SHRM26 Debrief · Modern Employee Experience · #2361

Plays Well With Others: Civility for Grown-Ups at Work

with Megan Wollerton

▶ Watch on the SHRM portal ~81 min, distilled

civilitypsychological safetySCARF model

"If your people think they are being attacked, they are going to focus on defending themself rather than improving themselves."

What it was about

Workplace incivility is a measurable driver of stress, disengagement, and turnover, and leaders can reverse it with concrete, neuroscience-backed frameworks (SCARF, SBI, and a trust-repair model) that turn feedback and mistakes into moments that build safety instead of triggering survival-mode reactions.

By the numbers

1 in 5

employees have left a job because of incivility in the workplace

92%

are more focused when boundaries and respect are present in the workplace

66%

of employees who experience incivility have decreased productivity

Key notes

Use the SCARF model (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness) to diagnose which specific stress trigger is causing incivility or disengagement on your team before trying to fix it.
Give feedback using the SBI framework: Situation (when/where it happened), Behavior (specific facts, not character judgments), and Impact (why it mattered). Always include the Impact step, since most managers skip it.
Address problem behavior as close to the moment it happens as possible, privately, rather than saving it up for a performance review or PIP conversation (the 'kitchen sink' mistake).

The contrarian takeOver-documenting everything to protect yourself, a habit many HR and operations people take pride in, is actually a symptom of a toxic, fear-driven 'cover your tracks' culture. It keeps people trapped in survival mode and hurts real productivity rather than protecting them.

Take this back Monday

Do this for your team

Next time you give feedback, add the Impact step: state why the behavior mattered, not just what happened.

Say this in your next leadership meeting

Incivility isn't a soft issue: 66% of employees do less work because of it, so respect is a retention strategy.

Watch out for

The 'compliment sandwich' (praise-criticism-praise): people see it coming, it doesn't soften anything, and it reads as insincere.
The 'kitchen sink' approach: waiting months, then dumping every past infraction on someone at once instead of correcting behavior in the moment.
Mind-reading or labeling: attacking someone's character or motives ('you don't care,' 'you're lazy') instead of describing the specific behavior.

Fun fact · Megan Wollerton

Megan Wollerton is a best-selling author who drew on her own burnout in the high-pressure oil and gas industry to write From Burdened to Balanced.

If this landed, see these

↳ Go deeperRed Flags, Quiet Risks: HR Strategies for Detection, Documentation, and Trauma-Informed ResponseGoes further into the pattern-spotting and documentation habits behind the incivility this session flags.⇄ The counterpointBeyond Inclusion Training: Building Cultures that Get RealArgues generic frameworks aren't enough: real change needs specific, negotiated expectations per group.✦ The unexpected oneCulture Redefined: Architecting a Skills-Driven, Continuous Feedback CultureMakes the same case for real feedback conversations, just from the performance-review side of the house.