Criticism: When you throw dirt, all you do is lose ground.

 A University of North Carolina survey documented that. They found that incivility in the workplace definitely hurts productivity.

As their results were reported in Industry Week and The Dallas Morning News, 53% of the respondents said they lost work time worrying about a past or future confrontation with a co-worker. 37% said a hostile confrontation caused them to reduce their commitment to the organization. 28% said they lost work time because they avoided the person with whom they had a confrontation. And 22% said they put less effort into their work because of a confrontation with a co-worker.

Unfortunately, we're forced to work with difficult people. That's life. Even though we may not like certain people or the situation they put us in, there are some things we can do.

TAKE AN HONEST LOOK AT YOURSELF. I remember one man who left job after job because he found his co-workers to be annoying. Eventually, he discovered that when he spoke he gave off an aura of being easily flustered. So, of course, some of his less-than-kind colleagues took a subconscious delight in flustering him.

No one likes to give negative criticism, and no one likes to receive it. But sometimes it's necessary. This MP3 will give you six filters you can use to make sure the negative feedback you give is heard and accepted.