I know that you look at this thing. I know. I mean, I don't know if it's necessarily something on a quarterly review, like civility. Is that a checkbox? I don't think that's the case. But how do you build that as something that's built into performance? That actually, I mean, look, this is protection for the business.

It absolutely is.

If people are getting violent with each other, that's. That's a tough day.

Yeah.

How do you build that in?

So we start by saying first that civility isn't about being polite or avoiding conflict. It is. It's about protecting the business. So politeness is passive. Civility is intentional.

Oh, yeah. I love that.

Yep. Civility isn't politeness. It's protection. So, you know, if leaders don't define how people are expected to disagree, stress is going to define it for them.

Oh, that's a great point. If you just leave people to their own devices.

Don't. Not in this case. You really can't.

Done saying that. Don't.

Don't. Sorry. You can finish your thought now.

No, we're good. That was. That was my thought.

So you have to look at. I think I have, like, five points. You have to look at civility as an operating system. So first I think of civility as part of the company's operating system. It's not a vibe. It's not a value poster. It's not crappy. Wall art. It's a collection of repeatable behaviors that produce respect, dignity, and trust, especially under pressure. Because often when civility starts to creep up, in part, you're dealing with people's identity, but you're also. When. When things are stressful, people tend to be a little less civil. They don't have as long of a fuse. They don't have as big of a filter. And so if civility only exists when things are calm, it's not culture. It's really coincidence.

Ooh.

Yeah. Yeah. Civility has to operate when things are stressful. And this is exactly why we teach it in resilient operating systems. You know, resilience and respect have to be operational, not aspirational. Operational, not aspirational. So teaching those interpersonal effectiveness skills that dear men give fast. We've talked about in other episodes reminding people that disagreement does not meet destruction, that we are allowed to disagree. I think that is something, especially in the HR space. Like people are just, well, I'm offended because they said it. And it's like, well, they have the right to say it. And you can choose to be offended or not offended sometimes. Other times we gotta talk about it. But I mean, just disagreement doesn't mean you're offense. Okay. We can have differing opinions. So one thing I would say that can be helpful is there's something that we call a desired state audit. So that is, you know, CEOs really have to define the desired state clearly. Not just what we value, but what we will not tolerate. So what is the desired state that we have as an organization?

For example, I noticed the clear word in there.

Very clear. Because to be clear is to be kind. We keep talking about these things. Yes. Clear clarity. Yes. So, for example, in the desired state. So curiosity over ego, candor over contempt. Disagreement without degradation. We like things that have alliteration, but these are the desired states that we want. So if leaders don't name the boundaries, people are going to create their own. We talk about how employees want guardrails, and if we don't define them, they're usually messy. So it's really important. Next thing is when we're talking about operating system. If someone. If there. If a bug's going to enter the system, it often comes through the leader.

Yes.

Yeah. So model what you mandate. Model the standard culture doesn't break down at the bottom, it breaks down at the top.

100%.

Yeah. So if a leader interrupts, if they snap, if they get hurt under stress, if they disagree with you and drive you into the Ground that behavior becomes normalized immediately. Well, you did it, so that means that I can do it. So you have to set the standard as the business owner, as the manager, as the leader to model what you mandate. So remember that. And if you. If you mess it up, it can spread fast. Like that bug can get into this. It can just. And you got to remember, too, that people don't listen to your value statement. They watch for your response.

It's funny because we've talked about that with trust. We've talked about that with so many examples. One screw up can take you down quite a few notches.

Yes.

Yeah.

So. And there's another point in civility, and I think it's this line between ambivalence versus disagreement. And I've seen generationally that there's a movement towards, I'd rather you not care than we disagree. And that's concerning to me. And so that's something that we need to continue to work on. But no, as a leader, it starts with you. So model what you mandate. Another thing around civility is creating psychological safety. So creating the space where it is safe to disagree, but it is not safe to disrespect. And so psychological safety doesn't mean comfort. It means safety to disagree about the work without attacking the person or without attacking their values. And I think that's where in civility, we get into this situation where instead of talking about the idea, we attack the person, and then they feel that their values are being attacked and they don't have the ability to communicate. So, you know, teams should argue about ideas, not identities, because you can't argue identity. When you start pushing at someone and say, well, you're this. There's no defense for it. You've hit them in their identity, and then you're going to have. I don't understand why this person threw a stapler at me like, well, I do.

