Research on Workplace Incivility and Its Connection to Practice

We sense it before we can name it. Your boss rolls her eyes then sighs, “I already told you what I wanted”; your cubicle neighbor ignores your plea for assistance; your leader forgets to mention your name when boasting about his team. Incivility makes otherwise unremarkable interpersonal give-and-take conspicuous and memorable to us. Through others’ uncivil body language, facial expressions, demeaning remarks, omissions and mindlessness, we size up the interaction and feel diminished. We absorb these cues through situations and behaviors embedded in very narrow slices of experience. We recognize in the instant a phenomenon that is called incivility.