Read almost any article and you will see that workplace incivility is on the rise, with numerous employees reporting experiencing negative behaviors from their coworkers and leaders. They report increased rudeness, bullying, shaming, yelling and disrespect, among other things. According to the Civility Index published by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), in the first quarter of 2025, instances of workplace incivility were up 21.5%. This is critical for many reasons, such as leading to lower employee mental health, morale, satisfaction, and productivity. And for companies, this can mean a huge financial cost to their business.
Incivility can manifest itself in many ways, one of which is via communication skills (or the lack thereof). In fact, one of the most common areas that my executive coach colleagues and I give feedback to leaders on is the importance of having effective communication skills. When interacting with their employees, peers, clients, and higher-ups we mention the importance of using good listening skills and verbal communication. Further, we talk about the importance of addressing problematic issues in a one-on-one meeting in private (vs. public forums) with individuals. The old adage about using private meetings to give constructive or negative feedback and public forums to give praise is still really
important, and frankly probably even more important today given the rise in incivility in the workplace.
One area in particular that is important for leaders (really anyone) to consider is the tone of their communications. You can have the best message in the world, but if your tone of delivery is too loud or harsh, it can have a tremendous damaging impact on the relationship. And it can have even more dramatic effects if the conversation is overheard by others nearby or right there. Furthermore, it seems that with the rise in incivility, it is getting more commonplace for individuals to use a caustic, curt tone when talking to others.
Tone of voice in communication refers to the way someone speaks to or corresponds with another person and conveys your emotions, attitudes, and intentions. Your tone comes across in all of your formats with others. It can refer to your in person meetings, as well as your phone messages, emails, and texts. In terms of in person situations, perhaps you meant for something to be taken as a joke, but you used a stronger tone than necessary and made the comment in front of other people and as a result they interpreted it in a hurtful way and felt embarrassed. Your tone can also trigger defensive and/or aggressive responses from the other person. Suppose you thought you were just conveying your feelings about a situation but used a loud accusatory tone of voice or a condescending tone in a public forum, leading to the other person getting defensive and everyone around them appearing shocked by what happened. Thus, not only is the tone important but so are the surroundings (private vs. public forum). The tone can impact how people feel about you and the conversation more than your actual words can. As the famous poet Maya Angelou stated “ I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.
When talking to individuals after such an event occurs, I often hear that their tone just “happened” and they weren’t planning for it to be so loud or harsh. It can partially be exacerbated by the greater incivility in the workplace which encourages (or certainly doesn’t discourage) snarky comments to others. Of course, we need to work on improving our workplaces and ridding them of incivility. We also need to take charge of our own behaviors to ensure we are using an appropriate tone. So, how can we personally guard against this happening again in the future?
Ways to Guard Against Using An Inappropriate Tone
- Increase Your Own Self-Awareness. To understand your behaviors, you need to increase your self-awareness of how you are coming across. Getting feedback from others on your tone of voice in various situations and how it can be perceived would be valuable. Identifying when you feel “triggered” to using a louder tone is also important so that you can modify your responses to those situations. Listening to your own voice (in person, over the phone, etc.) can also provide beneficial information for how you might be perceived by others.
- Practice Taking Breaks When You Feel Yourself Starting to Get Upset. Taking a pause so that you can walk away before using a harsh tone is really critical for restoring your own equilibrium. Use that time to take a quick walk, take some deep breaths, drink a glass of water, or engage in other relaxing behaviors. Then, you can come back to the situation feeling less stressed. Of course, this goes back to the first point. You have to know yourself well enough to know when you are ready to snap.
- Work on Reducing Your Overall Stress Levels and Improving Your Resilience. So many leaders my colleagues and I have coached report high stress levels due to some basic factors such as: lack of sleep, not getting enough exercise, not having any hobbies, and/or not eating well or drinking enough water. These are areas that they have worked on to build up their resilience. Your overall physical and mental health matters in your ability to ward off stress and communicate more effectively with those around you.
- Work on Improving Your Active Listening Skills with Others. If you can improve your active listening skills and really listen to what someone says (not just think about what you are going to say next) and with empathy, this can help you when responding back to them. It can help you from using a brusque tone of voice with them if you are taking time to listen to what they have to say.
- Keep Practicing. Your communication skills are based on habits that you have formed over time. Thus, it will take practice and time to improve them. Whether you are working on enhancing your nonverbals, tone, listening, or words that you use, it will require regular practice and feedback from others to see if you are improving and to see how you are being perceived.
It’s important for leaders to be able to give constructive feedback to those they work with. It’s also critical that when giving this feedback they match their nonverbals (including their tone) to their message. If they really want someone else’s behaviors to change, then they need to make sure they are using the right words and tone to influence them in a positive way to change. They will have much better success if the other person actually hears the message and is not turned off by the person’s delivery of the message (style, tone). This is especially true with email as well. In fact, things can be made much worse with email as they can read a person’s message over and over again and they can share it with others damaging the sender’s reputation.
And if leaders mess up a message by using an inappropriate tone, it’s important to own up to it and apologize as soon as possible. Don’t give a lot of justifications. Just acknowledge it and commit to using a better style in the future. You’ll be a more effective communicator if you can follow these practices. And maybe, this can help lower the amount of incivility in the workplace for everyone.
A version of this article appeared on forbes.com, posted on August 10, 2025
EXPERD, Human Resources Consultant, Jakarta – Indonesia