The No Asshole Rule --the inevitable experience in the life

I first learned this book:"The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't" by Robert Sutton from a lecture. In the beginning, I have to admit that I didn't pay enough attention to this book because of the weird title. I thought that it was just an exaggerate people try to do some commercial tricks, especially the person who talked about this book is quite in exaggerate style. So this gem was throw in the dark of my mind for a while until I accidentally came across it from an old volume of Harvard Business Review. If HBR is fine to publish a mild obscenity name in their respectable pages, there must be some value inside . So I thought that I will give it a try, and picked it up from the local library.

I am glad I did it. In a non-sanitized real world, it is inevitable to meet someone who is an a*, or jerk, or whatever you called it. You have to either work with, serve or struggle to lead a*, and find yourself either vulnerable to deal with the situation, or arrogant with the helplessness feeling inside. A lot of valuable books talk more about an reasonable human being, while this special book provide some ideas to deal with nasty people or limit the damage from that. It was great read.

As not being the saint, we can be a temporary a* just because of having a bad day. If that's persistent pattern, "to have a history of episodes that end with one target after another feeling belittled, put down, humiliated, disrespected, oppressed, deenergized, and generally worse about themselves", it might be branded as a certified a*. Dr. Sutton presents a simple test to spot whether a person is acting like an a*:

• Test One: After talking to the alleged a*, does the "target" feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself? In another words, identify people who persistently leave others feeling demeaned and de-energized.
  
• Test Two: Does the alleged a* aim his or he venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful? Look to see if their victims usually have less power and social standing than their tormentors.
  

Dr. Sutton consolidates the dirty dozen list that a* uses everyday:

1. Personal insults
2. Invading one's "personal territory"
3. Uninvited physical contact
4. Threats and intimidation, both verbal and nonverbal
5. "Sarcastic jokes" and "teasing" used as insult delivery systems
6. Withering email flames
7. Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims
8. Public shaming or "status degradation" rituals
9. Rude interruptions
10. Two-faced attacks
11. Dirty looks
12. Treating people as if they are invisible.

According to the book, bullying, psychological abuse, mobbing, tyrants, and incivility in the workplace goes on and on, and much of this nastiness is directed by superiors to their subordinates(estimate run from 50% to 80%), with somewhat less between coworkers of roughly the same rank(estimates run from 20% to 50%), and upward nastiness where underlings take on their superiors(estimates less than 1% of cases).

How to develop "a shock-proof, bullet-resistant a* detector" to build a civilized place to work? Dr. Sutton tells a fundamental lesson: "the difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know." Indeed it is a good rule to test people. I had met a colleague she's very mean to our contractors and very polite to our boss, and I conclude that behavior arises from her lack of technical expertise to do her job. Although she did survive, uh, maybe much better than just survive in the office, the scene she shout at the poor contractor flashed in front of my eyes whenever she talks to me.

According to the book, "negative interactions had a fivefold stronger effect on mood than positive interactions". It takes numerous encounters with positive people to offset the energy and happiness sapped by a single episode with one a*." The negative effect does not only interfere with the firsthand victims, it also affects the secondhand witnesses or bystanders strongly. Furthermore, even a* themselves also suffer from their own behavior being "outed". If all employees are devoting their time and energy to protect themselves, then nobody will help the company with high performance. Turnover rate will be high.

An research conducted at couple nursing unit shows that "units with the best leaders reported making as many as ten times more errors than the units with the worst leaders." Why? Because when people feel safe, they are willing to admit the mistake and notice how serious the mistake could be. Instead of finger pointing, or just focusing on self protection, people are more focus on the organization improvement under the good leaders. As Dr. Sutton admitted in the book:" When I am stuck working for, or with, a bunch of a*, I don't go out of my way to help. But when I admire my superiors and colleagues, I'll go to extreme lengths."

Then, what is the Total Cost of A*(TCA) to our organization? Dr. Sutton again brought in an interesting exercise consider certain factors when we calculating TCA follows:

Damage to Victims and Witnesses

• Distraction from tasks: more effort devoted to avoiding nasty encounters, coping with them, and avoiding blame; less devoted to the task itself
  
• Reduced psychological safety and associated climate of fear undermines employee suggestions, risk taking, learning from own failures, learning from others' failures, and forthright discussion--honesty may not be the best policy
• Loss of motivation and energy at work
• Stress-induced psychological and physical illness
• Possible impaired mental ability
• prolonged bullying turns victims into a*
• Absenteeism
• Turnover in response to abusive supervision and peers -- plus more time spend while at work looking for new work

