I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Meeks.  I haven’t read the book, but I think we need to distinguish between truly being a jerk and someone who is trying to get the most of his/her teammates, employees, troops, etc.  I think people take criticism personally instead of accepting it is as feedback and trying to improve.  Of course there are cases where someone is truly a jerk (like the attorney who treated the legal secretary like she was invisible), but often times people are just hypersensitive.  Get over it and move on!  Even if someone is a jerk to you, most likely that person is a jerk to someone else in the organization.  Align with the other person that is being putdown.  You now have an ally with whom you can form a strong bond.  If after revaluating you understand that the “jerk” is in fact giving helpful feedback (maybe strongly, but real feedback nonetheless) and is pushing you to be better, try to accept the feedback and improve.  It’s not that difficult.

I agree with me wisley and mr meeks. I think Professor Sutton's definition and his interpreting of the term 'jerk' is very broad. There are people in an organization who are jerks to most of the other employees. Its not a one on one situation. If there is a jerk in an organization, other people will know it. However, most of the time i have heard people talking about the CEO being a jerk. And all the time, it is that jerk CEO who saves the company. May be i should read the book to better understand Bob's view

Bob Sutton defines jerk in a very amorphous form, which I guess is true in the real world. You have to face problems of all kinds and there is no specific definition. His strategies to face them are not breakthrough, it is something which every individual with basic common-sense would attempt to do. He has borrowed from various sources and compiled his thoughts hoping it will be useful to many people and I think it is serving as a good reference for many people and his new role as "Dr. Phil" should summarize it.

The definition of jerk is quite arbitrary, isn't it? While I do have a feeling that Prof. Sutton is funny as well as a tiny bit too cynical, I also agree with him that jerks occur everywhere. They are more "personal" than we often think. For example, when we identify someone that we don't like, we often seek sympathy from our friends wanting them to agree with us that that person is indeed a jerk. Identifying true jerks and dealing with them are both our tasks. I have not read the book yet but I did buy a copy hoping to gain some insights. Even if we don't meet some jerks today, we will definitely meet some in the future. I hope he also addresses how to turn jerks into friends. I think it is somewhat wrong to just avoid dealing with jerks, who also have many good parts despite their aweful attitude and sometimes personality all together. Stanford is not entirely jerk-free either, and it is a good example of an environment in which jerks play very important roles contributing to intellectual challenge and progress. Otherwise, Prof. Sutton has a very innovative approach to deal with problems that have long bothered people in the business as well as other realms.

I think that one of the reasons this session was difficult to get behind and support was for the reasons that others have mentioned: the key terms of the 'engagement' were not defined clearly. 

However, there seem to be a few other issues that many would consider arguable: for example, the labeling of Steve Jobs and other incredibly accomplished manager/leaders (ie Disney execs) as 'jerks' came off as precipitous and even 'naive' in certain instances.  Yes, these managers can be difficult to work for and demanding, and yes, some of them are jerks.   But it seems that professor sutton has too hastily removed the possibility that these men and women of professional success are just great demanding business leaders and written them off as jerks.  While I appreciate his sensitizing us all to the challenges of being a tough leader w/o being a jerk, I'm not convinced of some of his allegations.

I agree with sentiments from the original poster. What exactly is an ass-hole?

This issue reminds me of a class I'm currently taking, MS&E 254: The Ethical Analyst. In it, our professor's personal ethic was, when speaking about the ethic, "I will not hurt people", he specifically excluded the mental aspect of this. It is precisely because we have no control over how people react to things that it can be troubling to understand exactly what an asshole is. What can be offensive to one person can be innocuous to another, for example.

Is an ass-hole simply a majority opinion label, then? If this is so, then an asshole today might be a nice person tomorrow. 

I haven't yet read his book, either, so I don't know if he's laid out some objective criteria by which an individual is an asshole.

Pat

I agree with P Lehrman that Sutton was very quick to jump to allegations.  He made several claims that I can personally refute such as "You are going to become like the people you work with" and "high performance drops if you have no bad examples." And more to the theme of this blog, jumping to allegations to me is one characteristic of an asshole.  I think much of the definition is based on personal perception and to me someone who sits smugly on stage and calls public figures assholes (even if they are) is a bit of an asshole themselves.

I definitely agree with Mr. Meeks. There is no single solution that will satisfy everybody. No matter how thoughtful and considerate you are, there will still be somebody who can not be fully satisfied. Under some certain circumstance, being tough for the sake of the whole company or whole group is definitely necessary. I think being tough is one effective way to build up your authority. But do not forget: only being tough is not enough. In order to become a successful leader, you must also know your team, understand what each member needs, care about what they think, and encourage and help them to move forward.

I agree with Yan Yan.  A good leader has to understand his employees.  Some employees are less self-driven, so a good leader need to use several different strateries on them.  The leaders could be encouragable and share his/her vision to the employee, and at the same time push the employees very hard.  Some employees are less self driven but can always finish the given tasks on time, then the leader might just need to be encouragable but not pushy to this kind of employees.  Any way, I think a good leader should make his/her employees feel fun and self-valuabe to work.  If the employees could not satisfy the leader, the leader should be patient explaining to the employees why he/she is not satisfied and praise the good part of the employees at the same time, to let them know that they are important to the company.  A leader who treat employees like slaves is not recommanded to work for.

Last edited by ypeng27 (2007-06-06 21:57:17)

As I thought about the question of how to define a jerk, I started thinking back to a couple bosses that clearly fit the bill.  Part of the reason I think there is not a precise definition is that people are often not universally jerks, but rather they are percieved that way in certain relationships.  Therefore the characteristics of a jerk are more relationship dependent than dependent on a single person.  Following from this argument, it seems to me that any relationship in which you are detracting from someone elses productivity because they percieve you as a jerk is not beneficial for anyone.  In that situation, you are being a jerk whether you think so or not.