A thoughtful reader named alerted me to an interesting letter — and set of reactions — sent to Bob Lewis on his Advice Line over at InfoWorld. A reader — apparently a CEO — defended another CEO’s asshole ways.  InfoWorld headlined this as defending tough CEOs; I am all for tough CEOs, for having people in such positions who can argue their points and who can implement tough and controversial decisions. Hewlett and Packard did that, Andy Grove did it, A.G. Lafley does it, but in ways that generally treat others with respect. 

Here is the CEO’s letter and Bob Lewis’s response — which I think is excellent.  Go to the link to see the rest of responses and conversation, which are quite thoughtful. They give me hope that awareness about the evils of nasty bosses are increasing:

Defending tough CEOs
Filed under: General

Dear Bob …

I was surprised that you even bothered to comment on that letter ("How to deal with a really bad CEO," Advice Line, 8/8/2007) for advice.

People
want to play close to the heartbeat but can’t stand the thumping sound
– get over it. Things sometimes get harsh and, well, disagreeable when
you’re in that zone. Someone throws chairs, another threatens "Your job
is gone before mine!"

CEOs are not in that position to be nice,
nor are they there to be cruel, they are there to do a job, produce
results, perform. If they don’t, they’re gone. I agree with you, if you
can’t take it, leave. But my guess is people who have the self esteem
and the assertiveness necessary (not aggression) can both work with
this guy and get him to back off a tad – but it is FIRSTLY the person’s
responsibility, not the CEO’s. Thanks for the listen… and yes …

– I am a CEO.

Dear CEO …

If
you’re a CEO and you defend your peers who throw chairs, I think you
need to learn more about your responsibilities as a leader. Your job is
to get results. If you think you can achieve better results by bullying
the people who work for you, you’re getting only a fraction of the
results possible.

It’s like this: If the people who work for you
are afraid of you, they’ll tell you what they think you want to hear,
not what you need to hear. That makes you worse than ignorant – it
makes you misinformed. Leaders who are misinformed make bad decisions
for reasons that I trust don’t require additional information.

As
a leader, the definition of your job is to produce results through the
efforts of those who work for you. Leaders who yell, throw things, and
intimidate end up having second-raters working for them, because
first-rate employees have no reason to put up with that sort of
treatment. They don’t have to.

And the second-raters who are left aren’t going to deliver first-rate results.

Probably, that’s going to make the sort of CEO you describe throw another chair.

– Bob

Let me know what your thoughts are about this exchange, which I find quite useful for helping to distinguish between asshole CEO’s and ones that are simply tough and competent.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, the Italian version of The No Asshole Rule is about to be published. It is called  Il Metodo Antistronzi, which means — according to this comment on WordReference.com’s forum— something like "The Anti-Asshole Method."  My Italian publisher has not only translated book, they have also translated our ARSEMail tool, which at least in English, allows the sender to either apologize for acting like and asshole or to offer sympathy to a victim. It is called MailAntistronzi; if you speak Italian, let me know if it makes sense to you!

As I mentioned in my last post, the magazine Value Rich did a kind of review and summary of The No Asshole Rule with a series of cartoons summarizing a main point for each chapter.  One of the main ideas on the book — taken both from research on emotional contagion and from research on bullying and interpersonal aggression — is that acting like a demeaning jerk isn’t just a personality characteristic that some people have and others don’t.  There is a lot of evidence that, when any of us are around nasty people, we — without realizing it — start mimicking their nastiness, and suffer from asshole poisoning as well.  That is why one of the last points of the book is "assholes are us" and also why the organization or group that you choose to work with can have a huge effect on whether you behave like an asshole — or a decent human-being. 

Above is their cartoon captioned, "The Implication is that they breed like rabbits."

I
have almost made it through most of the emails and messages that piled-up during my
vacation and thought it would be fun to list some of the latest news related to The No Asshole Rule.

