From good manners comes something more important: a concern for how the person you are interacting with is feeling about that interaction. (Photo: rakenimages // Unsplash) 
When I was growing up I was surrounded by older people who insisted that I display certain manners. From about the age of 12 I understood that if someone older than me walked into the room I had to stand up. At school this was beaten into us (sometimes quite literally – it was a different time).
If a teacher or any other adult, or even a prefect, walked in, up you stood.
Interestingly, despite the fact that this was during the Eighties, this included cleaning staff. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be black in Joburg in 1986, having very few rights and yet having a class of white boys stand up whenever you walked into the room.
One of the phrases I remember from that era was “manners cost you nothing”. I think that’s right. It’s not hard to have good manners. And from good manners comes something more important: a concern for how the person you are interacting with is feeling about that interaction.
I remember having just turned 16 when a friend of my father stood up to greet me. I immediately liked him. My first impression was confirmed over the rest of the evening.
This may not seem important, but I do think it sets you up for the work context. There are particular procedures and protocols we follow in a workplace. We don’t all have to stand up for the boss (although people in government do it for ministers), but there are still ways to show respect – and for the person who receives that respect to show they’ve received it.
This is often the basis for the relationship that follows, the way in which you can join a team and work with that team.
Interestingly, there is now a way to measure the cost of being impolite, or to use a more technical term, uncivil.
In one of those conversations that I just cannot forget, the organisational behaviourist Siphiwe Moyo once told me on The Money Show that in fact in some places the cost of “incivility” can be assessed. And when one index showed how incivility had increased dramatically he believed this would have an impact on companies.
I know that for me, one of the reasons I’ve stayed in a job, or been attracted to a job, is how I’ve been treated, what the vibe in the office was like. It can be a very small thing. When you are in the company lift with someone you don’t know, do they greet you? Is it possible to share a joke? Or is there a sort of sullen, eyes downcast, phone steadfastly in hand kind of response?
I do think in other places, such as the US and the UK, there is very little lift interaction. There, greeting strangers is something to avoid.
Here, saying hello to someone in some way, literally “seeing them”, is absolutely expected.
This probably makes us better people. And probably helps us to get around some of the real difficulties we could otherwise have when our country’s diversity is expressed in an office.
And if an office has no vibe, if people are uncivil or just rude to each other, surely they will leave more easily.
In some economies the amount of “job hopping” is counted quite carefully. And it seems there was a big increase in job hopping after the pandemic. I’m sure that was related to the fact that so many of us were no longer in an office.
But I also worry that in some places people are just less civil to each other.
It’s no accident that the big increase in office incivility in the US occurred while political tension was incredibly high. Those divisions in society were entering the workplace.
While our political discussions are often quite open (have you seriously never discussed politics with an Uber driver?) I do wonder if we could see the same thing here. If there could, at some point, be a political debate that really divides workplaces.
For the moment, I don’t see it happening. In my experience, we’ve become quite good at finding ways to talk to each other.
This may be a strange thing to say, but it might also be one of the positive consequences of a non-growing economy. Because there are very few other places to work in, we might make sure we are not short-termist in an office. We don’t burn our bridges because we know we have to stay there.
Of course, it’s different for everyone, but I think we kind of know that we have to stay in our teams. When a group of people know individually they have to stay together, that probably makes them a much better team. They think over the longer term. And that hopefully means they make sure they are civil to each other.
Being civil and polite and having good manners may be free, but the payoff can be huge. DM