Category: The No Asshole Rule

I am always interested in good ideas and good stories about how to fight back against workplace assholes, as I use them to keep refining my list of Tips for Surviving Workplace Assholes. An engineer sent me a good story last week about how he fought back, which is entertaining and suggests some important lessons for both assholes who want to push people around and their targets:

In 2004, I was working for a major
Windows software utility company (name withheld deliberately).

I was the lead engineer on the company’s premier product. We were all
exhaling as we’d just turned the final build over for general release. It was
about 6:30 in the evening, and suddenly the CEO’s right hand man came running
into the software development area, ACTUALLY FLAPPING HIS ARMS, saying that we
couldn’t release the software as the documentation changes hadn’t been
reviewed. Could I do it? Sure, I said,
give me 20 minutes. He then started into a self-important rant about how it couldn’t take 20 minutes because
he was the CEO’s right-hand man and he had
to report back to the CEO that it was done and it had to be done faster
without stops because it was important
to get it done fast and he couldn’t let the CEO down because the CEO had
ordered it. I was walking from my office to the lead tech writer’s office as
this rant was going on.  When I stepped into the lead tech writer’s office
I put one hand on the door, looked him
dead in the eye, and waited for him to finish his rant, which took several
minutes. My whole team was clustered in the hall behind the ranter looking over
his shoulder at me, trying to see what I was going to do. The ranter continued,
saying how important it was to get it done fast and sooner and how urgent it
was that this not stop the software release because he’d already told the CEO
that all the release steps were done. When he finished ranting, I
continued to look him straight in the eye and said, "Twenty-five
minutes," and shut the door in his face.

Later I heard that all my team was behind me 110% but they didn’t have the
nerve to say it in front of the ranter…the CEO’s "right hand man".

It isn’t always possible to do what the
lead engineer did in this case – to shut the door in an asshole’s face.  I suspect that “the ranter” made the serious
mistake of believing that –- because he was associated with the CEO –-  he
had more power than the lead engineer on the company’s most important
product. Note the lesson: It is bad
enough to be an asshole, but if you act like an asshole when you believe that you have
a lot of power, but actually have little, you are in big trouble.  There was a double whammy in this case: The ranter didn’t get
the deference that he demanded and everyone around him saw him as jerk.

Being an effective asshole requires
substantial skill, especially at assessing power dynamics, and “the ranter”
clearly didn’t have it. 

The thoughts and comments at LinkedIn keep rolling in,
and I am a bit surprised by the large number, I am even
more surprised by the thoughtfulness and depth of most of the comments here about whether
power corrupts and how to reduce the risk.  Here is the
latest one, from David C., who is an “artist, entrepreneur, and brand manager.”

Power magnifies. It gives leverage to
every impulse, good and bad. Power in and of itself does not corrupt, but
because of that leverage it can accelerate corruption. A cycle of actions
without consequence can suppress the impulse for remorse – subsequent abuses of
power become easier as the internal mechanisms for recognizing abusive behavior
become calloused. To avoid this requires a blend of discipline, vigilance, good
institutional checks and balances, and perhaps most importantly, establishing a
trusted peer group that will promote accountability.

To build on this argument, I think that power magnifies what the leader does, in large part (as a host of experiments show) because people around the leader begin to focus great attention on every detail of the leader’s behavior.  Indeed, that is one of the odd effects on power: it causes leaders to devote less attention to their followers and it causes followers to devote more attention to leaders.  This asymmetry isn’t always healthy, but it is well-documented. Think of how closely the press examines the micro details of everything done by Steve Jobs and President Bush.  So the magnification that John is talking is likely caused in part by those who scrutinize and try to adjust to tiny things that the leader does, or at least seems to be doing.  And David C.’s points about ways that organizations can suppress and reverse this
natural tendency are on target –- wisdom that organizations and leaders in
almost any industry can benefit from.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional online network, with 14 million members, and over 300,000 new people are joining every week. They started an "Answers series" this week, where guests ask LinkedIn members for thoughts about a topic related to small businesses and start-ups.  The first guest was presidential candidate Barack Obama.  He generated a huge number of comments, as you would expect, over 1300 in the first 24 hours.  I was delighted to be the second guest.  The question I asked ( posted here) was:

Does power corrupt?

