Category: The No Asshole Rule

I am back early next week and promise will let you know what happens. If you have any advice for me about what to ask the Italians about workplace assholes and how the problem plays out there, I’d be most grateful. 

A surfer named George was kind enough to send me this link to Assholes Anonymous in the Urban Dictionary. The program is described as follows, check out all 12 steps:

Assholes
Anonymous or AA – A 12-step program for assholes in an attempt to
recover from its horrible sphincter grip into recovery. An asshole can
never be cured but they can be “in recovery.”

I got an interesting note from Franke James (pictured to the left) over at Office-Politics about a letter that she got from a reader. I offered some opinions about what this fellow should do, and Franke used them as part of her answer, which I thought was quite wise.  Here is the letter:

Dear Office-Politics,

Greetings! I have quite the dilemma, though most people think it would be a dream.  My old-supervisor answers to me now.

To make a long story short, the position of network manager was
created, and the network supervisor thought he was going to get it.
Unfortunately for him, he was written up too many times and was not
able to apply for the position. I fortunately was able to apply, and
due to my past experience and hard work, won the position.

My dilemma is…. I feel uncomfortable around this individual, given
his past history and the fact he was my boss at one point. I am sure he
harbors ill feelings towards me as well, unable to accept he was passed
over for promotion due to his own misdeeds (yes HR has talked to him and everyone about him).
How do I go about managing this individual? Is it possible to coach
this person? He fits the profile of author Robert Sutton’s definition of an Asshole: he drains everyone he deals with.

My old peers have accepted me as manager, but I feel resistance from
him and like he is being territorial. Being new to this position,
having been ‘test driven’ for 4 weeks, I’m still waiting for the
official announcement, even though I have been told by upper management
that I have the position. How should I approach this situation? I do
not want to be a commander this early as it could hurt my relationship
with my old peers (besides the announcement not being made yet), but
I’m afraid he may force me into it.

New Boss

This fellow is in a pretty complex situation.  My take was that his former boss had been given plenty of chances and perhaps it was time to push the delete button,  But Franke offered a more sophisticated and forgiving approach, and in re-reading the letter, I think she is right. You can see Franke’s wise answer here

The folks over at the 800-CEO-Read Blog point out the Hudson’s (which has many shops that sell books in airports) has just come out with a list of the best business books (and lists in other topics as well) for 2007. Here it is:

*      Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner
*      Microtrends by Mark Penn
*      The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton
*      The Black Swan by Nasim Nicholas Taleb
*      Wikinomics by Don Tapscott

The Hudson’s website is here; my favorite book on this list is The Black Swan — it grabs you and sweeps you along, because it is smart and because Taleb comes across as such an intriguing human-being. The book that is missing from this list, in my biased opinion is the Heath brother’s Made to Stick. The press release reports that they will be displaying the lists in Hudson’s stores starting in early January.

P.S.  I’ve written a bit about 1-800-CEO-Read before.  They specialize in bulk sales of business books, and have the most competent and warm customer service in the book business.  If you are going to buy one book, Amazon is cheaper, but once you hit about 25, Amazon and other large houses often mess-up the orders, and CEO-Read is the same or cheaper.  I’ve never had the folks at CEO-Read make a mistake, and the best part is that — although you can order online — you can also call or e-mail the remarkably warm and competent people who work there.  If something does go wrong, or you are pushing a tight deadline, they will take extraordinary measures to help-out. And the two guys who run CEO Read, Todd and Jack, not only know a huge amount about business books (Todd loves business books more than anyone I’ve ever met), they set the tone for a place that is asshole-free.  Actually, that is too weak, I think that The Power of Nice describes the operation a lot better!

I just got an interesting e-mail, which makes a good point:

As I recall from all the years I was a psychology major, psychoanalytic theorists called this "redirected aggression," the boss yells at the employee, the employee yells at his or her spouse, the spouse yells at the kids, the kids take it on the dog, the dog takes it out on the cat, and so on.  And there is some research implying that such ripple effects do occur, including a study by Bennett Tepper, which shows employees who have abusive supervisors do suffer greater  irritability, anxiety, and depression, and less life satisfaction.

My wife and attended the Quill Awards in New York on Monday night, along with my editor Rick Wolff, PR folks Rob Nissen and Mark Fortier, and one of my two literary agents, Christy Fletcher (Don Lamm, my other agent, couldn’t make it).  It was a lot fun, as I have never been to anything like that.  There was red carpet and a bunch of photographers, and various "personalities" including Stephen Colbert (who opened the show), Gay Talese, Sarah Ferguson, Brooke Shields and Tiki Barber, Lorraine Bracco, and Dan
Rather. 