You've written that report.

Yeah, yeah. So I would say, you know, you don't need thicker skin. You need better guardrails around this. So that's what's really important, creating psychological safety. And I would say, you know, I have a citation today, too. You talked about shrm. I want to talk about Google's project Aristotle. So it was one of the most widely cited workplace studies on team effectiveness. And what they found was the most successful teams were those with high psychological safety. They weren't necessarily the people that had the biggest and brightest. And it was all about an environment where people felt respected enough to take risks, offer ideas, and disagree without fear of personal reprisal, which in tech is a really big deal.

Huge.

Yeah.

I mean they're all about innovation.

Yes.

That's all they do.

No, exactly. So psychological safety is a huge strong predictor of team success. You want your team to be successful as they're innovating, as they're growing, as they're doing the things build psychological safety. And so what Google's project Aristotle found is that psychological safety, the ability to speak up with fear, was the top driver of high performing teams. And that tracks perfectly with civility because when people feel respected, they participate, innovate and solve harder problems together.

Agreed.

Yes. I have more points. Are you ready? Oh, I have one more.

I was about to say you've got, I mean we're like 10, 12 minutes in. You've got like another 40 minutes to go.

Oh, good, we can keep talking. Well, I'm excited. We'll get to operations in a second. But the last one is resilience over silence. And this isn't about avoiding those hard conversations, it's really about being able to have them without blowing holes in trust. And so, you know, silence doesn't keep the peace, it just postpones the explosion. And I know for me, young leader, sometimes Chrissy, now people think that my silence is acceptance and it's not. Sometimes it's formulating what the next conversation point is going to be or figuring out the question. But I've also been in that space where I didn't want to say anything because I just didn't want to take anybody off. So here's what I will say.

I don't do that as much.

I know you don't, but I do. It's still something I'm working on. So resilient leaders can sit with discomfort long enough to solve the problem instead of transferring their stress to the room. And that's something else in civility is again, you model what you mandate, but your, your team can pick up on the energy that you're delivering. And if you're sitting there silent, but they can tell that your fists are clenched or you're biting the side of your jaw, they're like, oh crap, what's going to happen? Or blow up or we can't wait till she does, depending on what the situation is. So really you have to remember that self regulation. So when you're building civility, it's a leadership skill and civility is often the outcome of regulation, learning how to manage those emotions yourself. And it's not restraint, it's not about like how much did I hold back? It's. How much did I regulate internally?

Real quick, the. Give me the difference between that regulation and restraint. Because to me, that's. It's interesting. That's. That's mushy between those two. Squishy. Mushy. I'm going to say squishy.

Squishy.

But it's. To me, it's that regulation. I almost see those as somewhat the same. And I guess I know you see them differently. Let's be honest. You did not start your business so you could spend your days buried in HR paperwork or Googling how to handle employee drama.

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Yeah. So regulation is. There are emotions. There are things that are happening internally inside of me. I am going to continue to move through that so that I can communicate. Restraint is. I'm just not going to say anything. I don't have the ability to have a conversation without throat punching someone. So that is restraint.

Okay, so that, that makes more sense to me now. So the regulation is having the emotions working through the emotions, not pushing those emotions down.

Yes.

And saying, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna act like a robot and just pretend this didn't happen. It's regulating that. So that way you have a. A proper and civil.

Yes.

Reaction.

Well, because we are humans having human experiences, and it is okay for us to have emotions in the workplace, it's not okay for sometimes those emotions to blow up into bad behavior, but at times it is absolutely. I think it's impossible. I don't think you're a good leader if you cannot show at times frustration, disappointment, at the same time, joy, elation, excitement. You need to be a multifaceted person for your team. Be human. Be human because they will react the way that you react. So you need to be able to model calm and composure, not just how to grit your teeth and dig your nails into a table because someone's telling you something you don't like. Learn how to build those Skills. And that's what emotional regulation is about. It is about learning how to effectively communicate. How do I stay mindful when my emotions are hijacked?