As people become
more powerful, there’s a tendency for bad behavior to surface. What
suggestions do you have for leaders to avoid becoming a jerk in the
face of rising pressure and demands?

The answers have been pouring in ever since — up to 245 a few minutes ago. The range of ideas and breadth of wisdom is pretty striking.  Here are three good ones to give you a taste:

Adam Pingel

On that topic, I always think of this quote:

"Nearly all men can
stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power."

– Abraham Lincoln

Ernie Funari

Treat everyone around you as if they had their children standing next to
them. To children – parents are heros. If you keep this in mind, why would you
treat someone’s hero with disrespect?

Jennifer (Ano) Cole

Power doesn’t corrupt, rather it’s society’s treatment of power and how that
power is used by the person wielding it. Getting used to ‘giving in’ to that
feeling of entitlement (because you’ve attained a certain amount of power) is
what transforms powerful people into massive jerks. It’s an easy to get yourself
into, but also problematic because others reinforce it. Everyone caters to
people of authority with that ‘entitlement’ perspective, which some people view
as courtesy or showing respect. But 9 times out of 10, they’re really not
respecting the person, they’re respecting the power that person has. (beause
they have this, drive a that, eat here, etc…)

How to avoid becoming a
jerk…make it a point to do something you used to do before you got ‘powerful’
like drive your own car to a fast food drive thru, or get into a pickup
basketball game at the park. Hang out on the carpet with your kids and wrestle
around, seeing things from their perspective. Volunteer regularly at a senior
center by just visiting with someone for 30 minutes. Do something real – people
will respect and love you for who you are and not for the power you have in your
leadership role.

Another suggestion – take time off from your leadership
life, and even your personal family life. People have forgotten what it’s like
to be alone with their own thoughts. Alternatively we fill our minds with things
so that way you never have to deal with the scum on the bottom of the barrel.
If you can’t manage/master the contents of your own mind, your perspective, your
focus, who you are at the core – it will affect your leadership ability
negatively. I guess Jesus knew what he was doing calling for the observance of
the Sabbath – just take a scheduled amount of time to get your head clear and
center yourself. Doesn’t have to do anything with religion or society or what
other people think. You’ll be all the better for it and others will too.

Again, this is just a taste, there are hundreds more.

I have written here a lot about research on how power can turn people into jerks, including posts on It Isn’t Just a Myth, Power Turns People into Assholes and  More Evidence That Power Turns You Into a Self-Serving Jerk. But one of the problems with academics (I plead guilty here) is that although we are great at showing what will happen under certain conditions and explaining why things happen, we often don’t get around to coming up with useful ways to help people avoid problems — or ways how to help magnify the good things in life. As such, I appreciate how practical so many of these suggestions are about how to avoid becoming a self serving jerk once you get some power.  If you are a Linked-In member, or want to join, you can add your ideas as well.

Finally,  I just love the Lincoln quote.  The No Asshole Rule proposes that "the difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human characters as I know."  It seems that Lincoln said pretty much the same thing, and of course said it much better, almost 150 years ago.  So this isn’t a new idea, but to paraphrase my colleague and co-author Jeff Pfeffer, "it is more important to focus on doing what is true than what is new!

The winners of the Quill Awards were announced this morning, and to my surprise, The No Asshole Rule won for best book of the year in the business book category.  I was surprised because the other four books were so great, and because it still amazes me that respectable sponsors like Publisher’s Weekly, NBC, AARP, and Parade Magazine seem to be non-plussed by the rather dirty title.  The other four nominees were:

Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas
Seth Godin; Portfolio
Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny
Suze Orman; Random House/Spiegel & Grau

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
David Shipley and Will Schwalbe; Alfred A. Knopf

Chocolates on the Pillow Aren’t Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience
Jonathan M. Tisch, Karl Weber; John Wiley & Co

Quite a group! I am honored.  The winners were determined by "a Voting
Board consisting of more than 6,000 booksellers and librarians."  Winners in other categories include  Cormac McCarthy for The Road (a stunning book) and Al Gore for The Assault on Reason.  Other winners include Amy
Sedaris, Nora Roberts, and Walter Isaacson.

