TRUST YOUR CANARY TeamTeam CivilityCivility BoosterBooster www.sharonebardavid.com TRUST YOUR CANARY Team Civility Booster www.sharonebardavid.com © 2015 Bar-David Consulting. All Rights Reserved. We trust that you will use this product as intended. To be used solely by Civility Team Booster managers/facilitators. No part of this guide may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, digital, mechanical, recording, photocopying or otherwise, without written permission of the copyright holder. Back in the day, coal mine workers would carry caged canaries down into the dark tunnels with them. The canaries would chirp happily as long as the air was clean and safe. But if dangerous gases were released within the mine shaft, the canaries would die, their demise alerting the miners to the presence of imminent danger. Inside every one of us resides our own personal canary. It alerts us when the invisible line between civil and uncivil behaviour has been crossed. We need to trust our canary — and act on it. We need to be able to identify workplace incivility, understand its origins and manifestations, and move forward to create civil work environments where each person can perform at his or her best. The Trust Your Canary program will help you and your team do exactly that. Welcome! Sharone Bar-David President Bar-David Consulting Bar-David Consulting Table of Contents Program Overview Page 5 Preparing to Launch Page 10 This guide includes everything you need to prepare to launch the Trust Your Canary program. Module 1: What is Workplace Incivility? Page 24 This module defines workplace incivility and offers common examples of its manifestations. Module 2: The Real-Life Effects of Workplace Incivility Page 36 This module examines the far-reaching effects of incivility on people, teams, organizations, and customers. Module 3: Incivility-Enabling Beliefs Page 47 This module reveals how certain beliefs that lie beneath the surface can inadvertently perpetuate workplace incivility. Module 4: Walk the Talk Page 57 This module focuses on modelling personal civility and on the role that bystanders can play in curbing incivility. Module 5: Dealing with Workplace Incivility Page 69 This module describes strategies for addressing incivility in a constructive manner. Sustaining the Change Page 80 This guide offers you the tools necessary to sustain the accomplishments achieved through the Trust Your Canary program. Bar-David Consulting PROGRAM OVERVIEW www.sharonebardavid.com PROGRAM OVERVIEW ™ Welcome to Trust Your Canary ! What is the Trust Your Canary program? Trust Your Canary Team Civility Booster is a team development program specifically designed to help boost civility on your team. It will help you, the team’s leader, facilitate meaningful team conversations about this topic in ways that lead to action and change. The goal is to trigger thought-provoking discussion that increases understanding between team members and contributes to the development of shared values and civil behaviour. The program is designed to support conversations that are thirty to sixty minutes long. You can dedicate more than one meeting to a particular module. Team conversations begin with a short video (three to five minutes) that focuses on a specific aspect of workplace incivility. Following that, you as the leader facilitate a discussion about the topic using questions that are provided to you as part of the program. Specific questions that enable shared action planning are included in each module. Why is the program titled Trust Your Canary? Before the advent of modern technology, caged canaries would alert coal mine workers if deadly gases were present in the mine shaft. Much like those canaries, we each possess our very own built-in personal canary whose job is to alert us when the invisible line separating civility and incivility has been crossed. It manifests in the form of a strong inner sensation that tells you that something is wrong about a behaviour that just occurred. Trusting your canary means that you listen to this inner alert and take action to address and stop the uncivil behaviour. 6 Bar-David Consulting How will the program help the team and you? Developing and maintaining a civil work environment is an ongoing process that requires everyone’s contribution and participation — and it also requires strong and competent leadership. Therefore, the Team Civility Booster is focused on development in two key areas: 1. Building a shared team understanding of workplace incivility and mobilizing team members to take action to model civility and address incivility in a constructive fashion whenever it occurs. 2. Assisting in your growth as a leader through continuous reflection and action planning. You will have ample opportunities to reflect on the matter of incivility and on your own journey as a leader throughout this process: before you launch the project, before and after each module, and then when the series of team meetings is complete. What does the facilitation toolkit include? 1. Welcome Video In this video, Sharone Bar-David, president of Bar-David Consulting, walks you through the program and suggests ways that you can maximize its benefits. 2. Five Videos Each video focuses on a different aspect of workplace incivility. These videos are for use only by authorized subscribers like you. 3. Program Overview (which you are reading right now) This Guide contains an overall orientation to the program and general information. 4. Preparing to Launch Guide This Guide contains preparatory questions that will help you successfully launch and implement the project. You will examine organizational and team factors that need to be considered, and action you need to take in advance to remove barriers and enlist support. It also helps you reflect on your own role — as a person and as a leader — within the overall picture. 5. Module Guides (one per module) The Module Guides contain information that is specific to each of the video modules. Here you’ll find every thing you need to prepare for the module, including reflection questions for you to work on before and after the discussion, and a selection of facilitation questions from which you can choose the questions that best suit your circumstances. 6. Team Member Worksheets Each module is accompanied by a one-page sheet that team members can use as you work through that module. 7. Sustaining the Change Guide Having completed the modules with your team, it is time to ensure that the gains made through the Trust Your Canary program are sustained. This Guide helps you and your team keep up the momentum. 7 Bar-David Consulting What is the best way to work through the Trust Your Canary materials? To make the most of the program, we recommend that you follow the steps listed below. Working through the preparatory questions will take time, so ensure that you do so in advance. As well, the process is built to alert you to issues you may need to address ahead of time, such as communicating with key team members whose support — or lack thereof — might have a great impact on the program’s success. So make sure to give yourself sufficient time before launching the project and before working through each module. NOTE: Depending on preference, you can work through the guides and questions on your computer or mobile device using the allotted interactive spaces. If you prefer to use pen and paper, simply print out the pages. Step 1: Read the Program Overview (which you are doing right now) and view the short Welcome Video. The guide and video explain the program and how to best go through it. Step 2: View all the videos in one sitting (approximately twenty to thirty minutes). Viewing the full set of videos will provide you with a solid understanding of the program’s content and inform your thinking as you review the rest of the materials. Step 3: Review the Module Guides in a cursory way to understand how the module-specific material is structured and the kinds of activities and time it will require of you. Step 4: Work through the Preparing to Launch Guide. You will need an hour or two for reflection, preparation, and planning. Step 5: Set times for the team meetings. Set them at optimal intervals given people’s schedules and how much time you’d like to allot for them (and you) to work on things between meetings. Having scheduled time for the team meetings, enter in your calendar times for personal preparation before and after each module (thirty to sixty minutes). Step 6: Communicate to the team that you will be launching the program (see recommendations in the Preparing to Launch Guide). Step 7: Review each Guide and prepare accordingly. Step 8: At the end of the series, work through the Sustaining the Change Guide to help you reflect on the full experience, evaluate the progress that was made, and plan for next steps. 8 Bar-David Consulting Who is Bar-David Consulting? Bar-David Consulting is a company specializing in creating respectful work environments. A training and consulting boutique firm established in 1990, the firm is committed to creating respectful and resilient work environments through training programs, consulting services, keynote speeches, and learning tools. Sharone Bar-David, founder and president of the company, is a leading expert on workplace incivility whose ideas, teaching, and writing has gained a loyal following over the years. What additional resources are available to help you curb workplace incivility? This program is part of larger set of learning tools from Bar-David Consulting that includes a wide range of training programs, Respect on the Go learning tools for leaders and staff, the learning hub on our website at www.sharonebardavid.com, our free blog, Sharone Bar-David’s book Trust Your Canary! Every Leader’s Guide to Taming Workplace Incivility, and other programs that are added periodically to help boost workplace civility.