At its core, civility is the foundation of a thriving culture. It shapes how people communicate, lead, resolve tension, and show up, especially when challenges arise.
Civility doesn’t look the same everywhere, however. What feels respectful in one culture might come across as distant in another. Some teams value directness, while others lean toward diplomacy. Leaders bring their own styles. Norms vary from region to region. And still, no matter where they are in the world, every employee deserves to feel respected and valued at work.
So the question becomes: How do you build civility across a global, complex, ever-evolving organization… in ways that actually stick?
The answer lies in creativity, intention, and a commitment to making civility something people feel, not just something they’re told about. Civility must become a habit for each individual.
Infusing Civility Into Your Global Organization
We’ve supported many organizations across several industries and almost every continent, and here are some of the most effective, human-centered strategies we’ve used with clients to help them bring civility to life.
Turn Learning Into a Shared Experience
People don’t change their behavior after watching a training video. They change because the learning resonates, and the environment supports and even requires it.
Instead of relying on one-and-done workshops, forward-thinking companies are creating immersive, ongoing learning experiences that invite people to explore, reflect, and apply.
Here’s what that can look like:
- Assign a powerful TED Talk or documentary, then hold space for real, reflective discussion in a fireside chat format.
- Share bite-sized or microlearning content, like videos, short articles, or journal prompts, through a digital platform like your LMS or internal communication channels to keep the conversations on positive workplaces going all year long.
- Create small-group spaces where teams can talk honestly about workplace culture in their own words.
- Provide a set of exercises and discussion points for a volunteering team member to lead a discussion during already scheduled team meetings.
Lean Into Onboarding as a Culture-Shaping Moment
Onboarding isn’t just about paperwork and tech setup. It’s the very first impression of “how we do things around here,” which makes it the perfect opportunity to set the tone for civility and respect. Don’t just talk about things like inclusivity and collaboration; make them a core component of your onboarding program from start to finish.
Here are a few creative ways to make onboarding more meaningful:
- Incorporate the new hire’s entire team into the onboarding experience – including buddy programs, on-the-job training, and discussions about the culture.
- Ask about past experiences with respect and incivility in post-onboarding surveys, then actually use that insight to shape the employee experience.
- Develop a 30-60-90 day roadmap for experiences and emotions about the workplace, in addition to the checklist for training job tasks. Consider, for example, what a new hire should be feeling by day 30 and how you will help them get there. Who should they connect with by day 60 and how will you ensure they get those connections? What company values should they see in action by day 90? Here’s a free resource to help you assess and shape that journey.
- Avoid requiring the necessary but often boring compliance training in the first few days and even weeks just so you can check it off. Position your harassment prevention training, for example, as a component of your culture-building initiatives with messaging around the expectation that everyone is respectful. Doing that means the new hire must be more engrained in the culture than they are two-days in.
Empower Managers to Lead Toward Civility with Confidence
Managers are one of the most powerful yet underutilized levers for workplace culture and also the most overwhelmed with work responsibilities.
It’s easy to assume managers know how to be civil themselves and also create civility within their teams. Yet civility doesn’t show up the same way on every team or in every situation, and unless you’ve told them specifically that they are expected to and will be measured on a respectful team culture, they aren’t focused on this.
Managers need more than a one-time training – they need tools, support, and space to reflect on how they show up and what they need to do to get a hold of their team culture and then improve it.
Some ways to creatively support them include:
- Integrating civility and respect into performance conversations as a coaching lens that encourages self-awareness and growth. Of course, managers will need some training on how to do this first.
- Hosting “manager office hours”—monthly drop-in sessions for candid conversation about tough behaviors, team dynamics, or difficult conversations. Led by an HR partner, managers can get social affirmation that they’re on the right track with a situation or get advice and support from their peers.
- Developing peer coaching pods, where managers can explore themes like psychological safety, dignity, and performance accountability together with a guide in hand. These pods are particularly useful when coupled with training – deliver three sessions on three different topics, for example, and require the pods to meet after each session to continue their learning and report back on what they discussed at the next session.
Our Manager Evolution Lab is a deep-dive leadership experience that helps managers reflect on their habits and assumptions, build skills for courageous, respectful conversations, and move from reactivity to intentional influence.
We love teaching managers how to proactively create a positive team culture with their daily activities and responsibilities.
Ensure HR is Equipped to Do Their Part
Certainly HR knows how to manage employee relations problems and harassment complaints (I hope). But does your HR team know how to proactively create a positive workplace culture? Unfortunately our experience tells us the answer is “not really.”
For example, we hear constantly from HR that they spend their time putting out fires instead of engaging in strategic initiatives. We hear, “Managers expect me to solve their problems for them,” and, “They come to me when it hits the fan and then I have to deal with it.” But HR should be coaching those managers to solve their own people-problems – because collaboration, innovation and respect are thwarted by the managers who let things fester.
In large organizations, one of the best ways to push civility forward is to train your HR team to:
- Coach team managers to assist them in putting a stop to hurtful behavior, resolving conflict, and leading their team to a respectful team culture
- Coach people engaging in toxic behaviors to change their communication and behavior patterns, or teach managers how to engage in that coaching
- Partner with the team managers they work with to assess organizational risk factors and team dynamics that may facilitate an exclusive or toxic work environment, and develop solutions to minimize those risk factors
Whether you’re building learning experiences from scratch, reimagining your leadership development, or looking for real ways to make respect part of the everyday, we’re the people you need to call.
This is our zone of genius.
At Civility Partners, we bring deep expertise, bold ideas, and a human-centered approach to helping organizations build cultures grounded in respect and dignity.
When civility is embedded into how people communicate, lead, and work together, culture shifts. And when culture shifts, everything gets better: performance, retention, innovation, and most importantly, your people.
Let’s build a workplace where respect isn’t just talked about—it’s lived.