The awards will be presented on October 22nd at a "gala
ceremony" in New York City.  The hosts are NBC’s Ann Curry and Al Roker.  The
list of presenters of includes Tiki Barber, Lorraine Bracco,
Stephen Colbert, Tom Brokaw, Tina Brown, Mary Higgins Clark, Jonathan Groff, Brooke
Shields.  My 17 year old wants Colbert to present it to me, as he would do such an artful job of insulting me. Lorraine Bracco  might be the best choice,  because she did a lot of "asshole management" during all the years she played Tony Soprano’s therapist on HBO!

The Quills Award are meant to be the most populist of book awards, sort of like the People’s Choice awards for TV, movies, and music.  As such, the biggest prize of the night, the Quills Book of the Year, is determined by popular vote. You can vote for your choice on the link.  And some of my friends have been nice enough to vote for The No Asshole Rule. But it is hard for me to argue — for example —  that it is a better book than wonderful works like The Road or Einstein.  And as I said in my first post when I learned about the Quills nomination, in my biased opinion, the best business book published in the past year is Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick.  For some reason, it wasn’t nominated. Lucky for me, as it would have been tough to beat.

My wife is excited about going to the ceremony, so it looks like we are going to New York in October.   And my thanks to all those people in the book business who voted for The No Asshole Rule!   

The Workplace Bullying Institute released one of the best, perhaps the best ever, national survey of workplace bullying over the Labor Day weekend.  This is a representative national sample of nearly 8000 adults. The interviews were conducted in mid-August.  Check out this detailed report about the study, which was conducted by Zogby, a polling firm.

A few findings were especially striking to me.  Here is the main question and the answers:

Question: At work, have you experienced or witnessed any or all
of the following types of repeated mistreatment: sabotage by others
that prevented work from getting done, verbal abuse, threatening
conduct, intimidation, humiliation?

Responses

Yes, I am experiencing it now or have in the last year, (12.6) 13%
Yes, it has happened to me in my worklife, but not now or in the last year, (24.2) 24%
I’ve only witnessed it, (12.3) 12%
I’ve been the perpetrator myself, 0.4% (n=22)
Never had it happen to me and never witnessed it, (44.9) 45%

This research  confirms prior findings that bullying is common, but that it is not something that just about everyone always faces at work on a daily basis– 13% of American’s report facing current bullying.   I also suspect that the self-reports that less than 1/2% of Americans have been or are bullies are underestimates, as not many people are willing to admit "I am a workplace asshole."  But these findings do confirm that nasty and demeaning behavior is a huge problem in the American workplace.

Three other findings also strike me. First, men are more likely to be bullies than women: 60% of bullies are men, 40% women.  In contrast, 57% of the "targets" are women and 43% are men. Given that men, on average, still hold more powerful positions than women, this is not a surprise.  As I’ve discussed,  there is lots of evidence that power turns people into assholes.

Second, 40% of targets leave their job voluntarily, 23% are terminated, and 13% are transfered to another job in the same organization. But only 14% of bullies are terminated and another 9% are punished but not fired. So it seems, as we have seen on this blog and in The No Asshole Rule, that too many of these creeps are getting away with their dirty work.  And these findings also show (like prior research) that employers who are allowing bullies to do their dirty work aren’t just hurting victims, these creeps are driving out good people. As this report shows in detail, and I show with a vivid case of just one asshole from one organization, the total cost of assholes can be staggering.  These researchers estimate that, if these findings can be generalized (and it is a representative sample) that bullies have driven over 20 million people out of their jobs.

Finally, this survey found that 72% of the bullies were bosses, people who were positions of authority over targets. When people ask me why The  No Asshole Rule focuses more attention on bosses, and less on people who abuse peers or superiors, I reply that it is because so much research shows that workplace assholes "kick down."  Of course, that is not to dismiss the damage done by people who "kick" peers and superiors — it is also a huge problem.  But the lion’s share of abuse does roll down the hierarchy.   

