Author: supermoxie

I just got this email. it sounds legitimate.  They are using the word etiquette, but it sounds to me like they will train and reform the assholes and other creeps in your office (which might include you…) and you get to be on TV at the same time.  It sound like sort of a reality TV version of The Office, with the extra twist being that they are going intervene to make you or other people  "behave better." 

The header for this e-mail was "Casting: Looking for ill-mannered coworkers."

I saw an article about your blog in Metro.  Maybe you know
of some bad bosses or ill mannered co-workers that might need a manners make
over.  Please pass around to anyone you think might be appropriate.

Thanks, Sean

Do any of your co-workers disgust you with ill-mannered
behavior?  Are you worried your lack of social skills might get you
fired?  Is your boss rude rather than supportive and you wish you could
tell him or her in a nice way?  Well if you’d like to make your workplace
a more harmonious environment, be a better boss, or be better equipped to climb
the ladder of success, a new national television show on a major cable network
wants to show you how top-notch etiquette lessons can create stellar office
camaraderie and make your business flourish!  If you (or someone you know)
has a particular office situation where expert protocol instruction and a
revamped set of manners at a top-notch etiquette school would be of great
benefit to all, we want to talk to you. please visit http://casting.citylightstv.com/AgeWntwManners.htm
to fill out an on line application or email us at etiquettecasting@yahoo.com

 Sean De Simone, Manager of
Casting and Talent Development , City
Lights Television NY/LA

As
I’ve written before, one of the main reasons that I wrote the chapter in The No
Asshole Rule on“The Virtues of Assholes” was that, when I started telling people
about the book, they often would argue “what about Steve Jobs, doesn’t his brilliance
show that assholes are, indeed, worth the trouble?”  I grudgingly agrue in the book that – if you are only talking
about performance – Steve
Jobs is the Poster Child for the Upside of Assholes , although as I
emphasize in the post, “Jobs is famous for saying the "the journey is the
reward," and for my tastes, even if the journey ends well, it still sucks
when you have to travel with an asshole, or worse yet, a pack of them.  If
you are successful asshole, you are still an asshole and I don’t want to be
around you.”

 My
idiosyncratic experience aside, however, I also present some Google searches in the book, where I compare three people
from entertainment and technology who have, at least at times, been accused of being
overbearing jerks: Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison of Oracle (See The
Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn’t Think He’s Larry Ellison and Michael Eisner,
former long-time CEO of Disney (See Disney
War).  I used the absolute number of
Google hits as an indicator of how often each is mentioned as an asshole (which I
admit is flawed because a website may say, for example “Michael Eisner is not
an asshole” and still be counted).  Guy Kawasaki
also had good fun with this, running all sorts of searches with different phrases
and the word asshole, like “lawyer” and “Guy Kawasaki.”

But I just learned about a big improvement in this method.

I got an amazing email from Kenneth
Cliffer, who has a Ph.D, and describes himself as “a neuroscientist by training"  who has been working "as an
educational consultant developing curricular materials for math and science.”  Ken points out, quite rightly, that a flaw in
my method is that doesn’t control for the number of overall Google hits for each
person.  It is only based on the absolute number
of hits that contain the person’s name and the word ‘asshole."  In the spirit of evidence-based
based management, where having strong opinions weakly held is essential –so that
updating is possible when better facts come along – it appears that I may have been
too hard on Steve Jobs.  The upshot seems
to be that Larry Ellison, not Steve Jobs, might be most properly called the
poster child for The No Asshole Rule.
I present Ken’s charming and enlightening email below on the “assholiness index:

I have come to the part of The
No Asshole Rule in which you compare Jobs, Eisner, and Ellison with regard
to their assholiness (consider using this term – it has a certain appeal in its
incorporation of "holiness" in it) using Google hits. However, I feel
compelled as a scientist to point out that it does not control for the
popularity of each of these figures, for which one might expect Jobs to be the
most generally popular, followed in order by Eisner and Ellison – exactly the
order of asshole references you found. Indeed, I get 70.4, 1.31, and 0.121
million hits for the three, respectively, the same order as for asshole hits
you got. To control for general popularity, you could use the percent
of all references that are asshole references, or the ratio of asshole to
non-asshole references. I now get many more asshole references for each than
you got, with Ellison now passing Eisner in that department – the numbers I get
now are 699,000 for Jobs, 20,200 for Eisner, and 30,500 for Ellison. Here is
how these numbers feed into one or the other assholiness index:

