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My experience is very different. The rudest people I've had to work with are generally incompetent to mediocre at best, often believe themselves to be far more

My experience is very different. The rudest people I've had to work with are generally incompetent to mediocre at best, often believe themselves to be far more competent than the evidence suggests, and end up significant drains on the company as people go to significant inefficiencies in order to avoid having to deal with aforementioned rude incompetents. The actual best performers tended to be quietly polite and unobtrusively competent, getting on with their work smoothly; given that being rude to people causes problems, being rude isn't just a sign of incompetence - it is incompetence.

singron 7y ago
> people go to significant inefficiencies in order to avoid having to deal with aforementioned rude incompetents This can also make them seem more competent. E.g. if one rude person is an obstruction that everyone else has to work around, the rude individual is the only one working unimpeded. Unless the difference in competency is large enough to account for that, the manager might consider the rude person more competent.
- EliRivers 7y ago
  I have certainly worked with what I think of as "negative employees"; people who have the same effect, when joining a team, as a competent person leaving that team.
guitarbill 7y ago
If this is the case, your hiring and evaluating process has a deficiency, which should be an easy fix. However, assuming a decent hiring process, people generally aren't rude from the get-go. The bigger question the study doesn't even tackle is how does rudeness evolve over time, and - again assuming rudeness isn't some intrinsic attribute - what factors lead to an increase in rudeness. If somebody is truly incompetent, sure, fire them. But incompetence is rarely so cut and dried, and points to a failure to invest in a person's or team's abilities. I don't think it's a stretch to see the proliferation of incompetence as a management failure in any case. If percieved incompetence leads to a lack of respect and therefore rudeness, it should come as no surprise why leaders who allowed such an environment to be created would be unable/unwilling to assess it accurately.
mharroun 7y ago
From my experience rude + under-performing = termination, if those people who you work with are not performing why does your companies management keep the around? I didn't put it in my original post but incompetent managers who use "boasting" as a success metric instead of objective metrics can lead to such an issue as well.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  if those people who you work with are not performing why does your companies management keep the around? I'm asking this question presently as a team lead. We have a contributor who is a drain on just about every aspect of our team's operations. They frequently miss meetings, they don't seem to take instruction well (example I brought up once to another team member, this person will ask for help, cut you off constantly, suggest their way is better, or do the direct opposite of whatever recommendation you offer and spend days on a problem set delaying sprints), have delayed multiple projects, caused numerous production outages so on and so forth. All of this combined has made trying to train this person or help them improve difficult and frustrating--very few on the team wants to work with them anymore. It's not a secret among the team that this person just is not the contributor we need, and it's pretty evident from his reactions a few times that our department head is not pleased either, but he doesn't seem interested in letting this person go--none of us are quite sure how to have that talk with our leader that we think this person should be cut loose and a replacement found. Suggestions on broaching that topic?
  - mharroun 7y ago
    As team lead are you the persons manager? If so you should have every right to go to hr to either terminate or start a performance improvement plan. If your a team lead with no hire/fire power you need to go to your department head (and rally those whoa agree with you to do the same) and be blunt. "X is is not performing to expectations on top of that the way X is not performing is disrupting, impeding, and alienating other members of the team and its now become not just a performance issue but one of employee attrition". This makes it about X vs the rest of the team/department and allows him to clearly see what is actually at risk. Its very unlikely 1 person is so valued that a manager would accept major turnover in their department.

singron 7y ago

> people go to significant inefficiencies in order to avoid having to deal with aforementioned rude incompetents This can also make them seem more competent. E.g. if one rude person is an obstruction that everyone else has to work around, the rude individual is the only one working unimpeded. Unless the difference in competency is large enough to account for that, the manager might consider the rude person more competent.

EliRivers 7y ago
I have certainly worked with what I think of as "negative employees"; people who have the same effect, when joining a team, as a competent person leaving that team.

guitarbill 7y ago

If this is the case, your hiring and evaluating process has a deficiency, which should be an easy fix. However, assuming a decent hiring process, people generally aren't rude from the get-go. The bigger question the study doesn't even tackle is how does rudeness evolve over time, and - again assuming rudeness isn't some intrinsic attribute - what factors lead to an increase in rudeness. If somebody is truly incompetent, sure, fire them. But incompetence is rarely so cut and dried, and points to a failure to invest in a person's or team's abilities. I don't think it's a stretch to see the proliferation of incompetence as a management failure in any case. If percieved incompetence leads to a lack of respect and therefore rudeness, it should come as no surprise why leaders who allowed such an environment to be created would be unable/unwilling to assess it accurately.

mharroun 7y ago

From my experience rude + under-performing = termination, if those people who you work with are not performing why does your companies management keep the around? I didn't put it in my original post but incompetent managers who use "boasting" as a success metric instead of objective metrics can lead to such an issue as well.

dvtrn 7y ago
if those people who you work with are not performing why does your companies management keep the around? I'm asking this question presently as a team lead. We have a contributor who is a drain on just about every aspect of our team's operations. They frequently miss meetings, they don't seem to take instruction well (example I brought up once to another team member, this person will ask for help, cut you off constantly, suggest their way is better, or do the direct opposite of whatever recommendation you offer and spend days on a problem set delaying sprints), have delayed multiple projects, caused numerous production outages so on and so forth. All of this combined has made trying to train this person or help them improve difficult and frustrating--very few on the team wants to work with them anymore. It's not a secret among the team that this person just is not the contributor we need, and it's pretty evident from his reactions a few times that our department head is not pleased either, but he doesn't seem interested in letting this person go--none of us are quite sure how to have that talk with our leader that we think this person should be cut loose and a replacement found. Suggestions on broaching that topic?
- mharroun 7y ago
  As team lead are you the persons manager? If so you should have every right to go to hr to either terminate or start a performance improvement plan. If your a team lead with no hire/fire power you need to go to your department head (and rally those whoa agree with you to do the same) and be blunt. "X is is not performing to expectations on top of that the way X is not performing is disrupting, impeding, and alienating other members of the team and its now become not just a performance issue but one of employee attrition". This makes it about X vs the rest of the team/department and allows him to clearly see what is actually at risk. Its very unlikely 1 person is so valued that a manager would accept major turnover in their department.