The 3R’s Can Cause Employee Conflicts and a Drop in Employee Performance & Motivation

When people feel poorly treated by someone at work the 3R’s can kick in and this can negatively impact employee performance, motivation, teamwork and productivity. It can be very destructive and even toxic.

Resistance

The first R stands for resistance. So, when someone says or does something hurtful, disrespectful etc., that person can feel victimized. They may then start to resist the other person. They might avoid contact with them or start talking to others about what the person did to cause them to feel hurt or attacked.

Resentment

Resistance can then turn to resentment if the situation persists. The conflict or problem needs to be addressed or the person who feels like the victim might keep building up resistance until they start to resent the other person.

Revenge

As resentment grows and not addressed it can easily result in revenge. This is when the victim finds ways to fight back on the injustice that was dealt them. If the cause came from management, the person might do something to take revenge on management by delivering poorer work performance.

I once was conducting

an organization climate survey in a company and one employee was saying how a co-worker was causing a slow down in production because they were angry at management.

We’ve all seen or heard of situations where one person is so called stabbed in the back by another because of something that was done to them that they felt was unjust or hurtful.

Solutions

The best way to avoid the 3R’s from occurring is to practice prevention. It could be a great topic for a team discussion meeting about improving teamwork.

You could start the discussion by asking a question to the team, have you ever felt mistreated by a co-worker or a manager? Then introduce the concept of the 3R’s and discuss how to resolve this type of situation.

Providing training on conflict resolution that includes communication skills like active listening and diplomatic disagreement can prevent issues like the 3R’s getting out of control and creating a toxic environment.

The 3 R’s is a behaviour that is quite common and a source of entertainment on television sitcoms and dramas. We can easily be exposed to this daily but in cannot be acceptable behaviour in the workplace and must be counteracted with training and development and responsible leadership.