That makes sense. It's interesting. So like you're saying during a teams meeting, your team should not see you biting a wooden spoon.

No, that is not acceptable. And if they do, then we may have some questions or conversation we need to. So with that, I'd like to shift. Josh. I can set the vision, but vision doesn't run the day to day.

It does not.

From an operations standpoint. How do we stop treating civility like a feeling and start treating it like a process that we can actually measure and manage?

I love the emphasis you put on feeling.

I figured you would.

To me, I mean, first off, there's. There's that certain just level of respect that this all has to be built off of. I have seen it where people are trying to be civil to those that they don't respect. And once again, it comes across as blowing sun where the sun normally does not shine.

Correct.

And once again, that shows through. And now that's more likely to make that other person uncivil. So now we're going to have two people that are feeling just.

It creates passive aggressive aggression.

100%. So to me, I mean, it is that minimal effort to be civil, and it's making sure that you're around people that you respect. If you do not respect your co workers, there's conversations that need to be had there. If someone is acting like they don't respect their co workers, there's bigger conversations that need to be had there. I mean, that's. Once again, you have to look at your crappy wall art and be like, are we really following through on this? Yeah, if you're not, then yeah. The other thing is too, is that it's the small efforts that make a big difference when it comes to civility. Their time, their dignity, their right to a professional environment. We had a discussion a few podcasts ago about someone that would come over and a boss, my boss. You know where this is going?

Oh, I do. I can still smell it.

Who would pass gas in my cubicle? That's. That's not dignity. That's not a professional environment. The other thing is, too, is, like, I've been in a couple of meetings recently where, like, important people have shown up late, and I'm like, you just don't do that.

That's my. Oh, yeah, that's my biggest pet.

I mean, if someone shows up at, like, if, if there's a 3 o' clock meeting and they're there at 301. I got no problem with it. No, if they're there at 307, I. And I get a problem with that because that's disrespect. That's a lack of dignity. And that's what takes away from that civility that we are trying to build in the workplace. It's. If you don't have those types of things that you're going to build that incivility. To me there, it's squishy. So it is sometimes tough. Like, this is not something that I like. I'm not going to put KPIs to this.

Okay.

And you know, I'm the KPI guy.

I know you are. So this is. I'm excited to hear this.

It feels like you said operations like four times. I am saying this is the squishy feeling stuff. It's like we're both getting. I feel like we should. Should we switch chairs? I mean, to me, I'm not going to send out a survey on a monthly basis to say, do you feel like your coworkers, workers, have been civil towards you recently?

You don't need to.

You can tell 100.

If you're walking the floor of your organization, if you are involved in meetings, you can tell if people are being.

Pay attention. Just pay attention.

Yeah.

Look at your people. Do they look relaxed and comfortable? I mean, not feet up on the desk relaxed and comfortable, but do they look like they're not? Like, if their shoulders are up by their ears, there's a problem there. I mean, I've been in a number of workplaces where you can just see the tension because there's one or two employees that hold hostility.

Yeah.

Towards others. And you're like, oh. And I mean, if someone, like, if they're sitting in their cubicle and you walk up to their cubicle and they kind of. When you. When you get there, there's a problem.

Yes. Or they're sitting in the meeting across from each other in the conference room and they're glaring at each other. It's like, are you upset with that person? You don't want to ask. Or it's like, hey, do you have. Are you. They're working on a group project together, presentation together, and they're like standing there like they're hostages. It's pretty easy to tell if people are not getting along.

It very much is. Now, the problem is that I see that so many people don't do. Is they don't. And I'M going to use one of your favorite things here. They don't document this.

No, I don't.

They may observe it, but they don't make a note to revisit it. They don't make a note to relook at it. So they may observe it 15 or 20 times before they finally think maybe there's a problem here.

Yeah.

Be intentional about it. Go out, look and see what is going on and then document it and put it. Like I was like, one of the things that I do with stuff like this is I put it on my calendar and say, hey, next Thursday, take, take the other office crews or just take the survey, go around, kind of take the temperature of the room.

Yeah.