As I say in  the book, one of the best tests of a human being’s "goodness" is how well he or she treats people with less power.  Unfortunately, this survey suggests that too many people are failing that test. 

Take a look around the Workplace Bullying Institute’s web site, which has excellent resources.  You can also see this interview that was played on CNN this weekend, with the WBI’s Dr. Gary Namie talking about this study and the problem of bullying — and I am on briefly at the end.  Frankly, it is nice to have a plug for the book, and I suppose all the snippets of various opinions from lots of different people are nice.  But I would have rather seen CNN talk more about this study.  They barely touched on it even though it is one of the most important, and most rigorous, studies on this problem. 

Finally, I am more ambivalent than Dr. Namie about the need for anti-bullying legislation, as I worry it will just add more work for lawyers and not provide much real protection. Plus I worry that the only way to collect a lot of financial damages in court is to suffer a lot of physical, emotional, and financial damages– so it may encourage people to stay who really ought to get out now.  But I agree with Namie 100% about the damage done by these demeaning creeps, and frankly, even if these laws (now introduced in 13 states) don’t pass, the threat of litigation may inspire some firms and leaders to stop tolerating the assholes in their organizations. So it may cause some to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

I confess that, however, when I heard the argument by a business leader on the CNN story that modern workers are essentially too smart to take it from bullies and will leave, and that employers who allow bullies to suffer will be at a competitive disadvantage, so there is really no need for the laws, I started drifting a bit more toward being in favor of anti-bullying laws. I’ve never believed that "the market" will take care of everything — it didn’t work for gender and racial bias (or harassment), so why should it work for bullying?  I still worry about anytime when the lawyers rush in, that all sorts of bad things will happen.  Perhaps that is unfair to lawyers, but I keep hearing this argument from lawyers!

Laws aside, this poll adds compelling evidence that when organizations allow asshole poisoning to flourish and spread, their leaders not only have suspect human values, they are engaging in bad business practices.  Also, as an advocate of evidence-based management, it is nice to see such a careful study.

There is an interesting video clip of an interview on CNN.com with former Gillette CEO, Jim Kilts.  The interviewer quotes some familiar advice in Kilts’ new book, Doing What Matters.  Kilts argues that one of the practices that fueled Gillette’s success during the years he led the company was "Never Hire a Prick, Even a Smart One."   And, indeed, Kilts has an impressive track record, having led turnarounds at both Nabisco and Gillette.  Kilts talks about how how "pricks"  are smug self promoters and  are destructive to the organization, and him it is essential to avoid hiring them or to drive them out of a company. As he says, they can get short-term results, but they break down people and organizations over the long haul.  I prefer the word "asshole" because it applies to both men and women, but it appears that Mr. Kilts is talking about more or less the same thing. So I will add him to the list of leaders and places that use the no asshole rule — which I think I will start calling The No Asshole Rule Honor Roll!

P.S. I just ordered the book and will write a little review of it after I’ve read it. He sounds like a great leader, but I am somewhat concerned about the huge payoff that Mr. Kilts is enjoying for selling Gillette to Procter & Gamble  — although I do have soft spot in my heart for P&G as (starting with CEO A.G. Lafley) they are one of the most civilized companies I know and are also deeply committed to innovation.

It has been about 7 months since The No Asshole Rule was released in the U.S., and it seems to still be chugging away. Frankly, I didn’t expect the sales and attention to persist so long.  CNN came down to film me last week, and I understand that the segment will appear sometime this weekend and I seem to still be doing several U.S. media interviews a week. Sometimes for stories directly on the book, and increasingly on stories on different, but related issues, such as the BusinessWeek All Star Professor Story, a most interesting Financial Times story on The Cost of Hidden Bias at Work (reporting some compelling research done by Freada Klein’s Level Playing Field Institute), and the recent Wall Street Journal story on layoffs.

But I still am talking about the book plenty and the wave of emails from people who are oppressed by assholes, are fighting back, or have implemented the rule hasn’t slowed down much.  It is still hanging around the BusinessWeek bestseller list, moving from #13 to #7 on the list that was just released.  Plus I just got an email from the folks at McKinsey that the article based on the book, on Building a Civilized Workplace,has been the most frequently downloaded article on their site this year.

