Zero Tolerance for Jerks

    Until now.

    Stanford Professor Robert I. Sutton has written what will surely become a business classic: The No Asshole Rule—Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. It will be published later this month by Warner Business Books.

    Sutton’s book, which grew out of a 2004 Harvard Business Review article, doesn’t break a lot of new ground. In fact, I’d wager that anyone who has spent a few years in the workplace probably understands, and has experienced, much of what he writes about in The No Asshole Rule.

    But that’s beside the point. Sutton’s book is worth a place on your desk because it is a constant reminder of how terribly toxic, costly and counterproductive bad behavior in the workplace can be.

    Sutton says the term “asshole” encompasses “bullying, interpersonal aggression, emotional abuse, abusive supervision, petty tyranny and incivility in the workplace.” He makes this sobering point: “Assholes have devastating cumulative effects partly because nasty interactions have a far bigger impact on our moods than positive interactions—five times the punch, according to recent research. … These findings help explain why demeaning acts are so devastating. It takes numerous encounters with positive people to offset the energy and happiness sapped by a single episode with one asshole.”

    And he shows that such behavior affects the bottom line of a business through impaired organizational performance, including increased turn¬over, absenteeism, decreased commitment to work and impaired individual performance.

    In case you’ve been living in a monastery somewhere and have never experienced such behavior, Sutton gives two tests for spotting an asshole:

    Test 1: Does the target feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized or belittled by the person? Does the target feel worse about himself?

    Test 2: Does the alleged asshole aim the venom at less powerful people?

    Sutton draws a distinction between the “temporary asshole” (boorish behavior most of us are guilty of from time to time) and the “certified asshole” who is truly toxic and dangerous. He has a marvelous little test you can take to see if you are a certified asshole, and 10 steps you can take in your workplace to enforce a “no asshole rule.”

    What’s great about the book is that it names the names of some of today’s “certified assholes,” including Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former United Nations Ambassador John R. Bolton and Hollywood producer Scott Rudin (who says he went through 250 personal assistants between 2000 and 2005).

    He also talks about Apple CEO (and legendary asshole) Steve Jobs, and says when he put “Steve Jobs” and “asshole” into Google, it came back with 89,400 matches. When I did it again in Google last week, it came back with 117,000 hits. Clearly, the legend of Jobs as a big-league jerk is growing right along with sales of the iPod.

    Most of all, Sutton writes about how to cope with bad behavior in the workplace, and he lists companies like Southwest Airlines and the Men’s Wearhouse as having had great success in fighting boorish behavior from employees and customers alike.

    This book hits home because the behavior Sutton writes about is all too real to anyone who lives and works in America today. As he put it in the foreword: “I was convinced to write The No Asshole Rule by the fear and despair that people expressed to me, the tricks they used to survive with dignity in asshole-infested places, the revenge stories that made me laugh out loud, and the other small wins that they celebrated against mean-spirited people. I also wrote The No Asshole Rule because there is so much evidence that civilized workplaces are not a naive dream, that they do exist, and that pervasive contempt can be erased and replaced with mutual respect” (and superior performance) “when a team or organization is managed right.”

Workforce Management, February 12, 2007, p. 34 -- Subscribe Now!