Is a Good Employee Someone Who is Not a Bad Employee?

The Workplace Attitudes Test is designed to screen out people who have a propensity to be disruptive in the workplace. I refer to these people as “turkeys” or “jerks.” They are disruptive all out of proportion to their numbers. An assumption underlying the Workplace Attitudes Test is if you avoid hiring problem employees you will ipso facto hire good employees.

But we can turn this upside down and ask what constitutes a good employee? You say you demand a better definition than “A good employee is someone who is not a bad employee.” Well, I’ll take a shot.

A good employee is one who is not disruptive. Not good enough? You say you want something more proactive? How about this, a good employee is a person who is slow to judge, who sees the world in gray rather than black and white, and has genuine concern for one’s fellow man.

In sum, a good employee is a person who is decidedly disinclined to say, “I am doing this for your own good.” See www.workplaceattitudes.com

The Trickle-Down Theory

This morning on iGoogle I noticed an article referring to WikiHow entitled “9 ways to get by while living in your car.” This is depressingly relevant to more and more people. The situation stems from an abuse of trust and lack of regulation. I fear it was those at the top who proved James Madison’s admonition, “If men were angels, government wouldn’t be necessary.” Anderson Cooper on CNN has a feature called “10 despicable bastards considered responsible to for our present economic situation.” (I paraphrased that.) Even Anderson thinks that 10 are not enough. I am reminded of a comment by Barnie Frank, Congressman from Massachusetts, in response to the statement, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” He said, “yeah, but what if you don’t have a boat?”

I must admit that I feel a little guilty testing people at the lower levels for “good workplace attitudes.” How many people with good attitudes worked for Enron and Merrill Lynch? I bet it was plenty, in fact the vast majority. It only took those at the top to bring the others down. Sure there are jerks everywhere, but I’m not so sure that the crème rises to the top. What rises to the top seems to be more a matter of what a skimmer removes at a sewage treatment facility.

I know, in times such as these it is easy to be cynical. I wish it was as easy as the scenario in the movie “Network” where Peter Finch encourages us to go to the window and yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” What then? The movie doesn’t say.

The Workplace Attitudes Test suggests that about one in twenty workers is a jerk. But there is another phenomna going on here. Jerks tend to congregate together and at all levels there is a tendency to ignore the rules. A lower-level jerk can be a pain in the butt to those around them, and jerks at the highest levels can cause untold damage, but the lesson is to ferret out jerks at all levels and don’t hire them. Hey, corporate boards don’t tolerate them. Government regulators, regulate them. Legislators, remember what Madison said about men (and women) not being angels and pass the appropriate legislation. Rules and consideration for one’s fellow man should apply to everyone. Maybe, the Workplace Attitudes Test should be considered a candle in the darkness. See, www.workplaceattitudes.com.

Deep Do Do

Ah, irony of ironies. Here I have developed a pre-employment instrument that is designed to screen out the jerks in the workplace and at the highest level, the pigs have taken over the farm, the fox has been put in charge of the hen house and the engineers have been asleep at the switch. Is this too many clichés? Give me a break, how in hell can I describe the imbroglio called Wall Street and the sell out we call government.

Yes, the Workplace Attitudes Test will help you keep jerks out of the workplace but short of a revolution, what do we do about psychopathic executives and irresponsible regulators? Frankly, I just don’t know. See www.workplaceattitudes.com if you would like to foster an island of sanity in a sea of deep do do.

Identifying Jerks With De-merits

In previous blog entries I suggested that jerks and abusive people shouldn’t be tolerated in the workplace. Some have noted that it is difficult to define jerk behavior. Even if we could define jerk behavior should we be permitted to ban it?

In terms of definition, I suggest that jerk behavior involves the abuse of other people, particularly subordinates. But why not throw this open to people in their workplaces and let them provide definitions? Workers are perfectly able to define behavior that should not be tolerated. I suggest jerk-defining focus groups.

Now, how about the libertarian argument that we shouldn’t regulate behavior? Well we do regulate behavior. Duels such as the one between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton are quite effectively banned these days. Also, there are very few gun fights like in the old west. We reframed the issue and said that consensual duels and six-gun face-offs are not self-defense or a matter of honor. We decided to call it murder.

However, even if we define jerk behavior to specific work environments, one major problem remains. How do we identify jerk behavior when it occurs? I suggest anonymous jerk de-merits.

For example, let’s give every employee 100 anonymous de-merit points each month to spend on anyone who has acted like a jerk. Each employee would make a list of people that they interact with and they could assign de-merits in any amount to anyone on that list. Totals would come in at the end of each month.