How are people doing? But unless you tell yourself to do that and be aware of that once again, until it is at a boiling point, you are not going to notice the issue.

Exactly. You don't see it if you're, if you're, if you're in the day to day all the time and you don't make a point to pay attention. If you're not a naturally, I mean, emotionally intelligent person, you're not intuitive about it. You're not hardwired for team dynamics. And not every business owner is. And that is perfectly fine.

Most aren't.

That's why you schedule it. That's why you pay attention. That's why you hire a fractional HR consultant. They'll tell you.

Yes, they will. They'll just walk into the room and be like, what did you do to these people?

This happens.

Oh, I, I 100% know this. And it's. To me, it's that, it's that intentionality behind it. Because if you don't have that, and I know every business owner likes to think that they're totally in tune with what's going on with their employees all the time. And they're not. No. And I mean even me, I try and pay attention. I try and ask the questions of this. And I still know that this is something that I can get so much better at.

Yeah. Especially as your organization grows, it becomes impossible for you to be that center all the time. And there's things I don't know about.

So yeah, I, the, the, yeah, the. To take that temperature and to think about that. And this is the piece where everyone talks about working on your business instead of in your business. And especially as a leader rather than doing the thing, whether you're a manager, whether a middle manager, whatever, these are the things that you have to work on the business instead of in the business. Get out of the spreadsheet for 10 minutes.

Exactly.

That's all it takes.

Have quarterly conversations with your director? Probably. Yep.

The problem is it's tough to get out of the spreadsheets. Just make the time.

Make the time.

Another mistake that I see people do is they try and manage attitudes. Different attitudes are good. You're going to have different people that are going to be doing different things, that are going to have different mindsets, and those are awesome. You cannot manage someone's attitude. You cannot manage someone's emotions. Every guy on the planet knows how effective it is to get in an argument with their significant other and be like, just, just calm down. That is, you try. That is the classic example of you trying to manage someone else's emotions. That's. That's usually. That is usually the last thing that that guy says before. Before getting hit with a rolling pin, a pan, a knife.

I don't know why she's not talking to me anymore.

Right, right. Just that. So to me, that is the. I was so excited to say that one because that is the classic example of trying to manage someone's emotions. You cannot do that in the workplace. Don't think you're the master manipulator. You're not. None of us are. Sorry, that's just not how it's going to work. Now you can coach on reaction and you can coach people on how they express those things and be like, hey, in the meeting yesterday, remember when you lost your.

Be an observer.

Right. How about take two seconds, just think about, like, what's. What's the result of this? We're going to give everyone time to talk. We're going to give everyone the time to say their things. Just don't go across the table towards them. Yes, but that's. Once again, that's coaching people on something that's not telling them, hey, calm the hell down.

Well, and it's understanding. Part of it too, I think, is understanding how people either process information or communicate information. And I think often civility. Things can. Can bridge in a different direction because people communicate differently. So, I mean, a great example. I mean, I am a verbal processor. I will talk about things for a very long time. Not everybody wants to. To sit next to a verbal processor while they're talking about things for. And they're like, have you made a decision yet? I'm like, no, I'm still thinking about it when I say I'm an efficient verbal processor. But there's some people that just still don't think I'm efficient, like the one I'm married to. So it's really important that you understand, you know, how do you communicate? And I think often when we're called into a situation where you've got two team members that do not communicate well, that's one of the first things that I start observing is just kind of seeing how they interact. And, you know, is one. A verbal processor is another one. I mean, how do they handle emotional regulation? Some of it may just be skill set.

It's okay how they're wired.

This person's an extrovert. This person's an introvert. We don't understand why they don't get along or why this other person just always has a tic. It's just there are ways to walk around it.

Why do they flinch when they walk in the room? The one thing that I always like to look at too, is to say to. To get a better idea of what's going on and start looking at things that I don't want to say. You can document because you don't need to keep a tally sheet in every meeting.

No. But you need to be an observer.

Right. And look at and be mindful of like, hey, I noticed you interrupted Bob three times. Only Bob. You didn't interrupt Bill. You didn't interrupt James. You interrupted Bob three times. Every time Bob opened his mouth, you're like, why is that? Right.

