An Innovative Leadership Program Has Arrived
Session Recap | “Talking, Walking, and Teaching Civility, Respect, Forgiveness, and a Love for All”
Last month, hundreds of leaders gathered at the Avalon Events Center in Fargo to attend the inaugural session of the Leading with Light leadership program. During the session, Dr. David Hunnicutt covered the “T” portion of the LIGHT framework, “Talking, Walking, and Teaching Civility, Respect, Forgiveness, and a Love for All.” Dr. Hunnicutt took attendees on a deep dive of exactly how a Leader of Light can embody and model this concept.
Here are a few of the major takeaways from the first session:
1. Incivility is at an all-time high.
From social media to driving to flying to sports to academics to the workplace, incivility is at an all-time high. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that the Society for Human Resource Management estimates that U.S. workers will experience 25 billion acts of incivility at work alone in 2024.
2. Incivility is highly contagious.
The thing that makes incivility so alarming is that it’s highly contagious. In fact, a whopping 94 percent of people who feel that they have been mistreated will retaliate in some way, shape, or form.
3. Incivility is enormously expensive.
For example, employees who feel they have been wronged at work will spend 20 hours of work time per incident ruminating on it and deciding what to do next. What’s more, it’s estimated that leaders and managers will spend approximately 13 percent of their total work time — that’s more than seven weeks per year — just mending employee relationships.
4. Incivility begins at the top.
Incredibly, some 60-plus percent of incivility is initiated by those in charge. In turn, this creates a cascade of uncivil acts that ripple their way downward throughout the organization.