Dealing with Dementors: Managing Negative Interactions

Event overview

As part of a series of lunchtime research seminars where Business School faculty outline their latest work or current projects to student audiences, Professor Alexandra Gerbasi will talk about Dealing with Dementors: Managing Negative Interactions. This will consist of a 20 minute talk, followed by interactive Q&A with the audience.

Talk Description

When people find out that I study negative workplace interactions, I am usually flooded with stories like “This guy I work with Steve is such a jerk. Every time I have to deal with him, I feel like he is sucking out my soul.” It is rare that someone tells me that they work in the best place ever and everything is sunshine and rainbows. This isn’t surprising, given the recent finding that over 50 percent of people experience rude or uncivil behaviour at work on a daily basis. This could lead us to think that we are surrounded by jerks or generally rude people. In that same study, researchers found that less than 5 percent of people are intentionally rude to their colleagues. So, two possible things are going on that small group of people are just going around being horrible to everyone, or the majority of the negative interactions are not intentional, and something else is at the core of those behaviours.