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HBR: The Benefits of Laughing in the Office

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HBR: The Benefits of Laughing in the Office

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Don't be afraid to laugh out loud in the office. A series of studies shows the positive impact humor can have in the workplace. For one, it can reduce stress. "When you start to laugh, it doesn't just lighten your load mentally, it actually induces physical changes in your body," the Mayo Clinic explains. It enhances your intake of "oxygen-rich air," increasing your brain's release of endorphins. Laughter has also been shown to boost productivity. A group of researchers found that after watching a comedy clip, employees were 10% more productive than their counterparts. And another group of researchers found that cracking jokes at work can even make people seem more competent. So, within the bounds of decency, laughter on the whole is a good thing, and the benefits far outweigh the risks.

While on an investor tour in Europe, I ended a busy day by joining my boss at a nice restaurant. After he said something funny, I responded in my typical style - throwing back my head and letting out hearty, unabashed laughter. People were taken aback. They turned to stare at me.

Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning's online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Stress Management. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

How to build resilience at work.

Learn More & See All Courses

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Don't be afraid to laugh out loud in the office. A series of studies shows the positive impact humor can have in the workplace. For one, it can reduce stress. "When you start to laugh, it doesn't just lighten your load mentally, it actually induces physical changes in your body," the Mayo Clinic explains.

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Theory X & Y - Understanding People's Motivation

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Theory X & Y - Understanding People's Motivation

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The approach that you take will have a significant impact on your ability to motivate your team members. So, it's important to understand how your perceptions of what motivates them can shape your management style.

We'll now take a more in-depth look at the two different theories, and discover how and when they can be useful in the workplace.

Theory X

Theory X managers tend to take a pessimistic view of their people, and assume that they are naturally unmotivated and dislike work.

Work in organizations that are managed like this can be repetitive, and people are often motivated with a "carrot and stick" approach. Performance appraisals and remuneration are usually based on tangible results, such as sales figures or product output, and are used to control and "keep tabs" on staff.

This style of management assumes that workers:

Dislike their work.

Avoid responsibility and need constant direction.

Have to be controlled, forced and threatened to deliver work.

Need to be supervised at every step.

Have no incentive to work or ambition, and therefore need to be enticed by rewards to achieve goals.

According to McGregor, organizations with a Theory X approach tend to have several tiers of managers and supervisors to oversee and direct workers. Authority is rarely delegated, and control remains firmly centralized.

Although Theory X management has largely fallen out of fashion in recent times, big organizations may find that adopting it is unavoidable due to the sheer number of people that they employ and the tight deadlines that they have to meet.

Theory Y

Theory Y managers have an optimistic opinion of their people, and they use a decentralized, participative management style. This encourages a more collaborative, trust-based relationship between managers and their team members.

People have greater responsibility, and managers encourage them to develop their skills and suggest improvements. Appraisals are regular but, unlike in Theory X organizations, they are used to encourage open communication rather than to control staff.

Theory Y organizations also give employees frequent opportunities for promotion.

This style of management assumes that workers are:

Happy to work on their own initiative.

More involved in decision making.

Self-motivated to complete their tasks.

Enjoy taking ownership of their work.

Seek and accept responsibility, and need little direction.

View work as fulfillling and challenging.

Solve problems creatively and imaginatively.

Theory Y has become more popular among organizations. This reflects workers' increasing desire for more meaningful careers that provide them with more than just money.

It's also viewed by McGregor as superior to Theory X, which, he says, reduces workers to "cogs in a machine," and likely demotivates people in the long term.

When to Use Theory X and Theory Y

Most managers will likely use a mixture of Theory X and Theory Y. You may, however, find that you naturally favor one over the other. You might, for instance, have a tendency to micromanage or, conversely, you may prefer to take a more hands-off approach.

Although both styles of management can motivate people, the success of each will largely depend on your team's needs and wants and your organizational objectives.

You may use a Theory X style of management for new starters who will likely need a lot of guidance, or in a situation that requires you to take control such as a crisis.

But you wouldn't use it when managing a team of experts, who are used to working under their own initiative, and need little direction. If you did, it would likely have a demotivating effect and may even damage your relationship.

Circumstance can also affect your management style. Theory X, for instance, is generally more prevalent in larger organizations, or in teams where work can be repetitive and target-driven.

In these cases, people are unlikely to find reward or fulfilllment in their work, so a "carrot and stick" approach will tend to be more successful in motivating them than a Theory Y approach.

In contrast, Theory Y tends to be favored by organizations that have a flatter structure, and where people at the lower levels are involved in decision making and have some responsibility.

The Disadvantages of Theory X and Theory Y

However, both theories have their challenges. The restrictive nature of Theory X, for instance, could cause people to become demotivated and non-cooperative if your approach is too strict. This may lead to high staff turnover and could damage your reputation in the long term.