Il Metodo Antistronzi: Italian Edition Published on August 31^st  Elliot Edizioni is about to
publish the Italian edition of The No
Asshole Rule. I am told that title
means, essentially, the no asshole rule, but perhaps there is a native Italian
speaker out there who can explain the nuances of these words. I’ve been talking to quite a few Italian
journalists, and am hoping to have as much fun with Il Metodo Antistronzi and
the Italian people as I’ve had with Objectif
Zéro-sale-con France and Der
Arscholch-Faktor in Germany. The book has especially seems to have hit a
nerve in Germany, as I am told it has sold more copies per capita in Germany
than in the U.S. I am trying to schedule
a trip in early October to Rome to promote the book, but am facing some
logistical challenges. I hope it works,
as I love Italy.

Assholes Seem to Get Away
With It.  The annual meeting of my
main professional association, the Academy
of Management, was held in Philadelphia a couple
weeks ago. This is a gathering of
several thousand people who do management research from around the world.  Here is a link to a short description on
Yahoo!.  There is an active group of
researchers in the Academy who do studies of bullying and abusive workplaces. One of the papers that got the most attention
from the press was a study of 240 people by , Anthony Don Erickson,
Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia.  They found that bad leaders –- including those who are
incompetent and those who are bullies – often got away with it. Respondents reported that about 65% of bad
leaders either got away with it, or were rewarded with things like promotion despite their lack of skill. This is not a random sample of any known
population, it is based on an internet survey, but it strikes me as consistent
was other published research on bullies.  Some other findings reported by the Academy of Management about this study include: 

“About 29% of respondents indicated that the principal impact of
bad leaders on them personally was in engendering such serious stress symptoms
as insomnia, bad dreams, general fatigue, and loss of concentration. About 16%
blamed a bad leader for emotional effects, such as hating one’s job, dreading
going to work, and feeling depressed about work life; another 15% identified
negative effects on personal relationships outside the workplace.”

“Asked about the bad leader’s impact on their work
performance, by far the largest number (33.6%) cited lowered motivation, which
included lowered enthusiasm, goofing off, and just going through the motions.”

“Asked whether they believed that the particular bad
leader they singled out was widely viewed as bad, about 90% indicated that this
was the case, 40.”

Not
a pretty picture! When organizations have  and  actually enforce no asshole  rules,  however,  the  creeps are a lot less likely  to get away with  their abuse.

Lutgen-Sandvik’s Research
on Bullying. I have been exchanging email with and reading
papers by Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik, an
Assistant Professor at The University of New Mexico. I will devote a post to her work in the
future, after I read her papers again and think about them more. Her complete
dissertation is available on her website, and while most dissertations are
truly awful, barely readable and thick with obscure details, Pam’s is the rare
compelling read. She reports in-depth
case studies and analysis of how victims of bullying fought back, and what methods
are most likely to succeed.  One of her
main findings, for example, is that people who work in concert with others –
– rather than alone –-  to battle back are more likely to succeed, to keep their
own jobs and to force the bully out. Now, that sounds like common sense, and I
suppose it is, but I think it is important to have common sense backed by more
rigorous research, because sometimes common sense turns out to be wrong. In addition to in-depth qualitative research,
Pam and her colleagues conducted a survey of American, Finnish, and Danish
workers, and found that American workers (47%) were far more likely to report
being the victim of at least one act of bullying per week than workers in Finland (24%) or in Denmark
(16%). Again, I will write more about
Pam’s research, but here is a press release describing this survey
study.

Bob Nardelli at Chrysler?  Given
Nardelli’s poor reputation for employee relations at Home Depot, I was pretty
shocked to discover that he was tapped to lead and save Chrysler. Perhaps I am missing something, but putting a
possible asshole in charge of a company that depends so heavily on good
relationships with unions, white collar workers, suppliers, the press, and so
on strikes me as a strange move. On the
plus side, I do think that toughness is something that every auto executive
needs and that being from outside the industry might be useful, as my
experience with American automobile companies is that – – even if what they are
doing isn’t working –-  they keep doing what they’ve always done before because,
well, they’ve always done it before!

