The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't by Sutton Robert I

Author:Sutton, Robert I. [Sutton, Robert I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BUS000000
ISBN: 9780759518018
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2007-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve coached youth sports a bit over the years. I wish I had one of these buttons to give out to those obnoxious parents who bellow out highly inappropriate critiques, insults, and unwanted advice from the sidelines—upsetting the kids and making the game into a horrid experience for everyone involved. At their worst, these overbearing sports parents are among the most clueless and craziest assholes I’ve ever encountered. Last year, I was assistant soccer coach for a team of nine-year-old girls. An ugly episode happened when one of “our” parents became so upset at the referee’s call that he ran onto the field in the middle of the game to berate the referee. When I asked the parent to get off the field, explaining that he was violating both the letter and the spirit of the league rules, he got so mad—his veins were popping, and he started glaring at me and screaming insults—that I thought he was going to punch me.

Thinking back on that incident and others like it, perhaps—building on the current soccer rules for unsportsmanlike conduct by players—the rules for youth sports ought to be modified so that referees can award a “yellow card” to, say, suspend a nasty parent from the sidelines of a game for ten minutes and a “red card” to expel persistently or excessively vile parents for the entire game. Perhaps both the message and the public humiliation could help some of these parents gain badly needed self-awareness—and cleanse the kids’ games of these horrible role models.

I’ve already talked about ways to achieve such self-knowledge and self-control, arguing that you ought to look at the people around you and into your past to assess—and perhaps reduce—your risk of spreading and catching such poison. You can also take a more direct approach to self-knowledge and do a personal “asshole audit.”

If you are interested in “real-time” information, look into a device invented by Anmol Madan and his colleagues at the MIT Media Lab. His gizmo is called the Jerk-O-Meter, and people can use it as an asshole detector to help them realize when they are being nasty or insensitive. The Jerk-O-Meter attaches to your phone and uses electronic speech analysis to provide instant feedback to the person speaking on factors including stress, empathy, and “overall jerk factor.” These MIT researchers claim: “The mathematical models for the Jerk-O-Meter were derived from several research studies at the Media Lab. These studies evaluated how a person’s speaking style could reflect his or her interest in a conversation, in going out on a date, or perhaps even in buying a particular product. Our results show that a person’s speaking style and ‘tone of voice’ can predict objective outcomes (e.g., interest in a conversation or in going out on a date) with 75–85% accuracy.”

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