Conversely, if you adopt a Theory Y approach that gives people too much freedom, it may allow them to stray from their key objectives or lose focus. Less motivated individuals may also take advantage of this more relaxd working environment by shirking their work.

If this happens, you may need to take back some control to ensure that everyone meets their team and organizational goals.

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Theory X and Theory Y - Understanding People's Motivations

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What do you think motivates your team? Money or the challenge? Theory X and Theory Y explains how your perceptions can affect your management style.

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HBR:  Less-Confident People Are More Successful

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HBR:  Less-Confident People Are More Successful

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Less-Confident People Are More Successful

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There is no bigger cliché in business psychology than the idea that high self-confidence is key to career success. It is time to debunk this myth. In fact, low self-confidence is more likely to make you successful. After many years of researching and consulting on talent, I’ve come to the conclusion that self-confidence is only […]

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HBR: Why You Need to Protect Your Sense of Wonder

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HBR: Why You Need to Protect Your Sense of Wonder

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We may be slowly returning to our offices (more or less), but the strains of the pandemic are hardly over. As we enter a transitional stage after a year of trauma and strain, more than ever we need ways to refresh our energies, calm our anxieties, and nurse our well-being. One potentially powerful intervention is rarely talked about in the workplace: The cultivation of experiences of awe. Like gratitude and curiosity, awe can leave us feeling inspired and energized. It's another tool in your toolkit and it's now attracting increased attention due to more rigorous research.

As a physician and a psychologist, we have facilitated hundreds of resilience and well-being workshops both before and during Covid for the military, physicians, educators, law enforcement, and in the business world. Helping participants to explore, experience, and recall moments of awe is one of the key scientifically supported strategies we engage in during our workshops and it's been rewarding to see our participants benefit and bring what they've learned to their own organizations.

Awe and Its Benefits

University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross defines awe as "the wonder we feel when we encounter something powerful that we can't easily explain." Often the things which bring us awe have an element of vastness and complexity. Think of a starry night sky, an act of great kindness, or the beauty of something small and intricate. During your workday the colors of the leaves outside your office or an act of sacrifice by a colleague could prompt a similar feeling - especially if you are attuned to it. In the United States and China especially, experiences of awe are frequently related to the virtuous behavior of others: an act of dedication, skill, or courage.

Cultivating experiences of awe is especially important and helpful now as we renew our energy and make plans for a more hopeful future. That's because beyond physical effects like tingling and goosebumps and a lowered heart rate under stress, awe also affects us emotionally. One experimental group, when asked to draw pictures of themselves, literally drew themselves smaller in size after having an awe experience. Such an effect has been termed " unselfing." This shift has big benefits: As you tap into something larger and your sense of self shrinks, so too do your mental chatter and your worries. At the same time, your desire to connect with and help others increases. People who experience awe also report higher levels of overall life satisfaction and well-being.

Let's look more closely at the effects on stress and resilience. Experiences of awe are associated with lowered levels of reported stress and recent experimental research suggests that this may be a causal relationship: That awe can actively help reduce stress. Recent research using fMRI has also shown that experiences of awe, such as watching awe-inspiring videos (compared to neutral or pleasant videos) decreases activity in the brain's default mode network (DMN), which is associated with self-focus and rumination. The result is decreased mental chatter.

Awe's benefits extend beyond stress relief, however. Research has shown that experiencing something bigger than us helps us transcend our frame of reference by expanding our mental models and stimulating new ways of thinking. This can increase creativity and innovation, and facilitate scientific thinking and ethical decision making.

It also helps us build relationships. Though feeling awe frequently happens in solitude, it draws us out of ourselves and toward others and inspires pro-social behavior like generosity and compassion. Some scientists theorize that it has evolved to aid group cohesion and provide survival advantages. For work groups experiences of awe can lead to increased collaboration, team building, and social connection.

There are many ways you can cultivate experiences of awe during the course of your workday.

For Individuals

A simple and powerful way to experience awe if you can step away from your desk is to take an " awe walk." Take twenty minutes to wander and be curious and observe the everyday beauty around you, even in a familiar place like your yard or neighborhood. In our workshops, this instruction helps people to notice others, as well as places and things they might typically rush past - a bee flitting from flower to flower, for example. Afterwards our participants report feeling inspired, calmer, and better able to focus.

Even better, take an awe-seeking walk in a natural landscape. Research shows that walks in nature, compared to urban environments, have a greater positive effect on our mood and well-being. Nature is an immersive experience of growth and resilience; it can be a powerful source of wonder and awe. Nature's rhythms also remind us that we are a part of the natural world, and we too are enduring. A CEO of a Michigan technology company one of us (David) has collaborated with schedules frequent bike rides through a landscape of trees and water. Doing so, he feels a part of something larger than himself as well as a boost to his energy and resilience.

