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If you think that this violence has nothing to do with bro talk, you’re wrong. When we dehumanize people in conversation, we give permission for them to be degraded in other ways as well. And even if we don’t participate, our silence condones this language. I deeply regret remaining quiet while women were being disparaged during my eight years as a trader.

Respect Your Volunteers A few weeks back, my colleague Joe Rominiecki made the case that we need to show that we’re supporting our community managers, who may be playing an important role without a ton of support.

“For those that host online communities for their members, the new front-line staff may very well be the person managing the online community,” he explained before hopping into The Community Roundtable’s latest “State of Community Management” report.

It’s clear here that reddit—a site that is pretty much nothing but community—faces the same kinds of disconnects between executives and ground-level support that happen in associations where communities are only small parts of the total member offerings.

The ripple effects of what happened to Taylor only highlight this. Because of the role people near the front lines play in keeping a community moving, they often have tribes of their own, and those tribes may instill a high level of passion among your most active community members—your moderators.

Because of the role people near the front lines play in keeping a community moving, they often have tribes of their own, and those tribes may instill a high level of passion among your most active community members—your moderators.

“Everything about which Reddit talks a big game—curbing abuse, protecting free speech, being the ‘front page of the Internet’—is directly tied to a model of content curation over which the company has little authority.”

tied to a model of content curation over which the company has little authority.”

In other words, volunteer moderators hold huge amounts of control, despite not getting a paycheck. They deserve to know what’s going on, and you have to keep them happy.

Technology distracts us. We’re wired to our smartphones. It’s increasingly challenging to be present and to listen. It’s tempting to fire off texts and emails during meetings; to surf the Internet while on conference calls or in classes; and, for some, to play games rather than tune in. While offering us enormous conveniences, electronic communication also leads to misunderstandings. It’s easy to misread intentions. We can take out our frustrations, hurl insults and take people down a notch from a safe distance.

Incivility shuts people down in other ways, too. Employees contribute less and lose their conviction,

To be fully attentive and improve your listening skills, remove obstacles. John Gilboy told me about a radical approach he took as an executive of a multibillion-dollar consumer products company. Desperate to stop excessive multitasking in his weekly meetings, he decided to experiment: he placed a box at the door and required all attendees to drop their smartphones in it so that everyone would be fully engaged and attentive to one another. He didn’t allow people to use their laptops either. The change was a challenge; initially employees were “like crack addicts as the box was buzzing,” he said. But the meetings became vastly more productive. Within weeks, they slashed the length of the meetings by half. He reported more presence, participation and, as the tenor of the meetings changed, fun.