I am starting to move onto some other projects, but the persistent attention is nice, but also bewildering.  And the book did just get released in Italy, in fact today is the official publication date. Its called   Il Metodo Antistronzi there, and I had the weird experience — from midnight to 1AM — of being on an Italian radio show where I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and the questions I was asked and answers I gave were through a translator.  I did gather, however, that there is as much concern about assholes in Italy as anywhere else.  And any of you who read Italian might be amused by this online crusade against an asshole boss.

And on it goes. Thanks to everyone for all the support and please keep the comments and emails coming. I remain delighted and often surprised by the new things that I learn every day.

I’ve been reading Michael Malone’s fascinating book "Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company." I think it is a great read. One of my favorite parts is a more complete description of the story about how — after directly defying Dave Packard’s orders to stop working on a product — Chuck House continued working on an oscilloscope that became a commercial success. Rather than punishing or firing Chuck, Packard gave him a medal for "Extraordinary Contempt and Defiance Beyond the Usual Call of Engineering."  The HP insiders I know who have read the book say they like it, but do complain that it glosses over Hewlett and Packard’s flaws.  Nonetheless, it is an instructive read, especially given how different the assumptions that Hewlett and Packard followed are from those seen in most companies.

I was especially intrigued by Packard 11’s simple rules, which he first presented at an internal meeting in in Sonoma in 1958. If you follow these, you don’t need the no asshole rule.  These are fantastic guidelines for building a civilized workplace.   Take the first one, for example: "Think of the Other Fellow First."  Sure it is simple, sure you knew it, but seeing the world through others’ eyes is probably most important single step for avoiding the self-obsession and selfishness that routinely happens when people are put in positions of power, as I discussed on this blog earlier this week.

Here is the list. I’ve found this on many places on the web. This version comes the HP website, here. It does caution that is is for internal use, but as these have been published so many places and they are such wonderful standards,  and I found it on a public website, I can’t imagine that putting here can do any harm — only good.

Dave Packard’s 11 Simple Rules

1. Think first of the other fellow. This is THE foundation
— the first requisite — for getting along with others.
And it is the one truly difficult accomplishment you must
make. Gaining this, the rest will be "a breeze."

2. Build up the other person’s sense of importance.
When we make the other person seem less important, we frustrate
one of his deepest urges. Allow him to feel equality or superiority,
and we can easily get along with him.

3. Respect the other man’s personality rights. Respect
as something sacred the other fellow’s right to be different
from you. No two personalities are ever molded by precisely
the same forces.

4. Give sincere appreciation. If we think someone
has done a thing well, we should never hesitate to let him
know it. WARNING: This does not mean promiscuous use of obvious
flattery. Flattery with most intelligent people gets exactly
the reaction it deserves — contempt for the egotistical
"phony" who stoops to it.

5. Eliminate the negative. Criticism seldom does
what its user intends, for it invariably causes resentment.
The tiniest bit of disapproval can sometimes cause a resentment
which will rankle — to your disadvantage — for years.

6. Avoid openly trying to reform people. Every man
knows he is imperfect, but he doesn’t want someone else trying
to correct his faults. If you want to improve a person, help
him to embrace a higher working goal — a standard, an
ideal — and he will do his own "making over" far more
effectively than you can do it for him.

7. Try to understand the other person. How would
you react to similar circumstances? When you begin to see
the "whys" of him you can’t help but get along better with
him.

8. Check first impressions. We are especially prone
to dislike some people on first sight because of some vague
resemblance (of which we are usually unaware) to someone else
whom we have had reason to dislike. Follow Abraham Lincoln’s
famous self-instruction: "I do not like that man; therefore
I shall get to know him better."

9. Take care with the little details. Watch your
smile, your tone of voice, how you use your eyes, the way
you greet people, the use of nicknames and remembering faces,
names and dates. Little things add polish to your skill in
dealing with people. Constantly, deliberately think of them
until they become a natural part of your personality.