Should the cumulative list be public? I’m not sure. Should you take action against those who get consistently high scores? Good question. All I am saying here is that it is possible to define jerk behavior and it is possible to identify it.

It is best not to hire jerks in the first place, but if you have them in the workplace you need to decide what you can do about it. See: www.workplaceattitudes.com

Silly Me, I Thought It Was Obvious

Recently, I started a discussion session on the HR website called ERE and the address is http://www.ere.net/forum. The topic was “Should HR be Pro-Actively Anti-Jerk?” I even cited the book, “The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t” by Robert I. Sutton. This book describes the high costs of jerks in the workplace. It goes on to describe how jerks are personally abusive and that they tend to treat subordinates with derision and superiors with some respect.

About eighty percent of the comments tended to agree that jerks are costly and that HR should do its part to bring tranquility to the workplace. However, about twenty percent of the comments demonstrated a fair amount of tolerance for jerks.

One comment asked (in Latin) who is going to watch the watchers. My Latin is non-existent so to add insult to injury, I had to look up the quote on Wikipedia. Another person said that “One man’s victim is another man’s whiner.” Someone else said “The purpose of HR is to serve as a protective device. Make sure everything is legal, fair and compliant and quash anything likely to result in litigation. When you are done with all that then by all means, you may devote a few minutes per day to your Utopian ideals on human potential.”

Others have suggested that jerks are necessary to shake things up and to keep people on their toes and that if someone is really good at their job then jerkiness should be tolerated.

There you have it, some justifications for tolerating jerks in the workplace: (1) who has the right to judge; (2) their victims may just be whiners; (3) the anti-jerk idea is utopian; (4) people need jerks to motivate them; and (5) and some jerks are so important that we need to tolerate them.

This is an old debate, but I agree with James Madison’s sentiments when he said, “If men were angels, government wouldn’t be necessary.” In other words, certain actions should be taken to guard against the worst instincts of some people. Even gun rights advocates tend to agree that hand-grenades and bazookas should be regulated. I’ll grant that some people would disagree, but they are jerks. See http://www.workplaceattitudes.com/

Why Jerks Kill Creativity

I suppose there are some jerks or turkeys working by themselves who are creative. But most endeavors, including creative endeavors, involve working with other people. As noted in earlier blog entries, jerks tend to demean other people, especially those working under them, and they generally pollute the work environment with caustic remarks.

Creativity may involve confrontation and the challenge of ideas but it cannot tolerate personal attack. Let’s look at the process of creativity to see why this is so. Some years ago I wrote a paper on creativity and group dynamics and I noted that there is a difference between renovation and innovation. Renovation involves the modification or improvement of something that already exists, whereas innovation involves the development of something new. I suggest that renovation can be strangled by jerks but innovation is stopped dead in its tracks.

Renovation is hampered by jerks because they tend to personalize critiques and this discourages suggestions. Innovation is stifled because this type of creativity requires some very special conditions that are antithetical to jerk behavior.

What are the conditions of creativity? I suggest the creativity requires: 1) persistent determination to solve the problem; 2) willingness to expand the boundaries of the problem; 3) willingness to consider multiple possibilities; and 4) respect for something I call the “gestalt.”

The persistent determination to solve the problem is somewhat self-explanatory. It involves a willingness to think about a problem and to learn as much as possible about things related to the problem. In short, it is strong curiosity. It is also lack of certitude, and jerks tend to be blessed by certitude. I am reminded of the quote by Bertrand Russell, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubts.”

A willingness to expand the boundaries of the problem is another form of
open-mindedness. If the problem is faster communication, then breeding faster horses for the pony express is not as good as working on the telegraph. In fact, sometimes creative innovation finds a solution to a problem that you didn’t know existed. The Walkman and the Ipod come to mind. Again jerks get in the way. Steve Jobs appears to be an exception because some people think he is a jerk ( “The No Asshole Rule” book written by Robert Sutton, Ph.D.), but a creative one. I contend that he is a genius first and a jerk second. He would probably do even better if he were less of a jerk.

Willingness to consider multiple possibilities is a process where ideas need to be evaluated without regard to status or personality. I recall a story of a group of executives trying to solve the problem of long wait times at elevators at a busy hotel. There were many complaints. They finally decided it was necessary to tear out several hotel rooms to make way for more elevators. The lady cleaning the room and emptying the ashtrays muttered that she thought that this was silly. One of the executives was smart enough to ask her why she thought it was silly. She said, “Well at the last place I worked they had the same problem. They installed mirrors on each side of the elevators and people were so busy looking at themselves that they forgot about the wait time. The complaints stopped.” If the executive was a jerk, I suspect that he would not have asked the advice of a mere “cleaning lady.”

