11-05-2006, 03:35 PM
Hostile Workplace is one where people can not do their best work or be their most productive due to conditions in their workplace. That is, the workplace is hostile to their natural humanity. Notice also the results of a hostile workplace are hostility toward the company's productivity, which directly impact profits in a negative way. People who are unhappy, unhealthy or angry do not work hard.
Hostile workplace is the result of suppression of people's natural ability to express themselves. It is the opposite of a workplace that promotes creativity and vitality. Hostile workplaces are deadly to productivity. They are unhealthy - and potentially deadly - to the people who work in them.
Hostility consists of:
verbal abuse against any person, for whatever reason
angry interchanges between people over political or territorial boundaries
one-up-manship and excessive competition
power plays and challenges issued over imagined threats to a person's authority
attempts to squash a person's ability to be creative and do their work in a way that is most productive for the individual
enforcement of ineffective or unreasonable rules for the sole purpose of exerting power over others or to impede progress.
According to Dr. Suzette Elgin, hostility can make you sick or kill you! Dr. Elgin also says (3):
Hostile language can kill you as surely as hostile driving can . . . Hostile language hurts and frustrates and confuses people . . . the damage takes place slowly, over time, and the wouldn't aren't readily visible. . . .
Exposure to chronic verbal abuse doesn't leave you with obvious cuts and bruises, but is a guaranteed recipe for ulcers, migraine headaches, high blood pressure, allergy attacks; accidents in the home and in the workplace and on the highway, colds, rashes, rashes, depression and every sort of misery.
Angry, cynical people are five times as likely to die under 50 as people who are calm and trusting (New York Times, January 17, 1989)
Scientists have long noted an association between social relationships and health. More socially isolated or less socially integrated people are less healthy, psychologically and physically, and more likely to die. Science, June 19, 1988)
These effects don't show up on the short term, which is why it took so long to find out what was really happening. In the short term, it often looks as if the meanest, angriest, least-liked people are the ones getting the benefits. It took today's computers, which can find the patterns in the data from hundreds of thousands of health histories extending over lifetimes, to show us what the real facts are. They're not the facts you see on television.
People who are too angry to listen cannot be educated.
Research has shown that attentive listening is actually good for your health. When you are really listening, your blood pressure goes down, your heartbeat moderates and your body shows the healthful changes associated with relaxation.
When your language behavior makes other people enjoy being around you and look forward to talking with you, when you clean up your language environment so that verbal violence isn't a routine part of your life, you do more for your health and well-being than you could ever accomplish in any other way.
If for no other reason, and no matter what your gender, that's why you should bother.
Hostile workplace is the result of suppression of people's natural ability to express themselves. It is the opposite of a workplace that promotes creativity and vitality. Hostile workplaces are deadly to productivity. They are unhealthy - and potentially deadly - to the people who work in them.
Hostility consists of:
verbal abuse against any person, for whatever reason
angry interchanges between people over political or territorial boundaries
one-up-manship and excessive competition
power plays and challenges issued over imagined threats to a person's authority
attempts to squash a person's ability to be creative and do their work in a way that is most productive for the individual
enforcement of ineffective or unreasonable rules for the sole purpose of exerting power over others or to impede progress.
According to Dr. Suzette Elgin, hostility can make you sick or kill you! Dr. Elgin also says (3):
Hostile language can kill you as surely as hostile driving can . . . Hostile language hurts and frustrates and confuses people . . . the damage takes place slowly, over time, and the wouldn't aren't readily visible. . . .
Exposure to chronic verbal abuse doesn't leave you with obvious cuts and bruises, but is a guaranteed recipe for ulcers, migraine headaches, high blood pressure, allergy attacks; accidents in the home and in the workplace and on the highway, colds, rashes, rashes, depression and every sort of misery.
Angry, cynical people are five times as likely to die under 50 as people who are calm and trusting (New York Times, January 17, 1989)
Scientists have long noted an association between social relationships and health. More socially isolated or less socially integrated people are less healthy, psychologically and physically, and more likely to die. Science, June 19, 1988)
These effects don't show up on the short term, which is why it took so long to find out what was really happening. In the short term, it often looks as if the meanest, angriest, least-liked people are the ones getting the benefits. It took today's computers, which can find the patterns in the data from hundreds of thousands of health histories extending over lifetimes, to show us what the real facts are. They're not the facts you see on television.
People who are too angry to listen cannot be educated.
Research has shown that attentive listening is actually good for your health. When you are really listening, your blood pressure goes down, your heartbeat moderates and your body shows the healthful changes associated with relaxation.
When your language behavior makes other people enjoy being around you and look forward to talking with you, when you clean up your language environment so that verbal violence isn't a routine part of your life, you do more for your health and well-being than you could ever accomplish in any other way.
If for no other reason, and no matter what your gender, that's why you should bother.