Executive 
Percent asshole/general hits   Ratio asshole/non-asshole hits

Jobs
          699/70,400 = ~ 1.0%
                 699/69,701
= ~ 1.0%

Eisner
       20.2/1,310 = ~ 1.5%
                  20.2/1,289.8
= ~ 1.6%

Ellison
       30.5/121 = ~ 25%   
                
   30.5/90.5 = ~ 34%

If you use the number of hits you got vs. the current number of
all hits, you get a percent assholiness for Jobs, Eisner, and Ellison of about
0.13%, 0.86%, and 0.83%, respectively. Note that this is not entirely
legitimate, since the asshole references and general references were assessed
at different times, but it does suggest that Eisner and Ellison may have been
roughly equal and scored about 6 or 7 times higher than Jobs for assholiness
with respect to their overall popularity (which means nothing as an absolute
index of assholiness – Jobs may be more assholy, but proportionately even more
popular). Now, according to my table above, it appears that Jobs is the
least assholy in relation to his overall popularity, Eisner is about 50% more
so, and Ellison pegs the meter at 25 to 35 times more assholy with respect to
popularity than Jobs.

Ken’s method is clearly a big leap forward from the one used in
the book, but being a scientist, he is careful to point out that further
research is still needed, suggesting “You’d
have to have an independent assessment of assholiness, such as your
self-test applied to the candidates, to make an absolute comparison.”

I also confess that I have not subjected this to the scrutiny of my colleagues and doctoral students at Stanford, who are quite skilled at finding imperfections in various methods, so I invite comments about the viability of The Assholiness Index.

P.S. I just put “Robert Sutton” and asshole in Google and got 14,300
hits. Robert Sutton alone yields 117,000 – since it  my ratio is worse than Jobs and Eisner,
although not Ellison’s.  Although I think
this has more to do with the book than my personal behavior!

When I was in New York last week, I was interviewed about the book by Jenna Lee at Forbes.com. The called the segment Are You An A$&*@^? Weed out the bad seed in the next cubicle. It was fun, in large part, because Jenna was smart and asked good questions, but doesn’t take herself too seriously.

David Haygood from IDEO wrote me a lovely, funny, note about what happened when "Pete
Kale, a friend and an IDEO client with our Transformation group, went into a
bookstore to buy The No Asshole Rule to share with his organization." 

In doing so, Pete — who tells his story below –demonstrates how to order the book without swearing:

I have written in-depth about "Why I call them assholes," why for me, no other word captures the emotions I feel when I am the victim of a demeaning creep, when I see others being abused by some jerk, or when the word I apply to myself when I have been nasty schmuck.  I also understand that the word does offend some people and that they object to my dirty language.  I always say (to steal phrase from William Wrigley Jr., of chewing gum fame), that "when two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary," so I respect people who object to my dirty title and I admire them for speaking-up.

I especially admire people who complain eloquently.  Last Saturday, February  24th, the San Francisco Chronicle published a long story by Jessica Guynn called "Crusade Against The Jerk at Work."   A reader from Palo Alto was apparently quite offended, and wrote a great letter to the Chronicle in protest. Mark Fortier, who is working with me to help promote the book, called it "amusing poetic vitriol:"

Editor — You may call him a respected Stanford professor
("Crusade against the jerk at work,” Feb. 24), but I call Robert Sutton a fallen educator, who
has descended into the vulgarity and coarseness of our times.

The red-faced Chronicle is too embarrassed to repeat his book’s
unexpurgated title. The subject matter may be valid, but the odor of crudity and
grossness has now seeped like sewage into our bastions of learning. Such low
language from a Ph.D. is typical of the foul-mouthed, tasteless vulgarity that
has corrupted television, radio, newspapers and other media with offensiveness
and obscene billingsgate we used to hear from the mouths of naughty boys.

Sure, Sutton will sell a laxative of books with his sleazy title,
but why slander that vital organ of our body? This will come to no good end.

