Are you in a bad mood today at the office? Good, you’ll be a little kitten tomorrow. This is basically the main lesson we draw from a study published in May 2024 in the Journal of Business Ethics. The team looked at the consequences of incivility and bad behavior at work.
By incivility and bad behavior, we must understand attitudes judged as “impolite”. The researchers noticed that employees who lose their temper in the office tend to quickly feel guilty and discuss it in the private sphere that same evening.
These intimate reports are not without consequences: the behavior of employees is changed the following day… And often for the better! Through a mechanism of guilt, yesterday’s troublemakers become tomorrow’s ideal colleagues. “Because you feel guilty, the next day at work, you work harder and you are more careful not to be rude again,” comments study co-author Klodiana Lanaj.
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The night brings advice (and business productivity)
Despite the increased search for work-life balance demonstrated by employees in recent years, bad feelings tend to play out on both sides of the field. And guilt is no exception to this rule: “When you are rude, you also hurt yourself. Guilt is a complex phenomenon,” analyzes Daniel Kim, another co-author of the study.
“Guilt is heavy but can also help us pull ourselves together by fighting against incivility and pushing us to be more involved at work,” emphasizes Daniel Kim. There may only be one night between your irritable colleague and the best sidekick. But whether you’re in a good mood or not, it’s best never to procrastinate with courtesy.