It was a lot  of fun, but  went on quite awhile because  — as this was an event  designed to be filmed for an NBC show tonight that is shown tonight  (on NBC stations, so it could be on CNBC or MSNBC in your area — I think about 7:00 PM in most areas) —  they stopped the show constantly  reset for filming the next round of awards.  As this story from Fox indicates, I agree that the best speech of the night was from Walter Issacson, who won the Quill for his wonderful book  on Albert Einstein.  As Fox put it, he said:

‘"Someday the book will replace
the Internet,” he said drolly, and then explained how the idea of being
able to see a book on paper and not on a screen might catch on for its
portability if nothing else.’

The best business book award was given nearly last, and we didn’t know the order of awards, so I sat in my seat constantly revising my little speech in my head.   I think it got better, and at least I was able to give it without using notes because I had three hours to work on it!   My award was presented by Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Faire and the New Yorker, and author of the recent Diana Chronicles.  Tina was charming backstage when I talked to her, but was apparently a bit apprehensive about about saying the a-word.  My wife heard her companion talk about her discomfort, and Fox also picked it up:

‘Tina Brown was set to present an award for Best Business Book to Robert I. Sutton for his “The No A—hole Rule.” She didn’t want to say the offending word, even though it would be bleeped out.
 

“What
should I do?” she wondered aloud. Luckily, she was drowned out by exit
music, but she still looked bemused swallowing the title.’

The round of awards right before was given by ventriloquist and his dummy; so even if Tina wasn’t wild about reading the title of my book, I was delighted to get the award from her instead of the prior guy. I wouldn’t be surprised if my speech isn’t played, as they will edit it  heavily, but it was a lot of fun in any  case.

The  "Book of the Year," which was determined by popular vote on the Internet, was Nora Roberts, for Angels Fall.  She is pictured to the left with Brooke Shields and Tiki Barber. I suggested here earlier that it was Comarc McCarthy’s The Road; I was wrong, but that was a great book.      

I have written in some detail about how medicine is one of the fields where asshole poisoning appears to run most rampant. I’ve written about Dr. Gooser and research showing that medical students and especially nurses face many demeaning doctors (See an artist’s vision of Dr. Gooser in action to the left).  I have also written about how one surgical resident and his colleagues took action to break the cycle of abuse that is so common in hospitals.  And I recently saw some hints of how doctors — especially a couple of surgeons — can have attitudes toward nurses that fuel such nastiness.  I gave a talk to Stanford alums a few weeks back (in fact, Kent Blumberg was in the audience), and two doctors pushed back on my claims that nurses face especially high levels of abuse, both claiming that nurses are often overly sensitive to their comments, and one saying — at least as I interpreted it  — that there are times when nurses are messing up and deserve to be slammed,  I am sure that nurses, like everyone, make mistakes, but as Amy Edmondson’s research suggests, when nurses are afraid to speak up and are belittled when they make errors, it leads to less learning and more mistakes.

There is,  however, another side of his story that I have not touched on: What about abusive patients?  Certainly, doctors and nurses who face nastiness and insults from patients can suffer the same kinds of negative outcomes — anxiety, physical illness, reduced motivation, and catching the nastiness — as happens to anyone else who encounters assholes in the workplace.  I have written about dealing with asshole clients, about how some organizations and people just refuse to serve them, and others levy "asshole taxes" to get some payback for their suffering at the hands of these creeps.  Well, as you will see below, doctors do get rid of difficult patients, but even assholes deserve health care. And charging them more seems suspect to me. 

Along these lines, I got a request from a doctor for ideas about how he should deal with asshole patients. Here is his email (with just a few things removed to protect his identity).  It is a charming little note, with come interesting turns. I invite you to read it carefully, and in particular, to suggest some useful ideas for this and other doctors who face mean-spirited and demeaning patients. This is not an easy task:

When I was doing my internship after medical school, my best friend
there and I had our own version of your rule.  This came up while we were
playing Monopoly on a day when we were snowed in.  Over the course of a
long day of Monopoly, multiple small disputes would come up, and we kept
creating rules and sub-rules to address all the different permutations of our
disputes.  Eventually, we just created a no a-hole rule, and all the
tension subsided.  All parties involved knew what it meant to be a decent
person, and wouldn’t cross the line.  I’ve tried to integrate this rule
into every aspect of my life, and succeed most of the time (although, as you
noted, there are those times where I deviate- and your book brought about some
needed self reflection).

On a similar note, there is a version of your rule in Utlimate Frisbee.
Even at the highest level, Ultimate is played without a referee.  Instead,
the players invoke "The Spirit of the Game"- and all parties agree to
not be a-holes and allow disputes to resolve by their good will.  It’s a
great rule, and it works pretty well.