Fun talk at Mozilla. I gave a no asshole rule talk at Mozilla earlier in the week, the folks who
bring you the open source Firefox browsers. Talk about an asshole-free place. As Asa Dotzler – Mozilla’s open-source marketing guru – put it, the work they do requires so much
cooperation with each other  and with people from outside the company (many of whom are volunteers, who
do the coding or marketing Firefox out love for the product and what it represents
about a participative and decentralized approach to the Internet), that acting
like an asshole is rare because it is so downright dumb when you need so much
mutual respect and trust to get the work done. It is amazing organization, with about 100 employees and over 100 million
users. And the browser is now in over 30 languages,
and is especially popular in Europe where it has over 30% market share in
countries like Germany. Mozilla employee Jay Patel wrote a little
about it as well on his blog
too.

Lucky 13.  The No
Asshole Rule Continues to hang around on a number of best-seller lists. It is currently at #13 on the
BusinessWeek bestseller list and has been on the list for four months,
starting-off at #2.

Bad Boss Contest. Vote for
the Biggest Asshole!
Working America, which is affiliated with
the AFL-CIO (the powerful labor union) is running its second annual “Bad Boss Contest.” The have
collected hundreds of bad boss stories and are now down to the six finalists. I’ve
been working with them a little, and contributed a little set of tips about
dealing with a bad boss and am listed as a “Bad Boss Expert”  along with others including Jane Fonda! Visit the website and vote for your favorite
bad boss story. The winner is decided on August 21^st. Here is the
current leader in the contest with over 350 votes:

Pete
Yonski,Illinois

My
story starts with me being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. I am in my
early thirties and have not worked since March of this year. I also have three
young children under the age of 8, and a wife who cannot work due to my
condition. I think you get the idea.

In the industry I work in, disability benefits are available but only equal
about one-half of what I normally would be making. These benefits are
formulated from a day to day basis for days you have received no other
compensation for. Needless to say, every day claimed is extremely important in
the basic task of feeding my family and keeping the lights on.

I have been an employee for about 10 years and as such, I have built up some
paid time off. I sent paperwork in to take some of my time off, to help pay the
bills, but when the paycheck came, I was short on several days. This was
compounded when I did not claim disability benefits on the days I thought I was
being paid for. As an end result, I lost out on my vacation days AND DISABILITY
BENEFITS. Talk about getting hit where it hurts.

My boss threw away the paperwork I sent in and then lied about ever receiving
it knowing that filing a grievance for the time I should have received would
take months if not years to resolve. Its hard enough just trying to stay alive,
let alone trying to pull knifes out of not only my back, but the backs of my
wife and children too.

ARSE Test Approaching
110,000 completions. I got a note from Aaron Mentele of Electric
Pulp that over 107,000 people have now completed Asshole Rating Self-Exam. The self examination continues! The numbers
for the Flying ARSE are respectable, with about 6500, completions, but clearly,
the original ARSE is “viral” in a way that the “airplane” version is not.

 Value Rich: A Cartoon
Review. The current version of this magazine has one
of the most creative and fun reviews of The
No Asshole Rule I’ve seen. Check out
New Book Gives
The Boot To Jerks. There is cartoon
to go with each of the seven chapters in the book, I think my favorite is the
one above from Chapter 1, of Dr.
Gooser doing his dirty work.

Today’s Globe and Mail has a story on Ian Telfer, chairman of "Goldcorp Inc., the world’s second-largest gold producer by market capitalization, called The Dealmaker Shows His Giving Side.  Mr. Telfer has a nice discussion of how he applies the rule: Here is an interesting excerpt from the interview with the Globe and Mail:

Are you really a manager?

