What has happened to polite, professional behaviour?
Over the past year or so I have observed that peoples’ behaviour at work seems to have declined. This isn’t a comment on a specific person or company – more a general observation from my privileged position, where I spend time with a large number of different people in a range of organisations.
Examples include:
- Turning up to meetings late
- Not turning up to meetings at all, and not sending an apology
- Agreeing to complete a task and then not doing it
- Not replying to emails & voicemails
I’m going to sound like a grumpy old man – and maybe that’s because this behaviour is making me grumpy! But I really don’t remember people behaving like this in the past. I’ve been working for 16 years and throughout this time, apart from the odd hiccup, I found that people generally didn’t display any of the behaviours I listed above. Maybe I had just been lucky until recently?
There are probably a number of reasons that might explain the changes I’ve noticed. One could be downturn in the economy resulting in people feeling under more pressure to get things done, which diverts their attention from the common courtesies. Another reason could be the proliferation of devices like mobile phones and tablets; they might be conditioning us to always expect interruptions, so we are no longer able focus on anything for a reasonable amount of time.
But is my observation correct, or are my senses just heightened more recently?
And how should one deal with people who aren’t behaving in a manner that you feel is appropriate?
What can we do about this? I think we could all lead by example. If we behave in the way we would like others to maybe the situation would improve. I hope so.
Danny, I’ve worked here 14 years (not as long as you I appreciate), but my impression of others is that it is pretty much the same as when I started (not able to comment accurately on myself, though I feel I still try to reply to all forms of conact, maybe too quickly, and still have poor timekeeping). I do wonder if there is a difference between the our different roles as I suspect yours is more sales focused than mine and wonder if that presents differences
I think a lot of people have become attuned to many, many meetings being a complete and utter waste of time and they’re not bought into the goals so they don’t complete the actions. Nothing bad happens so they learn it’s ok. They start to look forward to them as an escape from the tyranny of staring at a screen and email for an hour or two.
My opinion of the best cure is to run meetings only when really needed, with clear objectives, publish the agenda beforehand including starting with actions from last time (plus intervening comms) and ending with summary of actions and sending those out. Or posting on some sort of project page. Make sure everyone knows what they and everyone else has committed to deliver.