How We Lost Civility – And What Great Leaders Do to Restore It

Last week I wrote about drawing a line between who we’ve become and who we still want to be. This week is about how we even got here. Civility didn’t disappear overnight. It eroded slowly, almost quietly, until the gap between us felt normal. But it isn’t normal, and it isn’t inevitable. We can name it, and we can do better.

There’s a shift happening around us and it’s subtle enough that you can ignore it on a good day, obvious enough to trouble you on a bad one. You see it in the way people talk to each other, how quickly patience breaks, and how easily suspicion replaces curiosity. It doesn’t usually show up in big dramatic moments. It shows up in the small ones.

·       A sharp tone.

·       A dismissive comment.

·       A refusal to listen.

·       A certainty that the other person isn’t just wrong, but unworthy.

Civility used to be the baseline.  It was the thing that made disagreement possible without turning someone into an opponent. You could see the world differently without needing to see the other person as a threat. Somewhere along the way, that changed. Not all at once, or loudly. Not in a way you could circle on a calendar.

It changed the moment we started assuming the worst before we even heard the full sentence, when “winning” the argument mattered more than understanding the person or gaining clarity, and when frustration became a performance instead of an emotion.

Civility didn’t collapse. It eroded grain by grain, habit by habit, reaction by reaction. And most of us didn’t even notice while it was happening.

Part of the reason is that we’re leading in a world that pushes people toward their edges. Everything feels faster and more urgent. Everyone feels stretched thinner than they want to admit. And when people are stretched, empathy becomes the first casualty. It’s easier to react than reflect, to assume than inquire, or to protect your corner than consider someone else’s.

But there’s a deeper cost to this slow erosion, and it’s something we don’t talk about enough. When civility erodes, trust follows. Not just trust in institutions or leaders, but trust in one another. And once trust goes, the distance between people widens. Conversations become confrontations. Collaboration becomes competition. Differences become divisions. And the space where real connection used to live gets replaced by defensiveness and suspicion. We can’t build anything meaningful in that space. Not at home, in our communities, in our workplaces, or in our country.

Civility isn’t defined by tone or politeness alone, but both are woven into it. They’re the outward signs of an inner respect. But tone isn’t enough; what we’re losing isn’t just manners, it’s presence. Civility is about the conditions that make shared life possible. It’s the ability to disagree without destroying, to see someone clearly even when you don’t see the world the same way. We don’t need to reclaim politeness. We need to reclaim presence.

We need leaders who slow the temperature down instead of raising it. Who choose curiosity over contempt, create rooms where people can speak without bracing for impact, and who understand that civility isn’t weakness; it’s strength with its ego under control.

This isn’t a call for softness. It’s a call for steadiness. Because if we can’t talk to one another with a basic level of respect, we’ll never solve anything that actually matters. This slow erosion didn’t happen overnight, and it won’t be reversed overnight either. But every leader has the ability to stop contributing to it… and to start repairing it, one conversation, one pause, one moment of choosing presence over reaction at a time.

That’s how we rebuild what we’ve been losing.

·       Quietly.

·       Deliberately.

·       Together.