You have to be. The head office of Goldcorp is 60 people and I
probably hired 50 of them. If you get the right people, they can do the
job.

There is a bestseller right now called The No Asshole Rule.
It is all about: ‘Don’t hire any assholes.’ So I spend a lot of time
picking who we’re going to hire. You need someone with technical
qualifications, but you also have to find someone who can work with
other people and respect other people.

Then you give them real responsibility and that is the secret to the
whole system. You let them make mistakes. That is what the majority of
managers seem unable to do: They can’t let someone make even a minor
mistake.

I would also add that, in addition to using the no asshole rule, Mr Telfer also applies one of the single most important management practices for any company –to create a safe environment where people are given enough autonomy to make some mistakes, and when it happens, it is used as a learning opportunity.  Companies that slam people when they make mistakes create a climate of fear that undermines learning and usually leads to more mistakes — and effort devoted to hiding errors or avoiding the finger of blame, rather than learning.  This is a major point in Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense, The Knowing-Doing Gap, and Weird Ideas That Work, and I’ve blogged about here under "The Best Single Diagnostic Question."

P.S. The Globe and Mail has been very kind in the coverage of our work.  Last December,they picked Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management as the top business book of 2006.

I just finished an interview with Adam Penenberg.  He is writing a story about workplace bullying for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Magazine, which has the largest circulation of any magazine in the world. Adam has a fascinating background.  If you check out his website, you will see that he is author of Tragic Indifference. This is an account of the Ford-Firestone SUV rollover fiasco, the biggest product liability case in history. Tragic Indifference is now being made into a movie, which will star Michael Douglas. Not only that, Adam’s real life character was played in the 2005 film "Shattered Glass," which his website describes as follows:

‘Hayden Christensen stars as Stephen Glass, a staff writer for the respected current events and policy magazine The New Republic and a freelance feature writer for publications such as Rolling Stone, Harper’sGeorge.
By the mid-90s, Glass’s articles had turned him into one of the most
sought-after young journalists in Washington. Although a number of his
stories had generated controversy, his copious notes always seemed to
satisfy The New Republic’s fact-checking department. That is, until a writer from the Forbes Digital Tool Web site, Adam L. Penenberg (played by Steve Zahn), began asking questions. "Shattered Glass" is a study of a very talented-and at the same time very flawed-character ."’

Adam is looking for stories from people who have faced workplace bullying.  He wants to hear from people about the damage done to them and their families, how they fought back, and how they ultimately made things better for themselves and others,  how they escaped, and perhaps how they exacted a measure of revenge . Of course, many stories like these have been published on this blog, and I continue to get (and deeply appreciate) more stories about workplace assholes.  But I have a policy of protecting the identity of people who send me their stories, especially people who have suffered workplace abuse.

Adam is looking for people who will name names, who will use their real names, the names of the people who abused them, and the names of organizations where this happened.  Adam argues, I believe rightly, that real stories with real names make for far more compelling storytelling.  Adam would like to talk with you if you are comfortable telling your story to him and having it published with real names.  I realize that many people who send me their stories will not be comfortable doing so, and that for others, doing so may stir-up problems, perhaps even legal problems.  If you talk to Adam, you should go in with your eyes wide-open. 

At the same time, Adam is a first-rate journalist, he adheres to the highest ethical standards, and is writing for an outlet that will handle your story with sensitivity and care.  And if you contact him, he won’t use your name and tell your story unless you comfortable with the "terms." In addition, as with stopping other kinds of "bad" behavior, authentic and vivid stories are essential for stomping out asshole ridden workplaces  — for showing the damage done and how to fight back.  So if you are able to speak-up, it is the kind of thing that can help save others from the suffering that you may have faced — and the impact will be especially large because of AARP’s massive circulation.

Adam’s email is adam@penenberg.com.  Please contact him directly if you are interested in telling your story to him.

