I’ve written a lot here about how being put in a position of power can turn people into insensitive jerks. This is also the theme provoked a deluge of response to a question that I asked over at LinkedIn, so I know that this is something that people care about a lot. BUT caring about it, even admitting in private that you’ve suffered from at least temporary bouts of asshole poisoning when you’ve been in power is one thing, but talking about it in a public forum is an entirely different thing — I realize that this is something that most of us would rather not do.
If you DO want to talk about it, here is your chance! I wrote an article based on ideas in The No Asshole Rule and some of the ideas on this blog for an enlightened publication at UC Berkeley called The Greater Good — which has published the work of a host of well-known academics and other authors. For example, there are articles by Daniel Goleman and Richard Sapolsky in the current issue. My article will be published in a forthcoming special on power dynamics, and it especially focuses on the dangers of being in power and how to overcome them. The editor The Greater Good, Jason Marsh, made a suggestion that, at first, made me squirm: Why don’t we find someone who fell prey to these dynamics to write about it in a sidebar to the article? My first reaction was "I can’t ask people to do that."
My second reaction was that I am not comfortable asking this question directly to people who have talked to me about acting like temporary assholes, but I am comfortable making a general appeal. I have talked about times when I’ve been a temporary asshole in my book, and as I like to say, "assholes are us." In addition, this is a sufficiently weird idea that it strikes me as an intriguing experiment. After all, compared to what people do on the Dr. Phil show, this is a mild request.
Here is Jason’s email to me — feel free to write him directly or to write both of us. He is the editor, so he is the one who gets to decide what gets published and in what form, so writing in does not assure that you get in print:
"For the blog posting, please say that we’re looking for a short (350-word), first-person essay written by someone whose personal experience resonates with the phenomenon you describe in your book/essay–someone who was poisoned by a position of power, found they started to act abusively toward co-workers of lower rank, but then realized what had happened to him or her and tried to change his or her behavior. If they have a story they want to share, they can email me directly at jhmarsh@berkeley.edu"
I won’t reveal any of the names of people who write me or Jason on this blog (unless people want me to do so), but I will provide a general report in a week or so about the reactions to this plea (beyond any comments on this blog), as I am very curious to how many people respond to this request and what the tone and content of such responses might be — and you might be as well.
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