Excuses, excuses....
I haven't posted here for nearly a year, primarily because I focused on writing a novel. It's my third and I began writing it over Labor Day weekend 2012. It took about six months to complete a first draft and I've had it out with readers who have since returned comments, so now I'm into rewrites — or, as I like to joke, Rewrite City: Town Without Pity.
Leadership and civility
...But I haven't forgotten about what's important here. Recently I revised my workplace civility course and geared it for leaders serving in the public sector, the bottom-line $64,000 question being,
"What can you do to model the civil behaviors you expect to see from your employees?"
Leaders or not, brazen repeat offenders are those with real or perceived "star power." They're the department manager, the killer salesperson, or the exceptionally gifted team member. The impact and long-term consequences of incivility are still the same: no matter how good your best employee may be, his or her acts of incivility will drive others away. And the entire organization will wind up paying for every cost.
Talent and civility
All day I've been bugged by this week's big sports story — the Rutgers coach on viral video, screaming homophobic slurs at his players, hurling balls at their heads, basically losing it when they weren't playing up to par. The sad reality is that homophobic
slurs have been upheld since time immemorial to rattle a man's sense of
his own masculinity, but it's still profoundly sick and wrong-headed to
use them. His particular intensity may be new and off-putting, but screaming coaches are nothing new. Neither are belligerent CEOs or abusive drill sargeants or volatile artistic types.
Excuses, excuses
Why do we keep making excuses for this line of behavior? Does it look like "passion"? Do people perform that much better when belittled and terrified? Is so much riding on it? College sports may have become a billion-dollar business, but most American sports have been characterized by gentlemen-athletes and scholar-athletes. (I think of the tender humility of Lou Gehrig's final farewell, or Pee Wee Reese throwing his arm around Jackie Robinson's shoulders). To squander that ethos is to surrender ourselves to the idiocracy thriving on the squalid conflict to be found in reality TV shows and cut-rate movies.
Because here's the bottom line: If anyone in this world should know how to motivate talent, it's the sports coach. If anyone should understand the inner workings of players and teamwork, it's the coach. If anyone in sports should embody the values of fair play and sportsmanship, it's the coach. Anyone can be paid millions per year to stride along a ball court, screeching like a self-important putz. That he's like this? Shame on him. That he's been allowed to continue like this? Shame on us for tolerating it and believing value can be yielded from it.
If you as a leader do not hammer down on repeat offenders, their acts of chronic incivility will rework your organization until you wind up paying every red cent for the quantitative and qualitative damages they incur. It's not merely that this particular coach could behave this way; scrutiny should be paid to the culture that permitted it.