The
New York Post ran a story earlier in
the week called Despot Measures: Should Workplace Bullying Be Outlawed?. I found it to be an interesting and balanced
story, as it described how a number of states -– including New
York and New Jersey — are currently considering anti-bullying legislation. Essentially, the idea of these bills is to
punish employers that allow “equal opportunity assholes” to get away with doing
their dirty work, thus going beyond current laws against race and gender-based
workplace abuse. To quote the Post article by Brian Moore:

Professor
David Yamada of Suffolk University Law School has studied
workplace bullying for years. In response to the problem, he’s written
legislation that’s serving as a model for most antibullying bills across the
country, including New York and New Jersey.

Essentially
the laws would lower the bar for those who want to bring suit against a
tormentor. While one can sue now, such bids hardly ever win – these laws would
improve plaintiffs’ odds by creating a set of criteria for what’s actionable.
Under Yamada’s template, that would include “repeated infliction of verbal
abuse such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults and epithets; verbal or
physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening, intimidating,
or humiliating; or the gratuitous sabotage or undermining of a person’s work
performance.”

Yamada
says the law has sufficient hurdles to prevent silly, vengeful lawsuits. The
target must demonstrate “malice” on the part of the bully, for example, and
“there has to be a tangible showing of physical or psychological damages.”

I confess that
I’ve been ambivalent about such legislation. On the one hand, I do think that
equal opportunity assholes and the employers that lack the courage to stop them
do deserve to be punished. I also
recognize that the threat of litigation may encourage companies to take a more
aggressive stand against asshole behavior. On the other hand, I worry about the legalization of everything and that
those with biggest incentive for such
legislation to pass are employment lawyers. After all, anti-bullying
legislation means more work for lawyers who defend both assholes and their
victims. I am still trying to develop a
firmer opinion on this matter, and invite advice and arguments, but for the
moment, I think that the threat of the legislation is a good thing because it
raises awareness about the problem and might help some of the worst assholes
and their firms to reform –- but I am not sure I actually want any of this
legislation to pass.

There is, however,
another angle to legal action that I have more well-developed opinions about.
In the article, I am quoted as saying, if you are in an abusive workplace, the
best thing you can do is “Get out as quickly as possible.” I realize that this isn’t always possible,
and indeed, that is why I assembled a list of tips
for victims of assholes – which include the suggestion to people who can’t
or won’t escape that they ought to carefully document abuse, as that will help make case to HR, or if that
fails, for legal action. BUT I think it
is important to explain why I am so vehement in my opinion that, if you are in an
asshole filled workplace, getting out is the best solution. These opinions were clarified for me after
having an enlightened dinner with two world-class attorneys after my
speech last Monday at the Commonwealth Club. My three main arguments
against staying around, taking sustained abuse, documenting the case, and
fighting back – especially through legal action are as follows:

1. First and
foremost, as the two attorneys emphasized, to win a case against an employer,
an employee needs to demonstrate that he or she has suffered damages. This
means that THE MORE DAMAGE THAT YOU SUFFER, THE MORE MONEY YOU ARE LIKELY TO BE
AWARDED. This means that the worse the
abuse you take, and the longer you take it and the more harm you suffer, the
more money you have a shot at winning. Indeed, recall Professor Yamada’s point:

The
target must demonstrate “malice” on the part of the bully, for example, and
“there has to be a tangible showing of physical or psychological damages.”

So, the more you
lose – – the deeper your depression, your anxiety, and your financial losses, and the more physical ailments you suffer –-
the better your case. The implication
for me is WHY NOT GET OUT BEFORE YOU SUFFER TANGIBLE DAMAGES IN THE FIRST
PLACE?  Or at least why not  get out  with as little damage as possible, and get one with your life?

