Author: Robert I. Sutton
The No Asshole Rule by Robert I. Sutton, a professor at Stanford University is a popular book following his work into workplace culture. The book was recommended as part of our college book club and naturally instigated an attempt from the rest of us to figure out who upset our colleague who recommended the book (the colleague held the fort and did not disclose anything, but we will keep investigating lol).
The author writes about incivility in workplaces, including bullying and psychological abuse, all of these being terms used to talk about issues in workplaces or, as authors writes, about assholes who make everybody’s life miserable. This misery includes serious offences such as already mentioned bullying and abuse, but also verbal abuse, nasty teasing, and uncivilized behavior. The book is written for a wide audience and mainly uses popular language, but it is also backed up with some interesting research, in a way that provides info for researchers like me but also allows anyone to read it. I was interested to learn about the European Working Conditions Survey, the Trauma Institute that monitors workplace conditions, as well as references to studies arguing that men bully men and women bully women. I thought this was very interesting and the author addresses it by saying it is a common assumption that men are bullies and whilst there are more male than female managers, numbers are indeed skewed in that direction, however, when genders are separated, women can be just as abusive and tend to abuse other women whilst men mainly abuse men. This was very interesting, particularly in reference to my research on blokish women who were labelled by other women as worse than men, which always made sense (women have to be tough to succeed, so sometimes they become too tough), but then it suddenly made even more sense now. I found this insight very valuable and will take it forward into my work (see one previous paper here). The author also points towards country differences, saying that these low differences between genders are for the US, whereas in some European studies, men proved to be more abusive than women. Again, very relevant and interesting.
The author also helps readers by outlining terms often used in research that study workplace issues, identifying terms such as bullying, emotional abuse, petty tyranny, harassment, mobbing, interpersonal aggression, bad behaviour at work, etc. He also mentions some cultural differences and thus says that whilst many Americans will say asshole, many British will just say a nasty piece of work. The latter is a term I use, I just never realized this is an equivalent to an asshole, I thought it was an equivalent to a bastard, so that was interesting too.
There are so many interesting bits in this book that I could talk about (e.g., cloning and hiring those who are like us, which my research recognized too, see here), the notion of alpha males and females who turn into ‘selfish and insensitive jerks and abuse their underlings in a competitive workplace’ (p. 91, Kindle), etc. However, I will end up writing 20 pages if I go into details on everything this book offers, but I do have lots of notes I wrote on my Kindle Scribe.
I particularly enjoyed the author’s asshole test and was pleased to tank it entirely. YAY, I am not an asshole. I mean, I knew that, but was still surprised how low I scored. I thought I would score higher since secretly I dislike assholes and think they are idiots lol. Equally, I enjoyed the author’s reflection on being the ‘asshole guy’ because he wrote this book. I thought that part was hysterical lol. I also liked the explanation of the hiring debate faculty does at Stanford trying to look at qualifications but also weed out assholes, which was funny to read and certainly, kudos to Stanford for trying to be a nice place to work.
Overall, The No Asshole Rule was a good book, and I enjoyed reading it. The only thing that was missing was an elaboration on how exactly to avoid hiring assholes who will destroy organizational culture. The author makes a case that they should not be hired, and that he recognizes some people can hide their true character, so how do we address that? What if an asshole is also a hypocrite who tells hiring committees exactly what they want to hear and then wreaks havoc once they join the organization? Maybe that is a question for another book and a continuation of this interesting research.
Thank you for reading!