10. Develop genuine interest in people. You cannot
successfully apply the foregoing suggestions unless you have
a sincere desire to like, respect and be helpful to others.
Conversely, you cannot build genuine interest in people until
you have experienced the pleasure of working with them in
an atmosphere characterized by mutual liking and respect.

11. Keep it up. That’s all — just keep it up!

P.S. The connections between the Stanford Engineering School and HP have always been very close. In fact, Bill and Dave borrowed $500 from Engineering Professor Fred Terman to start their company!

I
was working on an article for a special issue on the psychology of power for a magazine
called The Greater Good. It is published out of the University of California at Berkeley. Check out the magazine online, they publish some
impressive stuff. Editor Jason Marsh pointed
me to an amazing study that provides additional – and quite scary – fodder to
support the huge body of research (see this
post) showing that simply putting people in positions of power turns them
into self-centered jerks.

Jason pointed me to a series
of recent studies by Northwestern’s  Adam
Galinksy and
several other colleagues (including Stanford’s Deborah
Gruenfeld) that provides simple – but scary – evidence that just THINKING
about how powerful you are can cause you to disregard how others see the world. A description of this research can be
found, here at Live
Science and you can get a complete copy of the paper here
at Galinsky’s website.

In short, the researchers divided experimental subjects into two groups. People put in the  “high power” group were asked
to remember and write about an incident when they had power over one or more people. People put in the "low power" group
were asked to remember and write about an incident where someone had power over them.   People were randomly assigned to groups. Subjects in both
groups were then asked to write the letter E on their forehead.

Galinsky and his
colleagues inferred that if the letter
E was written so that it would seem correct to the research participant — but backwards to everyone else — this would suggest a failure to take other people’s perspective(see the picture on the left). Conversely,
if the letter was written so it would seem backwards to the participant, but
forwards to others, that was a sign that the person was taking others’ perspectives into account (see the picture on the right). These researchers hypothesized –- following a huge body of research
showing that power leads people to focus more on themselves and less on others –- that people
who had been “primed” to think about how powerful they were would be more likely
to draw the E “backwards” from other people’s perspective.   

Not
only did the hypothesized effects occur, the effects were strong: People primed to feel powerful were nearly
three times as likely to draw the E so it seemed legible to themselves but
backwards to others.

Sure, this is just a little study done in the lab. But think about it. The subjects were college students, were randomly
assigned to conditions, and did a very brief experiment. This is a far weaker manipulation than what
happens in real life, where people are told that they deserve positions of
greater power and hold them for years.   And –- although the “priming” had strong effects in the lab –-
remembering and writing about a single incident represents an intervention that is many, many
times weaker than what happens when people are given real power to hire and fire underlings, to move people into different jobs, to decide others’ pay, and on and
on. 

Most of us believe that we are too
good and too ethical to turn into self-centered jerks just because we have a
little – or a lot – of power over others. Unfortunately, a vast body of evidence
suggests that most human-beings turn pretty ugly when they get power over others. The tendency to become a self-centered jerk
(and following other research) who acts as if “the rules don’t apply to me” is
something that everyone in power needs to fight against in every way, every
day.

Indeed, if you have ideas about how leaders can fight this unfortunate tendency, I would be most interested to hear your suggestions.

My Tips for Dealing With Workplace Assholes start out with THE BIGGEST AND BEST LESSON: ESCAPE IF YOU POSSIBLY CAN.  Along these lines, a reader named Dave wrote me with this advice:

When my children graduated from
college and were about to enter the work force for the first time, I gave them
two pieces of advice:

1. Bite the bullet up front and backlog your vacation to the
maximum allowed.

2. Put a minimum of six months salary
aside and preferably one year.

Then, if you get into a disagreeable situation with your boss or
company, just walk out. And better yet, if you can time it, wait until you’ve
been tasked to put together some sensitive information for a big project or
presentation, then walk out the morning it’s due, after having done practically
nothing.

Dave, thanks for the great advice, and it is most timely given the upcoming Labor Day holiday in the United States.

P.S. The picture is Johnny Paycheck, who wrote "Take this Job and Shove It," as that is the moment that Dave is talking about.