Bob Sutton’s book, the No A**hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, has been generating buzz since it was published last year.
Sutton, a professor of management science at Stanford University, argues that a**holes—those who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who focus their aggression on the less powerful—poison the work environment, decrease productivity, induce qualified employees to quit and therefore are detrimental to businesses, regardless of their individual effectiveness. He also makes the solution plain: they have to go.
Sutton provides advice for how to weed these people out of your organization, and on his website he also offers a compelling proposition: what if YOU are the a**hole? It’s a valid question. After all, don’t we always think that the problem lies with someone else?
Sutton and Guy Kawasaki created a quiz called the A R S E (a**hole rating self-exam) that proposes questions like, “True or False: you are surrounded by incompetent idiots and you can’t help letting them know the truth every now and then,” “True or False: you see your co-workers as competitors,” and “True or False: your jokes can get a bit nasty at times, but you have to admit, they’re pretty funny.”
A certain number of True answers receive this warning from Bob: “You sound like a borderline certified a**hole, perhaps the time has come to start changing your behavior before it gets worse.” An unacceptable number gets this: “Get help immediately. But, please, don’t come to me, as I would rather not meet you.”
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