Overview
At the heart of civility is respect. Respect and dignity are essential for psychological safety, especially when others have diverse experiences and viewpoints. Civility is not about complacency or placating. It’s not about denying or pushing away strong feelings that can emerge when conflict emerges. It’s about temporarily suspending our alarm bells for a period of time so we can do the hard work of “climbing the empathy wall” to better understand the deep stories behind those we see as “the other.”
In this podcast, I interview Sejal Thakkar, an employment lawyer whose family immigrated from India. She has lived the duality of a “betwixt/between” life and has experienced the incivility of discrimination. As she grew through these experiences, she developed a “civility plan” to help workplaces improve their tactics for psychological safety.
About Sejal Thakkar, Esq.
Dubbing herself "Chief Civility Officer", Sejal is not your average employment law attorney! Her more than fifteen years of experience advising clients, human resources personnel, and legal counsel regarding sound, standard employment practices uncovered a need - and personal passion - for bringing more proactive, relevant, and impactful workplace training programs to her clients and their teams. Her highly experiential customized workshops tailored to executives, managers, and individual contributors bring the courtroom to the training room in an interactive, engaging environment that favors human stories over compliance checklists.
Show Notes
McKinsey Quarterly “The hidden toll of workplace incivility” https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-hidden-toll-of-workplace-incivility#
National Guidelines for Workplace Suicide Prevention http://workplacesuicideprevention.com/
Krista Tippett “On-Being” Podcast featuring Arlie Hochschild “Deep Stories of Our Time” https://onbeing.org/programs/arlie-hochschild-the-deep-stories-of-our-time/
BOOK: “Strangers in Their Own Land” https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Their-Own-Land-Mourning/dp/1620973499/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Strangers+in+their+own+land&qid=1612227475&sr=8-1
SHRM Study: The truth is that TOXIC work environments can cripple organizations. - SHRM study -employee turnover bc by toxic cultures cost employers- over $223 billion dollars over past 5 years. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/employee-relations/pages/toxic-workplace-culture-report.aspx
Christine Porath - professor of management at Georgetown University did a study in 2016.
95 % said they believed we have a civility problem. 70% said it had reached “crisis” mode.
66 % cut back work efforts, 80 % lost time worrying about what happened and 2 % left their job.
Notably, she noted that incivility significantly impacted witnesses work performance as well.
https://hbr.org/2013/01/the-price-of-incivility
http://www.christineporath.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Civility-Manifesto-Christine-Porath/dp/1455568988
Dr. Cynthia Clark, Ph.D., R.N., a leading expert - fostering civility and healthy work environments- She defines it as “an authentic respect for others, requiring time, presence, a willingness to engage in genuine discourse, and an intention to seek common ground.”
https://www.boisestate.edu/research-ott/civility-matters-3/https://www.atitesting.com/educator/about/news/2019/04/24/civility-cynthia-clark-journal-of-nursing-regulation
https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Sustaining-Civility-Nursing-Education/dp/1945157054
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