Prof has advice for tackling workplace jerks
You suggest companies perform an audit, quantifying in dollar figures how much a jerk’s poor behavior costs. Then you give an example of a company that did, and figured one salesman’s bad behavior had cost it $160,000 in a year. Instead of firing him, the company took about $100,000 out of his bonus. Can you tell us about a company that purged its jerks instead?
I can’t name the company, but it was a Fortune 500 retailer. As part of a turnaround, the new CEO came up with a mafia-style hit-list of 25 of the biggest jerks. He wanted to get rid of them all at once, but human resources said, “Let’s get rid of them through the performance evaluation process.”
The company did and my informant said you could see, even at the store level, less nastiness.
One of your solutions to workplace jerks seems to be to stop hiring them. Other solutions include giving referees at youth soccer matches the power to “red card” abusive parents and eject them from the game and shaming jerks when they behave poorly. What do you consider your top solution to the problem of jerky behavior?
First thing: I believe that some polite self-awareness helps. There’s a test you can take; we put this on Guy Kawasaki’s blog.
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Second, there should be consequences. People should know it’s not efficient and it’s going to cost them. My wife is a lawyer. She said with the more aggressive attorneys at her firm, in compensation discussions with them, the partners tell them they should cool it a little bit or it will cost them.
This is something that gets to how you design an organization. Jerk poisoning is a contagious disease. It’s something you get and give to others.
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