The Bully Rulebook

How to deal with jerks.

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Call them jerks, bullies, louts, boors, or--as Robert Sutton prefers--assholes. Whatever you call them, such characters are a part of every organization, and Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University, has written a book about how to deal with them, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't. Sutton shared his thoughts on the topic with Inc. editor-at-large Leigh Buchanan. Prohibited by her editors from using the objectionable word, Buchanan turned to a thesaurus for help.

What got you interested in jerks?
My late father. He was an entrepreneur who started a half dozen companies. And his standard for a work relationship was if people were assholes, it wasn't worth it no matter how much money you could make. Because in the end it would drive you crazy. Then when I got to Stanford, my department had a no-asshole rule that we applied in hiring.

Is that the term they use at Stanford?
You do see the word more now because dirty talk is more socially acceptable in organizations. When I first got to Stanford, they were talking about it. It wasn't written down, of course.

How do you define the term?
There is a two-step definition that comes from the literature on abusive supervision. The first standard is whether someone consistently leaves people feeling demeaned and belittled and deenergized. The second standard is whether that person targets people who have less power than they do. But there's also an emotional component--the feeling that you're being oppressed or pushed around by a bad apple.

Does this refer only to bosses?
Can someone be an entry-level brute?
Sure. It starts at lower levels when people start oppressing their peers. At that stage, they tend to be less successful because they have less power, but they can still do damage. I've even worked with undergraduates who have left me feeling bad about myself.

It seems like schmucks can be particularly dangerous in small companies.
The thing about small businesses is there's no place to escape to. It's not like you can transfer to another division of a four-person start-up. You just have to leave. Especially when organizations are in start-up mode, people spend an unbelievable amount of time in one another's company. Assholes in that situation can have an enormous impact. Also, a company's size can create situations that can make people act like jerks. Someone wrote to me about a woman who was pregnant and worked in an office so small there was no bathroom. She had to use one in a neighboring shop. Her boss decided her visits were too frequent and started taking them out of her breaks and lunchtime.

Explain how jackasses can take a financial toll on companies.
You can actually calculate the total cost of assholes, or TCA. One Silicon Valley executive told me he had a rainmaker who was consistently abusive. No secretaries in the company would work for him, so they had to do external searches. He had to have training for sexual harassment and anger management. He was constantly complaining to management and to human resources about any little thing pertaining to his benefits. The HR people got so mad at him that they calculated the cost to the company of his being an asshole and it was $160,000 a year. The firm used that information in his compensation discussion and cut his bonus to send him a message.

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