Workers Behaving Badly: Why Our Stress May be Bringing Out the Worst in Us

After 9/11, I was struck by the sense of caring we showed for one another. It was a horrible, stressful time, but it seemed to bring out the best in us. We began to look out for one another, even at work. We shared our mutual pain about what had happened, and even expressed our fear for the future. Office squabbles seemed ridiculous, and petty jealousies even more so.

Now it's seven years later, and we're facing another horrible, scary time. We see empty chairs at work, evidence of the people who have taken early retirement or other buyout packages. Almost every one of us know someone who has been laid off. Our own employers have stated they will not be filling empty positions for now.

And yet, office politics are on the rise. Gossiping, backbiting and negative campaigning dominate the airwaves, and we seem to mimic that behavior at work.

So, instead of pulling together on the job as we did after 9/11, we seem to be our own worst enemies right now. Of course, much of that is due to the enormous stress in both our private and professional lives. No one can predict what will happen next week, let alone in the coming year.

If makes workers feel powerless, and that's a lousy feeling. It makes us want to grab whatever we can and hold on, everyone else be damned. But here's the thing: We actually DO have a lot of control right now. We have control over how we treat one another.

It's not a easy thing to admit that we've been a jerk to people we work with, either through our silences or our short-tempers or our snide comments. But we've got to own up to our bad behavior, because until we do, we won't begin to fix what needs fixing.

So, today, I want you to think about the person in the cubicle next door or down the hall. I want you to think about how fear and anxiety has made you and others behave, and what you can do to start making things right.

Remember, the evidence supports the fact that when we are friendlier to one another at work, when we genuinely care about one another, we are not only happier but more productive. And right now, that's definitely a very good thing.

What are some ways to improve relationships with others at work?

Friends on the Job

In the early days of my career, I was very good friends with many of the people at work. I’m not sure if this was because we were young, single and in the pressure-cooker environment of a busy newsroom, but we all seemed to be pretty tight.

We’d often play cards after work until the wee hours of the morning, we haunted pubs and pool halls on the weekends, or looked for other low-cost ways to entertain ourselves when not at work (we were also all incredibly poor).

And when we all moved into various new positions elsewhere, it was wrenching. We tried to stay in contact, but jobs in different places kept us apart.

Later in my career, once I was married, I was friendly with people at work, but never spent time with them outside the office. In fact, my boss asked me why I didn’t sort of “hang around” with others after work and seemed in such a rush to get home (I can’t imagine why this was any of his business). But I answered honestly: “I’ve had the kind of life where my personal and professional life were blurred, but at this point it’s important to me to really work on my private life in private.”

Still, I look back with great fondness on those early days when my best buddies and I competed good-naturedly for stories and talked during the day about what we would be doing that night. It sort of made work, well, less like work. And it certainly cut down on an anxiety about back-biting co-workers, because we were friends and we just didn’t function that way.

I have been reminiscing more about those days since I interviewed a Florida State University professor who co-authored a study about different on-the-job components. One of those was the fact that having a “socially supportive” workplace is related to greater job satisfaction, lower feelings of exhaustion and reduced turnover.

The study was based on an analysis of 40 years of earlier research and some 220,000 workers, and pretty much supports the anecdotes I’ve been hearing.

For example, recruiters tell me that when they try and attract college candidates, they often hire the candidate – and a couple of qualified friends. Recruiters say that they understand that it’s often very important to younger workers to have a friendly atmosphere at work, and are more satisfied and less willing to jump ship if they work with buddies.

Of course, the Gallup Organization came out with similar findings about the importance of having good friends at work, which Tom Rath wrote about in the best-selling “Vital Friends.”

So, how about you? Are having friends on the job important? Or, is being just “friendly” good enough? Are there any downsides to having friends on the job? I’d like to hear your thoughts….