Woes of Certified A*

• Victims and witnesses hesitate to help, cooperate with them, or give them bad news
• Retaliation from victims and witnesses
• Failure to reach potential in the organization
• Humiliation when "outed"
• Job loss
• Long-term career damage

Wicked Consequences for Management

• Time spend appeasing, calming, counseling, or discipling a*
• Time spend "cooling out" employees who are victimized
• Time spend "cooling out" victimized customers, contract employees, suppliers, and other key outsiders
• Time spend reorganizing departments and teams so that a* do less damage
• Time spend interviewing, recruiting, and training replacements for departed a* and their victims
• Management burnout, leading to decreased commitment and increased distress
  

Legal and HR Management Costs

• Anger management and other training to reform a*
• Legal costs for inside and outside counsel
• settlement fees and successful litigation by victims
• Settlement fees and successful litigation by alleged a*(especially wrongful-termination claims)
• Compensation for internal and external consultants, executive coaches, and therapists
• Health-insurance costs
  

When A* Reign: Negative Effects on Organizations

• Impaired improvement in established systems
• Reduced innovation and creativity
• Reduced cooperation ad cohesion
• Reduced discretionary effort
• Dysfunctional internal cooperation
• Costs of victims' retribution toward the organization
• Impaired cooperation from outside organizations and people
• Higher rates charged by outsiders -- combat pay for working with a*
• Impaired ability to attract the best and brightest
  

To sum the above factors up, we can be shocked to see that A* are creating more troubles than they're worth. Then why there are still so many a* around the workplace? Because when people believe " winning isn't everything; it's the only thing" and "Second place means being the first loser.", a* are seen as character flaws but tolerated when people are more talented, smarter, more difficult to replace, and endowed with a higher natural success rate than ordinary mortals. A bad society rule seems to be: " If you are a really big winner, you can get away with bring a really big a*."

Fortunately, today a lot of organizations start to change: to enforce the no a* rule and build it into the culture. Of course, writing, displaying and repeating words about treating people with respect, but allowing or encouraging the opposite behavior, is worse than useless. On the other side, the only thing worse than too much confrontation is no confrontation at all. According to Karl Weick from University of Michigan: " Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong."

According to the book, there are top ten steps to enforce the No A* rule:

1. Say the rule, write it down, and act on it: But if you can't or won't follow the rule, it is better to say nothing at all since avoiding a false claim is the lesser of two evils. You don't want to be known as a hypocrite and the leader of an organization that is filled with a*.
2. A* will hire other a*: Keep your resident jerks out of the hiring process, or if you can't, involve as many civilized people in interviews and decisions to offset this predilection of people to hire "jerks like me".
3. Get rid of a* fast: Organizations usually wait too long to get rid of certified and incorrigible a*, and once they do, the reaction is usually "why did we wait so long to do that?"
4. Treat certified a* as incompetent employees: Even if people do other things extraordinary well but persistently demean others, they ought to be treated as incompetent.
5. Power breeds nastiness: beware that giving people--even seemingly nice and sensitive people--even a little power can turn them into big jerks.
6. Embrace the power performance paradox: accept that your organization does have and should have a pecking order, but do everything you can to downplay and reduce unnecessary status differences among members. The result will be fewer a* and, according to the best studies, better performance, too.
7. Manage moments, not just practices, policies, and systems: effective a* management means focusing on and changing the little things that you and your people do, and big changes will follow. Reflect on what you do, watch how others respond to you and to one another, and work on tweaking what happens as you are interacting with the person in front of you right now.
8. Model and teach constructive confrontation: develop a culture where people know when to argue and when to stop fighting and instead gather more evidence, listen to other people, or stop whining and implement a decision, even if they still disagree with it. When the time is ripe to battle over ideas, follow Karl Weick's advice: fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.
9. Adopt the one a* rule: because people follow rules and norms better when there are rare or occasional examples or bad behavior, no a* rules might be most closely followed in organizations that permit one or two token jerks to hang around. These reverse role models remind everyone else of the wrong behavior as long as it is clearly identified as wrong.
10. The bottom line: link big policies to small decencies: effective a* management happens when there is a virtuous, self-reinforcing cycle between the big things that organizations do and the little things that happen when people talk to one another and work together. Having all the right business philosophies and management practices to support the no a* rule is meaningless unless you treat the person right in front of you, right now, in the right way.

The rule test is essentially right when things are going badly since it is easy to be civilized when things are going well.

(to be continued...)