Finally, respect for the gestalt. This is a little more difficult to explain but many scientists suggest that oftentimes their pre-occupation with a problem is rewarded with a sudden solution to their problem. It springs full-blown into their mind. Oftentimes in the shower or at night. These insights must be respected and they seem to be the result of patient
open-mindedness. Again, jerks seem to be excluded from this process. Maybe you want to make your workplace more creative, see www.workplaceattitudes.com.

Being a Jerk Once in a While Doesn’t Make You a Jerk

The Workplace Attitudes Test is designed to identify enduring jerks or turkeys, not people having a bad day or those people with lesser people skills. It is sort of like the difference between “mean stupid” and “benign stupid.”

Mean stupid is where, upon hearing that a kid was hit by a car in the street, someone says “Well if he didn’t want to be hit, he shouldn’t have been playing in the street.” Benign stupid is where, upon learning that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s disease, someone says “Wow, what are the chances of that?”

This is similar to the distinction between “states” and “traits” drawn by Dr. Robert Sutton in his book, “The Asshole Rule.” He notes that psychologists indicate that “states” are fleeting feelings, thoughts, and actions whereas “traits” are enduring personality characteristics. States are often related to circumstances, and traits are related to beliefs and attitudes.

Beliefs and attitudes are the lenses through which a person sees and interprets their world. The Workplace Attitudes Test is based upon research linking identifiable beliefs and attitudes with the consistent behavior of jerks and turkeys in the workplace.

In short, jerks and turkeys act the way that they do because they have certain beliefs and attitudes that determine their behavior. They tend to see the world in a way that justifies their actions. We all have subjective lenses (beliefs and attitudes) through which we see our world -- as Bertrand Russell, British author, mathematician and philosopher, is reputed to have said “There is not one world, but as many worlds as there are people in it.”

My research related to the Workplace Attitudes Test shows that jerks and turkeys see their world as a place of hostility, a place of winners and losers, and a place where courtesy and consideration have little value. Jerks and turkeys are often able to “play-act” their way through a job interview but once they have the job their negative beliefs and attitudes usually direct their behavior.

Fortunately, the Workplace Attitudes Test lets us see the lens through which they see their world. See www.workplaceattitudes.com

A Jerk is a Jerk is a Jerk

Now that would seem obvious. Why isn’t it? In a world that claims that there are no absolutes, believe me, there are absolutes. Newtonian physics is not cancelled out by Einstein’s theory of relativity, especially if you hit a tree at one hundred miles an hour in your car.

When it comes to jerks, I am reminded of that cartoon about two guys standing in a pot surrounded by cannibals. The caption reads “It doesn’t help to add more salt once you’ve crapped in the soup.”

Why do I bring this up? Well, I’ve been reading some blogs lately that say that one jerk in the workplace may be a good thing. The argument goes that some people are indispensable, that it is impossible to find enough reasonable people, and that one jerk will help keep everyone else on their toes.

There is an interesting book called The "No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn’t," written by Robert Sutton a professor at the Stanford School of Engineering and the founder and co-director of Stanford’s Center for work. He points out that there is a calculated “total cost of assholes” and it is surprisingly high, plus it is almost impossible to enforce a civility rule with one asshole (or jerk) in the workplace.

I have often wondered why there is such great tolerance for jerks. I think one of the reasons is that a lot of jerks have money and we have an almost irrational appreciation for conspicuous consumption. We tend to forgive people with wealth and give them credit for virtues that are conspicuously lacking. They also tend to like the attention and they get a lot of press. For every Warren Buffet, a reasonable man, there seems to be ten Donald Trumps. I like to refer to this as the jerk or asshole halo effect.

But let’s look a little closer at the behavior of the office jerk. Mark I. Schickman, in his review of the aforementioned book, says that jerks “take credit for other people’s work. They manage expectations by making employees feel bad about themselves. They have the laser-like ability to find the weakest, most insecure people and focus their aggression on them. The symptomatic behaviors include insults, threats, teasing, shaming and ostracizing.” http://hrheroblogs.com/resources/2008/02/06/the-no-asshole-rule-building-a-civilized-workplace-and-surviving-one-that-isnt

Do you want to have even one jerk in your workplace? Shouldn’t it be a primary function of bosses and HR to keep these people away from the rest of us? I am reminded of the Tylenol scare of a few years ago. Some nut was putting poison in Tylenol. It would have been unthinkable to say it was only a few poison capsules in millions and millions of bottles. Come on folks, end the suffering. Screen for jerks and assholes. See http://www.workplaceattitudes.com/.