Opinion: President Biden’s call for civility in the White House could backfire. Here’s how to ensure it won’t – The San Diego Union-Tribune

Ward is the executive director of the Center for Respectful Leadership. He lives in La Mesa.

During the first day of his presidency, Joe Biden conducted a virtual swearing in of a group of White House appointees over a videoconference call. He then presented them with a very stern warning: Im not joking when I say this, the 46th president of the United States said. If youre ever working with me, and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. On the spot. No ifs, ands or buts. Everybody, everybody, is entitled to be treated with decency and dignity.

Wow! Essentially, President Biden is commanding a culture of respect in his administration and doing so very, very directly. Given the amount of disrespect in political and public discourse weve been seeing and hearing in the last few years, this is a breath of fresh air.

And yet its not often that leaders make such clear and unequivocal statements about respectful behavior, not to mention what will happen if people dont comply. This is because many of them dont value respect, or assume its unimportant, or dont understand how respect is a key driver of partnership, performance and productivity. This is a shame, because respect is a far more important organizational success factor than most people think.

But can you really command employees to respect each other and expect that to work? Maybe.

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Part of creating a respectful organizational culture means ensuring that most, if not all, employees share the same definition and understanding of respect, as well as the same values and practices around decency, integrity, honesty, kindness and what are known as the three Cs: courtesy, civility and consideration.

But bringing employees to common agreement, and to a high level of understanding and practice around respect, requires education and training, collaboration and patience, trial and, yes, error. And given that the Biden administration is only a few days old, its a safe bet that these things havent happened, yet.

So President Biden appears to be jump-starting the process, by making his expectations of his appointees behaviors, and the consequences for not complying, achingly clear. This could have the desired impact, especially since the commander in chief is saying it.

But within his command to respect is a threat: if you dont comply, you lose your job. In some organizations, such a ham-fisted approach could backfire and result in everyone tiptoeing around each other on eggshells, afraid to be outed by their colleagues as politically incorrect or disrespectful. In this kind of environment, known as a too nice culture, most people wont speak their minds or give each other candid feedback, or theyll replace honest appraisal and openness with sugar-coated nuance and passive aggressiveness. The reality is a too nice culture is almost as destructive and as costly as an openly disrespectful culture.

Successful organizations are balanced. They are workplaces where respect is genuinely valued and practiced with consistency and authenticity, while at the same time they are places where people feel safe enough to argue a point passionately or call each other out on disrespectful behavior without a proverbial sword of Damocles hanging over offenders heads.

President Biden has been clear with his intentions, and hes made a good start on respect. Now he needs to ensure theres concrete training and follow up so that everyone in the Biden administration understands, values and practices respectful leadership every day.

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Opinion: President Biden's call for civility in the White House could backfire. Here's how to ensure it won't - The San Diego Union-Tribune