2. Remember,
psychological abuse isn’t just something that “good people” heap on “bad
people.” As I show in The No
Asshole Rule, research on emotional contagion, and on abusive
supervision in particular, finds that if you work with or around a bunch of
nasty and demeaning people, odds are you will become one of them. This not only
has ethical implications, it means – ironically – that you might just find
yourself in the odd position of suing others – and being sued yourself – to
recover the costs of workplace abuse.

3. Finally, as
those lawyers reminded me, the litigation process means re-living the damage
that you have suffered over and over again. You will have to tell your story over and over again, and rather than
getting past the incident, your “financial incentive” is not only to emphasize
all the damage you have suffered in the past, but to continually uncover
evidence of the damage that you continue to suffer. In addition, if you have never been through
deposition or trial with opposing legal counsel, remember, it is their job to
discredit your testimony – so you not only have to relive past distress,
painful new ones will be heaped on you during the litigation process. Again, even if you win your case against the
assholes, you are likely to suffer a lot of damage in the process. This drain on your time and energy as well as
the stigmatizing impact of being a plaintiff against a former employer may also
have an adverse impact on your prospects for future employment and promotion.

In closing, I want
to emphasize that I encourage and applaud people who fight back against
workplace assholes in any way that they can, including through legal
means. I encourage people who have
already suffered damages to fight back. And I am also painfully aware that many people are trapped with assholes
with no immediate prospect of escape, and that taking legal action of some kind
may be the only option left in some cases. At the same time, I believe that people who choose to take legal actions
against their employers should understand the risks they face… and that is why
I continue to believe that, if you work with a bunch of assholes, the best
thing to do FOR YOURSELF is to get out as fast as you can.

P.S. One of the
lawyers did point out an interesting benefit of bullying legislation for victims.
She noted that legislation that makes it easier to state a claim against an
employer for an abusive work place may encourage employers to settle such cases
much earlier.  This means that a benefit of the
legislation may be that abused employees will have greater leverage to pursue a
settlement before filing litigation, and that settlement, in turn, might
give victims the financial cushion they need to recover and find another job. But I still have mixed feelings about whether
I want such legislation to become law.

I have written a number of times about how quite a few religious people have expressed support for The No Asshole Rule, despite the mild obscenity in the title.  My favorite example is still from Richard Beck, who used ideas from the book to lead a discussion in his bible studies class about 1 Corinthians, which he concluded by saying 1 Corinthians means "Basically, don’t be an asshole."

I was pleased — and am now less surprised — to see some nice words op-up today on a Jewish and a Christian web site.  Pastor Scott Stiegmeyer, who I think is director of admissions of a "pastoral ministry in the Lutheran Church" put in a good word for the book.  And a blog called the Dallas Reconstructionist, which is "Devoted to Living and Promoting Reconstructionist Judaism  in DFW"  drew some interesting parallels between ideas in the book and Jewish principles:

‘One of the central points of the book was that the main test of
whether a person is a "certified a-hole" is how they treat the weak.
If a person bullies the weak, they fall into the a-hole category. 

As I pondered this a-hole litmus test, I thought of how "the weak"
can be found at all levels in an organization.  Some employees may have
bosses that are weak in oral communication or in delegating properly.
So, rank within an organization shouldn’t be the test for who is
considered "weak."  Some people may be strong in most areas but
critically weak in one or two. 

Also, I started thinking about how this principle of treating the
weak with kindness is definitely a Jewish principle.  The Torah
mentions kindness to the stranger (who could be considered in a
weakened state) repeatedly.  The Torah also mentions visiting the sick
and acts of loving kindness. 

I assert that the starting point for treating the weak with kindness
is realizing that we are all human and have faults.  We should also
treat ourselves kindly when it comes to our own weak areas.‘

This sounds right to me! And I confess that I wasn’t surprised to see this discussion, as I have finally overcome my misguided beliefs that most religious people would reject the book because of the title. Now I am thinking about making some more direct parallels between the no asshole rule and the golden rule — indeed, I once talked to a German journalist from a Christian magazine who argued that the two rules are quite similar.