The Hindu Business Line : Employee performance vs treatment of others

It happens almost everywhere: You talk to X and end up feeling `oppressed, humiliated, de-energised, or belittled', even as X goes about aiming `his or her venom at people who are less powerful'. How civilised workplaces would be if people like X were excised! Robert Sutton tells you `how' to press the `delete' button, in The No Asshole Rule (www.oxfordbookstore.com).

To those who squirm at the a*** word as being `too crude', the author explains that `the fear and loathing', which the `nasty people' generate, can't be captured with words such as `bullies, creeps, jerks, weasels, tormentors, tyrants, serial slammers, despots, or unconstrained egomaniacs'. The book is about surviving `destructive characters who damage their fellow human beings and undermine organisational performance'.

Sutton talks about the `origin' of the `rule' more than 15 years ago during a faculty meeting in Stanford University. He offered the rule as a `breakthrough idea' that Harvard Business Review published in February 2004, along with 19 other ideas. The short essay in HBR had used a*** eight times and provoked a `deluge' of reactions, recounts Sutton.

`Common everyday actions' that a*** uses are a dozen, as follows: `Personal insults, invading one's personal territory, uninvited physical contact, threats and intimidation both verbal and non-verbal, sarcastic jokes and teasing used as insult delivery systems, withering e-mail flames, status slaps intended to humiliate their victims, two-faced attacks, dirty looks, and treating people as if they are invisible.' All obnoxious practices, only too visible at most workplaces, you'd agree.

Sutton cites research by Charlotte Rayner and Loraleigh Keashly, which has estimated that 25 per cent of bullying targets and 20 per cent of witnesses leave their jobs; and that replacement costs can soar to $2 million a year!

Organisations that are effective at enforcing the rule know that `employee performance' and `treatment of others' aren't separate things. So, `talented jerk' is an oxymoron, explains Sutton. "Hotshots who alienate colleagues are told to change or leave," is how a company vocalises the ruleSutton is positive that civilised workplaces do exist; they are not a naïve dream.

"Pervasive contempt can be erased and replaced with mutual respect when a team or organisation is managed right," he assures. Drive out or reform the thorny a***s around, urges Sutton. When that isn't possible, his counsel may `help you limit the damage that these creeps do to you and to your workplace'.

Empowering read.

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in

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