As a physician, I find the hardest part of adhering to the no A-hole rule is my
interactions with patients.  The vast majority of my patients are a
delight, and what fuel my desire to be a physician.  However, as you
noted, 1 negative interaction can have far more impact than many positive
interactions.

In particular, I deal with patients who have some form of pain, and some of
these patients can be nasty, impatient, entitled, and just in general be total
certified a-holes.  While many of your suggestions work well in other
contexts, as a physician I have a professional and ethical obligation to
continue to provide as high a quality of care as possible, even if the patient
is being an a-hole.

Do you have any recommendations for how
physicians should deal with a-hole patients?  The most popular current
method is the "dump," where colleagues will refer their problem
patients to other physicians (the famous "referral preceded by an
apology.").  While this sometimes helps find a patient-physician
interaction that works for everyone, more commonly it just spreads misery
around, and doesn’t help anybody.  Any feedback you have would be
appreciated.

I just got a note from Melissa at Fletcher & Parry LLC (my literary agency) that The No Asshole Rule will be published in Polish by Helion. Melissa sent along a list of titles that they are considering — in both English and Polish — and i thought it would be fun to ask your opinions. Let me know which one you like best. And if you speak Polish, I’d be especially curious to hear your opinions or any alternatives you might suggest:

In English:

Assholes.
The survival kit

An
asshole always will be an asshole

When
you work in moronland/assholeland

No
trespassing for assholes 

Desk
to desk with an asshole.

All
the assholes big and small

In Polish:

–
"Buce, ćwoki i buraki. Sztuka przetrwania w biurze".

–
"Buc, zawsze będzie bucem"

–
"Gdy pracujesz wzaGŁĄBiu".

–
"Dupkom wstęp wzbroniony. Zasady trzeba mieć!"

–
"Biurko w biurko z jełopem"

–
"Wszystkie dupki duże i małe"

I appreciate your thoughts.  I love the creativity here, but have no idea which one to pick.

I got a most instructive e-mail about how one work group fought back against their asshole boss: They laughed at his mean-spirited actions to help cope in the short-term and to undermine his authority, and also used his own words against him — by simply forwarding the asshole’s email’s to his boss — in the long-term.  Now that’s exemplary asshole management technique.  I need to add the power of laughter to my lists of tips.

Here is the complete email:

"We had an indescribably awful boss till recently,
who was much younger and inexperienced than most of us but still managed to
haunt us with his sadism and viciousness. We fought with the only tool that we
had- laughter… We, staff members, used to laugh as much as possible at
him- his appearance, manner of speaking, his lousy decisions, his religious
fanaticism, his hurtful comments, his rudeness, his game of divide and rule,
his favourite subordinate,  till we became immune to his asshole behaviour
and began looking forward to fresh material to laugh at. He came to know this
but was very frustrated because no-one gave him any details. It began to get
under his skin till he stopped meeting us. 

Also, I began bcc-ing his obnoxious emails
to the chairman who began to wake up to this major asshole and one day,
mysteriously, the asshole disappeared, no doubt to make life hell in some other
workplace. I feel sorry for those people. 

(I would like my name to remain confidential as
this asshole may still have the power to hurt me.)"

I include his last comment because it is so revealing.  Clearly, these folks did an extremely effective job at fighting back against this guy.  But even though victorious, the paranoia that I see in the request to keep names out of it strikes me as rational and wise.  Like it or not, battling back against a workplace asshole often requires such political savvy.

My wife Marina and I will be in New York on Monday night to attend the Quill Awards, as The No Asshole Rule won in business book category.  The event is black tie (not exactly my style), but she talked me into buying a tux for the event.

I bought it at Men’s Wearhouse after first going to Nordstrom — it was not only a lot less money, I liked the customer service better because of their team selling approach. At Nordstrom, because of the incentive system and the norms, the people who aren’t "your" salesperson never seem to lift a finger to help each other. At Men’s Wearhouse, I was most impressed by how everyone at the store in Redwood City, California, worked together to help me pick what I wanted and to make the process quick and painless.

I am scheduled to be on Fox Business Network at some point between 7 and 8AM on Monday morning, and then am planning on visiting JetBlue to see one of my former students, who is now an executive. Meanwhile, Marina, my wife, is going to meet with people at Girl Scouts headquarters in connection with her new job.

Then we are off to the Quill Awards that night with my editor Rick Wolff, my literary agent Christy Fletcher, and Mark Fortier and Rob Nissen (who both have done a great job publicizing the book).  The ceremony itself is at Lincoln Center and takes about 90 minutes.  It  will be televised on the evening of Saturday, October 27th on NBC stations. Stephen Colbert opens, which should be fun. My speech is limited to 30 seconds..I am thinking about it, but haven’t really written it down or started practicing it.  AL Gore also won an award for The Assault on Reason — I hope that he shows up!