That's a question.

That is that lack of civility. And there's a reason typically behind that. So the one thing that I always look at too, is that interruption is typically, almost always an escalation. And it is looking to escalate those things once again. Escalating typically leads to incivility.

Yeah.

The same thing is the other. The other way that I look at it is too, is good ideas shouldn't need to compete for attention. If one person says one thing, someone else should have the time to say something else. The one thing that I have to say that, like, where all this comes down to it for me is civility is the bare minimum.

Yeah.

I worked at a company. I got screamed at twice by someone right when I was in a meeting with the CEO about it. He's like, wow, we've moved her four times, and each time she's been a problem. Dude, you're the problem.

That's you.

Right?

This is a Like, you're tolerating this. And you're right. Yeah. You have a tyrant.

You're tolerating what isn't even considered the bare minimum. She's performing below the bare minimum because she's, like you said, she's the tyrant to other employees. So like, for me, the tolerance is almost zero. I get if someone had a bad day.

Everybody has a bad day.

Sure, I have gone on some tirades, not like hands in the air screaming at someone. But I, look, I've been short with people. I get it. But let's go to the basic laws of physics here. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And realize that if you are blowing off steam to someone else, they're absorbing that. Now where they direct that energy, they could direct that energy in depression, they could direct that energy in sabotaging your email campaign could direct that energy. So giving them this big blow off of energy, it's not worth it. It's got to go somewhere. The other thing that I look at with civility is, did you hire this person? And why? Because if there's an issue about this, why are they here? Yeah, we talk like, I would say 90% of the things that we talk about. It's. We talk about clarity. I, I just enjoy getting to Chrissy to say smile every time I say the word charity. The, the other piece though is too, is. I mean, we talk about culture, we're talking about the culture of how to get the most for your people. And the problem is, is it is that little bit of upfront investment in that culture is what makes it so if you have the good culture, you are not worried about the, like, civility as much because people have that respect. Once again, this comes down to your shitty wall art. What are your mission and vision statements? Are they just, just bad wall or.

Are you modeling them?

And are you modeling them? That is 100% it. I, I always, I always find it funny when someone blames their employee for something because I'm like, well, they're kind of your responsibility. They're doing what you told them to.

This person's wreaking havoc in my office. Right.

Wonder why that happened. Weird. Defining what, what we're doing and why the hell we're doing it is a big deal because once again, that is going to keep everyone in line and everyone moving the same direction and no one's screaming at someone else.

Yeah.

What about like, this is the big question. Yeah, politics is hot. Yeah, we don't talk about politics. Really. I mean, well, I mean, and to me there's, there's all sorts of reasons that not to do it. But a lot of people do like to talk politics. They do 53% of workers want to ban. They do political talk in the studio. What are your thoughts?

Well, I think it's impossible when your business or industry is in a political business or if you're. You're a political football. We can't. I mean, our organization, we're in the insurance industry. We are in the news. Not aoi, but like, what we do is in the news right now, every day. It's going to be until, I don't know, they figure it out.

So which, at this rate, we're looking at 2045.

I don't even. I don't even know. I don't. I don't even think about it. But I will say, you know, here's what my stroke. When you ban things. So banning conversation doesn't remove the tension, it just drives it underground.

Yep.

So, I mean, the issue isn't what people believe, it's how they behave. So when we started seeing things change in 2020 and 2021, we took our team and we continue to take them through tolerance training. So we can have conversations where we disagree. We can have uncomfortable conversations. We have to be able to have uncomfortable conversations. We're in HR and insurance. We tell people no a lot. We tell them they're wrong a lot. We have to disagree on things. So it's something that is extremely important. And I think that respectful disagreement is a skill. And if leaders don't teach it, people default to emotional shortcuts. Yep, that's it.

I mean, it's funny you say the. The banning conversation doesn't remove tension. You know what popped into my head when you started talking about that?

What?

I. Fifth grade.

Oh, boy.

I got. I went to Kmart and got Guns n Roses, Appetite for Destruction.

Okay.

Probably not the best thing for a fifth grader to listen to, but they.