VIC BEFERA

Palo Alto

I don’t agree with Mr. Befera, but his writing is charming and funny. I would also add that one of the lessons that I learned from my product design friends like David Kelley is that, in creating something, the aim isn’t always to please people, it is to make them them feel alive, to think about themselves and  what they value and believe. In this vein, I am heartened by the strength of the emotional response to the book, and appreciate Mr. Befera’s response just as much as the woman who wrote me about how she and her co-workers used "asshole diaries" to drive out the local bully.

P.S. I don’t know how Mr. Befera would feel about it, but I am pleased to report that a Reuter’s story "Author Puts Focus on Office Bullies and Jerks" just came out that prints the uncensored title.  The picture to the left was printed with the title, I just love it.   

My wife — an attorney — always emphasizes that if anything bad is happening to you, and you want your organization, your boss, or your attorney to help you do something about it, vague and emotional complaints won’t help very much. And even having one, well-documented example won’t help very much either.  What you need is a documented history of the bad stuff that is happening AND it is even better if you can recruit others to document the bad stuff as well, because that way it is far tougher to dismiss you as a "nut case."

I got an email earlier in the week from a government worker who explained how she used an asshole diary to document the actions of an abusive co-worker, recruited others to do the same, and then, the asshole seemed to mysteriously disappear.  Here is an edited version of the quote, to protect her identity. Read it closely, it is the model of how to fight back against an asshole — and to put your managers, HR Department, and their lawyers in a position where they have plenty of ammunition to help you, and if they elect not to help you, you have plenty of ammunition to use against them.

I have spent the
afternoon reading your book The No Asshole Rule and plan to copy pages and
paste them to my locker at work. I have worked [at a government agency] for four
years and encountered the asshole of all assholes very early on. I won’t
go into all the horrible things she did but will instead share how I and her
other victims decided to respond to her. After months of
being tormented by her and her "posse’"and comforting other tearful
victims, I decided to document her behavior. I kept a little notebook
in my pocket and wrote down her behaviors that were racist, slanderous,
threatening, etc.  I documented the many harmful things she did with dates
and times…..basically I kept an "Asshole
Journal."  I encouraged her other victims to do so too and these
written and signed statements were presented to our supervisor.

Our supervisors knew this worker was an
asshole but didn’t really seem to be doing anything to stop her harmful behaviors
until they received these statements. The asshole went on a mysterious leave
that no supervisor was permitted to discuss and she never returned.   I wanted to share my story about the
asshole journals.  It was a lot of work and there were moments where I was very
fearful but it all worked out in the end.

I applaud this woman for her
courage and wisdom. This is one of my favorite “fighting back” stories.

I have been asked a lot of question lately about the best way to confront an asshole. There are times when this isn’t a good idea, as it may inflame or anger them even more, and you can get hurt.  And, of course, one of the worst things you can do is to call an asshole an asshole (in most cases, I have some close friends who can tell me that, and need to tell me so now and then, and I listen because they are usually  right).

It works best when people don’t realize how nasty they are being and a polite but firm message can bring them to their senses. I have received a couple emails lately from a fashion model about some of the backstage stage nastiness that goes on in that business.  She told me a great story about how she used a respectful but firm message to stop the venom from spewing out of another model:

I took a stand last weekend while one was screaming at me in my
face, I simply smiled and said: “When you are rational enough to carry on this
conversation without screaming I might be willing to listen, But I WILL NOT
TOLERATE YOU TO SCREAM AT ME IN THIS ABUSIVE MANNER.” Then I walked away. She
ran after me and hugged me and said she was sorry.

Polite but firm confrontations don’t always end this happily, but there is an art to conveying to people that you won’t take their abuse any longer in a way that they can "hear" the message, and this model shows the right way to do this; indeed, I heard a similar argument from Ron Reagan (the president’s son) when he interviewed me for his radio show last year. He described how he pushed back during the years that he was a dancer to abusive directors, and how it was often an effective way to convince them to be civil.  Ron said that his attitude was “You can criticize my work, and I’ll try to
improve, but attacking me is unacceptable or I will leave.”  Not bad!  

The Asshole Rating Self-Exam (or ARSE) continues to boom along.  The folks at Electric Pulp tell me that things in the interview keep booming along: