Pursuing the Good Life by Christopher Peterson

Author:Christopher Peterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

REFERENCE

Kish-Gephart, J. J., Harrison, D. A., & Treviño, L.K. (2010). Bad apples, bad cases, and bad barrels: Meta-analytic evidence about sources of unethical decisions at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 1–31.

52

Positive Psychology and Assholes

A few years ago, I gave a talk on my campus about positive psychology in the workplace. I was pleased with how it went, although the questions were difficult. I am better at being conceptual than being practical, and some of those in attendance—staff members from different university units—wanted to know what to do about those in their midst who were relentlessly negative, pessimistic, and mean. A tough but good question, and all I could do in response was to mutter something about killing them softly with kindness.

Afterward, I saw a friend and mentioned my talk. I told her that I behaved well—no foul language—but that I had wished I could have answered the question about negative coworkers by talking about my recent conversations with the leaders of a company on the East Coast. They all said exactly the same thing about the reason for the company’s success and high morale: “We don’t hire assholes.” This is apparently a very explicit company policy, even if it is not written down in a procedure manual. I joked with them that it should become the official company motto and appear on the letterhead of their stationery, rendered of course in Latin: Non Rectum Intestinum.

I had deliberately censored myself during my campus talk because I did not think asshole would be an appropriate word for a self-identified positive psychologist to use in public. My friend laughed at me and said, “Too bad … if you were more willing to use that word, you might have become a best-selling author.” She then told me about a book by Robert Sutton (2007) titled The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. I confess I had not heard of it, but I immediately ordered it and read it with great interest that weekend.

I assume many readers here are familiar with the book, given its popularity. If not, its gist is simple to convey. Today’s work-places are filled with “bullies, creeps, jerks, tyrants, despots, and egomaniacs”—in short, assholes (p. 1). These folks usually direct their abuse at those over whom they have power. The cost—for the targets, for the workplaces, and even for the assholes themselves—is staggering. Sutton recounts one story of a company that decided to deduct from an employee’s salary the financial costs incurred by his bad behavior: like anger management classes for him, legal fees to adjudicate complaints, time spent by senior management and HR professionals fretting over his misdeeds, and the cost of hiring and training a series of people who worked under him. The total in one year? $160,000! It would have been cheaper to fire him, but the point is made.

The book is a very good read, with memorable stories about actual people who perfectly fit the description used in the title, like the Hollywood producer who ran through 250 personal assistants in 5 years.

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