Let you check out at Kmart, correct?

When my parents heard this, of course, in the car on the way home, as I'm right, I remember my mother and father sitting in the front seat as Rocket Queen comes on, thinking, this probably isn't the right thing. They banned that tape from me. Do you think that stopped me from finding a way to listen to it?

Oh, heck, no.

That is.

You listen to it on repeat.

Because that just made me want to. Want to listen. Mom and dad don't like this. Oh, my God. Give me more. Give me more. How. How do you feel like when you're trying to keep things piece. I mean, there. There's some loneliness when we're trying to manage different pieces where someone's louder, someone's quieter, there's headbutting, there's different views on things.

Feel like you're the only responsible person in the room or you're the person that's holding everything together.

Right, Right. Do you think it's scary to say that I'm the only adult in the room ever?

I. Yes. I didn't say it.

You agreed and in many cases, rightfully so. But, like, I mean, how do you combat that loneliness?

I think acknowledging that it's real is really important first. So it exists. The other thing that I would say is, you know, peer groups are helpful, having other business owners that you have friends that you are friends with. But part of being able to navigate these is really teaching your team how to communicate effectively. So, I mean, if you do one thing this year for your team, help them navigate disruption, teach them or have someone else teach them about how to communicate when they're in fear or uncertainty. Because that's often where civility comes in, is people get into fear or they get into power dynamics. And so it's really important. You're building your interpersonal effectiveness skills as a leader. You're helping them build their skills, and that makes it less lonely because you have a separate skill set that you can share. If you're a small business owner navigating the world of marketing or looking to establish yourself as an industry expert, you already know the power of a great podcast.

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I. There's, there's something you touched on there that I kind of want to revisit. You said the, the fear, I believe, or power dynamics. The power dynamics, to me are a huge thing because there's some things where you see, like, let's say, say there's five salespeople.

Yeah.

There's. Any time you have five, five competitive.

There'S always one alpha.

There's. Right. And there's always that one that is going to try and steamroll everyone else. And I feel like that's one of those things where you have to watch that power dynamic.

Sure.

There's always the one that's kind of. I don't want to say in charge. Ish. Even maybe in charge adjacent.

Yes.

They're the high performer. They. So you have a tendency to go with their gut on certain things. Things they do. But you have to make sure that the other ones aren't feeling threatened.

Yes.

By this one. Because. And I mean, I see it all the time that the top dog salesman gets all sorts of preferential treatment, generating a ton of money. Yeah. But don't let that cross over into civility.

No, you can't let it cross over into civility. And you have to be able to, again, modeling what you mandate. Making sure that everybody has the same set of skills to be able to communicate. Because you can be a really good performer in the sales space and you can be a really crappy communicator. And so if you can build those skills around that person with other people in the team, it can also benefit that individual very much.

So for sure. Some of the key takeaways for today.

Yeah.

One that I love is stop ignoring the minor stuff. The. The eye rolling, the dismissive tones. There is a reason why people sometimes turn their cameras off and teams meetings.

Yes.

Because they can't hide their WTF face very well. But anytime you see something like that, that is the canary in the coal mine. And I mean, it's easy to watch someone say something and someone else lean back or someone fold their arms and you're like, those are the things to pay attention to for that.

Yeah. I would say small behaviors are early warnings or early opportunities. So. Yeah.

Opportunity out of this.

Opportunity out of this. Because when you address things early, it's not punitive, it's protective. So you're showing the team that we care enough to keep this healthy. So nip it in the bud. Or give them the resources to be able to communicate effectively.

Ooh, the other one. Audit your hiring.

Yes.

Stop hiring uncivil people. I see it so many cases where people use softball questions. Tell me the best thing about you. Tell me the worst thing about you. No, you need to find out, like, where this person is coming from. For me, I mean, everyone knows success is a shared thing, is our core value as a company. If I don't see an example of that from someone when we're talking, uh, not happening.

Yeah. And to kind of piggyback off what you're saying in auditing, hiring, you're hiring for how people handle tension, not just their talent. So at the end of the day, those skills get you hired. But behavior determines whether or not someone belongs. So the real question isn't, can't they do the job? It's how do they show up when things get hard? Because civility under pressure is one of the clearest indicators of long term fit. Can we stay kind when we're stressed out?

