The odds are that you’ll see pigs fly before you ever discover a totally jerk-free workplace. Like the proverbial rotten bad apple in the bunch, there seems to be at least one bad actor lurking in every organization, wreaking havoc on co-workers and managers alike. Or even worse, the jerk is your manager.
Bob Sutton shares your pain. In fact, he wrote a best-selling book about the subject, indelicately titled The No A*****e Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. The book, which was a spin-off from an immensely popular essay he wrote for the Harvard Business Review in 2004, touched a nerve. After its publication in 2007, Sutton — a professor of management science and engineering in the Stanford University School of Engineering — says he received thousands of emails from readers.
“In fact, I still get emails,” he notes. “And the book still sells.”
Just how pervasive are workplace jerks (to use a less blunt and more politically correct term than Sutton’s)? It’s a persistent problem, he says. There’s actually a group called the Workplace Bullying Institute (www.workplacebullying.org) that has performed surveys on the subject; the results show that about 35 percent of American workers will be bullied at some point in their career — and usually by a boss, he notes. Moreover, 10 to 12 percent of American workers are victims of workplace bullying at any one time.
The good news is that organizations are getting much better at dealing with bad behavior, thanks to hostile-workplace lawsuits. The result is an ever-growing body of case law that makes it more expensive, as well as more socially unacceptable, to turn a blind eye to workplace bullying. “Being an equal-opportunity a*****e used to be a defense, but not so much any more,” Sutton notes. “The intense focus on school bullying plays a role, too — it’s become part of the national zeitgeist.”
On the other hand, workplace jerks — whom Sutton defines as people who treat colleagues badly and leave them demeaned and de-energized — create a quantifiable negative ripple effect throughout departments and workplaces. Sutton says that there’s very good evidence that employees are less productive and creative, as well as more anxious, when they must work with, um, jerks.
“There’s a physiological response,” he says. “People don’t feel well, and they leave jobs at a higher rate. So if you want to keep your best employees, that’s a real problem. When people get treated badly, they don’t work as hard … they don’t care as much about the details. They’ll come in late, leave early and take more sick days. In short, they’re doing less to help their organization.”
Moreover, there’s a financial cost, too; while it may be harder to quantify, common sense dictates that somewhere along the line, jerkism affects organizational bottom lines. To back up that assertion, Sutton tells a real-life story about a high-performing salesman he calls Ethan, a one-man demoralization wrecking crew who was kept on board because of his excellent sales results.
But the company’s fed-up human resources department finally calculated the cost of Ethan’s terrible behavior at about $250,000 a year. Cost factors included the continual rehiring and training of new secretaries for Ethan, the higher “battle-pay” salaries required to entice people to work for him, decreased production and time wasted by managers dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Ethan. (Sutton’s book even reveals a formula for calculating the TCA, which stands for the total cost of, well, jerks.)
Strategies And Solutions
What can beleaguered co-workers do to survive workdays with the resident jerk? First of all, organizations should do their utmost to screen out jerks during the job interview process. But given the numbers of workplace jerks that exist, that approach doesn’t always work too well; it’s too easy for a jerk to play nice in an interview. Sutton does say, however, that he’s heard of companies that ask hotel desk clerks about the behavior of job candidates who stay overnight for interviews.
Organizations also need to train managers better so they can more effectively deal with jerks, as well as let managers know in no uncertain terms that tolerating bad behavior from “star” employees is not acceptable. “Anyone who’s a star and seemingly irreplaceable is a big problem for an organization,” Sutton says.
But in the end, many employees are left to fend for themselves in dealing with the Ethans of the world. Here are some jerk-survival tips from Sutton that may make the task a little less daunting:
1. Hit the eject button. Escape by quitting and taking another job. That’s not always an option in a stagnant economy, but it’s the easiest way out of what might be a totally unbearable situation.
2. Try a little tenderness. Attempt to have a polite conversation with the jerk about his or her offensive behavior. “You have to know their personalities well enough to do this,” Sutton advises. “Sometimes it’s better to have someone they respect more than you — like a peer or a boss — do the talking … you have to figure out the dynamics and politics of your situation.”
3. Dear diary. Document in detail all abusive behavior. Keep a running diary and save any emails that back up your case. “If you can get colleagues to help you document behavior and then complain en masse, you put yourself in a more powerful position,” Sutton points out.
4. Find your happy place. Use emotional detachment to deflect the abuse.
5. Go to court. As a last resort, hire an attorney and file a lawsuit. This is a significant step that poses many difficulties, not the least of which is massive legal bills. “Anyone who resorts to litigation should go in with their eyes wide open,” says Sutton. “Big companies might go to great lengths to protect their reputations or star performers. In a David-versus-Goliath battle, you often lose.”
But in the end, doing what you can to make your little corner of work a jerk-free zone can yield untold benefits, such as dramatically better morale, increased productivity and greater profitability.
