Interpersonal tensions between colleagues can be costly for businesses. Even the spectre of a threat can sap concentration, undermine collaboration and divert huge amounts of mental energy away from work and towards self-defence.
Ecologists have observed how prey animals manage fear, threats and co-exist with predators within an ecosystem. This revealed surprising mechanisms that, in turn, shed light on how we react to team members in tense situations.
A surprising observation has emerged from the natural world: predators control prey populations not only by eating them, but also by instilling fear. This chronic fear forces prey to invest an immense amount of energy in vigilance and avoidance, leaving them with less energy for activities like finding food or reproducing.
In other words, it’s not predation itself that limits the growth of prey, but the constant anticipation of what might happen to them.
The three strategies of prey
A very similar phenomenon occurs in groups of humans grappling with situations of chronic incivility. If one member of their group shows patterns of aggressive behaviour, the other colleagues are left working in a climate of relational uncertainty.
Their brains interpret the aggressive behaviour as a potential social risk. The group’s energy is then diverted away from work, towards self-protection. In other words, it is not the conflict itself that wears down team members, but the energy they spend anticipating and avoiding it.
Prey use three strategies to survive under this pressure. The same strategies are used in human groups:
1. Prey synchronize their behaviour with the danger. If a predator is known to be active at certain times of day or in certain places, the prey will adjust their movements and activities accordingly. Employees make similar adjustments in the workplace by avoiding certain meetings or reducing their interactions with specific people.
2. Prey retreat to areas with lower threat levels to reduce their vigilance. In organizations, this strategy might take the form of withdrawing from social interactions or taking on more solitary tasks. Today, in some situations, it’s reasonable to conclude that working remotely has become an avoidance strategy. This does not mean disengagement; it’s a way of managing the psychological cost of danger.
3. Collective protection. Prey animals gather in herds so they can share the burden of surveillance and risk. In human teams, this phenomenon can take the form of creating informal alliances or subgroups that use collective support to reduce shared stress.
(Unsplash)
Tackling incivility
These reactions are understandable, but they come at a cost to the organization. Energy is diverted towards managing social risk rather than the task at hand.
In other words, the incivility itself is not the problem. Energy is lost when a collective dynamic disrupts the group’s functioning. This is why managing incivility must be considered at the group level and done pro-actively, rather than reactively.
Managers can control certain behaviours, but they cannot force employees to be civil. The most effective strategy is generally to organize a team-building session in the form of a structured discussion about both the quality of relationships and a group’s mode of functioning.
One of the primary objectives is to create stability in group interactions. This is a space for discussion where reactivity is put on hold, where issues are discussed rather than criticisms levelled and where emotional intensity is allowed to subside before it escalates. Psychological safety does not eliminate conflicts, but it creates the conditions necessary to address them constructively.
In fact, incivility at work leads employees to anticipate and avoid certain interactions that increase cognitive load and stress. Structuring meetings and clarifying the rules of discussion can reduce this uncertainty and, as a result, the vigilance that it provokes.
Structuring meetings, clarifying the rules of discussion and spelling out decision-making criteria immediately reduces the burden of vigilance.
(Pixabay)
Questioning group norms
To do this, the group must first identify the sources of incivility. Problematic behaviours may be linked to organizational factors, including high work demands, a lack of support among colleagues, job insecurity or organizational changes. Good will is rarely enough on its own: sometimes structural irritants need to be addressed or the way work is organized needs to be adjusted.
It’s not enough to simply say that the work atmosphere is difficult: the group must identify the habits that make incivility more likely. How does the group, often unwittingly, contribute to an atmosphere that perpetuates incivility? When no one reacts to incivility, are they implicitly approving this type of behaviour?
From an ecological perspective on social behaviour, the central issue concerns the regulation of group norms. In many teams, uncivil behaviour persists because people are reluctant to intervene alone, since enforcing sanctions can be costly and expose them to risks.
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That means the person who intervenes is likely to bear high social and emotional costs, particularly if their initiative provokes defensive reactions or even retaliation. Yet when no one steps up to take on this role, opportunistic behaviour tends to increase, which undermines co-operation and collective norms.
So one can imagine that, in an organizational context, a person in a position of authority might try to assume a regulatory role on their own. But without group support, the cost of this intervention is hard to sustain. And that may gradually lead the authority figure to relinquish this responsibility.
The best solution is not to increase surveillance, but to share the regulatory costs. Visibly supporting the person who intervenes immediately changes the dynamic. A simple show of support — “he’s right,” “thank you for saying that” or “we agree” — can transform an individual intervention into collective regulation.
It’s often useful to formalize the group’s commitments in a code of conduct or a charter of collegiality, and then to schedule follow-up meetings to check whether the resolutions have held up over time.
In short, a group cannot rely solely on its members’ good will to curb incivility. It must aim to share the burden of upholding its standards. As in natural ecosystems, the stability of a system depends less on the elimination of danger than on collective efforts to regulate its prevalence and effects.