Yeah, love that. When someone's stressed out, the other thing that I like, occasionally we'll have something that, let's say borders on uncivility. Don't just like at the moment, address it and let it go. Three days later you have to check back. Five days later, you have to look back and be like, is this problem being rectified? Check in with people that are involved in stuff like that. If you don't, they're going to be like, oh, I was never heard from again.

Yeah. And I would say the final is leaders go first. So that last piece is, culture doesn't improve until you do. So civility, respect, emotional regulation, those are the leadership skills. They're not employee problems. If you want calm, you model calm. If you want respect, demonstrate it under pressure. Show them what it looks like. If you want people to communicate well, you need to practice, especially when it's the hardest. If you are a crappy communicator, you don't get to blame your team for being crappy communicators. It starts with you and your team. It's never going to outgrow the example that you set, but they will absolutely mirror it 100%.

Yeah. If you can't act civil, you cannot expect that. Did we have recently an episode about expectations?

We did.

Look at that. Look at that. And by the way, one of our listeners, Bill, said he was sending that to a lot of his managers. So thank you for that, Bill. Yeah, I feel like this is why we're having the podcast is to, to help people have these conversations and to get those things out there. In fact, he doesn't even need to have the conversation. He just sends them an email with a link that they're going to click on, probably with some regret, but hopefully they learn something from it.

Yeah.

As we start to wrap up here, you've got two seat, you've got two employees, let's say what, you walk out to the parking lot, you look at their cars, there's a Trump sticker on one, there's a Bernie sticker on the other one. They see.

And they share a cubicle.

Correct. They see each other's cars and they're like, we ain't working together. How do you handle things that.

Oh, okay. So you take politics off the table and you put behavior on the table. So the expectation is an agreement. It's professionalism. So this is one of those moments where it's not like you're going to your corner and you're going to your corner. No, no, no. We come to the table together and you reset the standard. Clearly that you don't have to think alike, but you do have to work together respectfully. And if they can't meet that bar, then it becomes a performance issue and it's not a personal one.

Ooh, I like that. And if I can add something to that, too, I have found, too, when you bring people to the table like that and you start talking about non related, non politically related things, suddenly they aren't that far apart.

Yeah. And it doesn't. We're going to remove that. We're going to talk about how teamwork is our core value. How are we going to be a team and get these things done? How are we going to care for our clients and get these things done? Love it. Because we have clients that have those stickers and in their parking lots, too. So it's all good.

Whatever sticker you.

Whatever sticker you have. We're good.

Whatever stick you have or don't like, there's a client out there that has exactly. Whatever it is.

Which is why we live in the middle and we practice civility at all times. So.

Yep.

Josh, what's the single biggest operational mistake managers make when they see something uncivilized.

Like someone wearing a caveman outfit? It. No, it's. They hesitate. They kind of sit. They sit back and be like, oh, that was awkward.

Yeah.

And then they just sit there and look at it.

I hope that doesn't happen again.

Right. I mean, you need to address that. That second right then and there. As soon as you know about it. Right then and there. Show decisive action to be like, this is not tolerated. And as I said before, you follow up a few days later. You. You follow up a few days after that. Because it. It one time, once again, is not going to address that situation.

No.

If you get a whiff of anything coming from that, that's once again not what you're looking for. It's time to make big changes.

Yeah.

Big changes. That being said, you're like, everyone out there is trying to take back their culture, their profits. Chrissy, thank you again for your solo episode.

It was not solo. Together.

We did. We did. We did. We did. And we. I thought we were very civilized in the discussion. That was. That was. That was pleasant. That all being said, if you want to find more resources, make sure you hit the business fix podcast.com next week. We are talking about the Rockstar Trap.

I like that.

Oh, this is going to be fun. Because in most cases, we've all heard the Peter Principle.

Yep.

And if you haven't, you're going to hear it next week because your best worker might be your worst manager ever. Typically is.

Yep.

Do me a favor. Take care of yourself. If you can, take care of someone else, too, we will see you very, very soon. Sam.