If you can't step away from your desk, take advantage of the wonders at your fingertips on the web. Several studies have shown that videos can stimulate awe. Perhaps you're inspired by award-winning documentaries such as , , or the recent Oscar winner My Octopus Teacher. Let Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb" give you goosebumps. The harmony and complexity of music can also elevate and inspire awe. Create your own personal "awe playlist" of videos or music and when you're feeling stuck spend a few minutes being drawn into what you're seeing and hearing. You can also invite moments of awe by asking the simple question "What's beautiful here?"

Another option is to tune into news sites that spread good news - acts of kindness, generosity, and perseverance. Keep a file on your computer of stories of the goodness, benevolence, and decency of the human race. Tap it when you are feeling overwhelmed or depleted and want to be elevated. A simple story of one person making a difference can inspire others around the world.

For Managers and Teams

If you're a manager, you can leverage the power of awe to help your team with its energy and resilience and to provide empathy and emotional support. Encourage your team members to share their awe playlists and create opportunities to share experiences of awe by starting meetings with questions like "What took your breath away this week?" or "What made you glad you're on this planet?" (Contribute your own stories too, and share their impact on you.) In work one of us (Karen) has done with The Oklahoma City Thunder, leaders asked teams to bring personal photos that sparked awe and gratitude. At a team meeting, the photos were projected, and each person spoke about their photo and experience. Meanwhile the health system where David works offers voluntary noontime resilience webinars featuring awe. Individuals from disparate departments who've never met come together and share stories of awe in small group zoom rooms. The positive energy after each of these events is evident and elevating.

Managers should watch out for several potential missteps when creating awe experiences for their teams, however. First, what stimulates awe in one person can stimulate feelings of threat or danger in another - if someone with a fear of heights is forced to look at a vertiginous view, for example. Know your team well enough to understand where to draw the line. Secondly, as you encourage your teams to experience awe, keep in mind that it's an addition and not a subtraction: Adding experiences of awe does not eliminate grief or anxiety; nor does it mitigate the need for teams to talk openly about the challenges they face and the support they need from leadership. It's normal and healthy to experience a full range of emotions, especially in highly challenging times. It's imperative that managers offer as much compassion and understanding as they can muster. Finally, don't mistake intimidation for awe: We're not talking about developing a cult of power around yourself as a leader - a very different approach which can do more harm than good.

We spend much of our time at work trying to stake our claim and make our voices heard. It can feel counterintuitive to engage in something that might stimulate feelings of "smallness." But doing so through a positive experience of awe can, in the end, bring us that sense of grounding we're searching for, along with a multitude of benefits - such as energy, inspiration, and resilience - for ourselves and for our teams.

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Why You Need to Protect Your Sense of Wonder - Especially Now

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We may be slowly returning to our offices (more or less), but the strains of the pandemic are hardly over. As we enter a transitional stage after a year of trauma and strain, more than ever we need ways to refresh our energies, calm our anxieties, and nurse our well-being.

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HBR: What Really Influence Employee Motivation

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HBR: What Really Influence Employee Motivation

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What Really Influences Employee Motivation

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You are contagious | Vanessa Van Edwards | TEDxLondon

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Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive

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HBR: Proof Thar Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive 

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HBR: Proof Thar Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive 

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Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive

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How to Fix Your Company's Culture of Overwork

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HBR: How to Fix Your Company’s Culture of Overwork 

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HBR: How to Fix Your Company’s Culture of Overwork 

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The new age of flexible of work has encouraged a culture of overwork, which is proving to be harmful to the mental health of employees. In her new book, Never Not Working, Malissa Clark offers a three-step process for organizations to reverse this unhealthy relationship: 1) Assess your company's baseline level of overwork and its origins; 2) Plan for incremental change by targeting places where change will be most effective soonest; and 3) Execute a trial experiment, learn, and iterate.

Associate professor and head of the Healthy Work Lab at the University of Georgia, Malissa Clark, argues that in a post-pandemic work landscape that transcends buildings - and hours - the boundaries of professionalism and personal lives have been blurred. In her new book, Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business and How to Fix It (Harvard Business Review Press), Clark explains the current epidemic of overwork, what it looks like at its worst, and how a generation of employees have unknowingly let their work consume them. This excerpt, which is lightly edited, outlines clear steps that organizations can take to correct a culture of overwork for the betterment of their employees.

Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning's online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Ethics at Work. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

Avoid integrity traps in the workplace.

Learn More & See All Courses

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How to Fix Your Company's Culture of Overwork

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The new age of flexible of work has encouraged a culture of overwork, which is proving to be harmful to the mental health of employees.

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HBR: 8 Essential Qualities of Successful Leaders 

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HBR: 8 Essential Qualities of Successful Leaders 

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Becoming a great leader is a journey of continuous learning and growth. It's a process - one that thrives on embracing challenges, seeking feedback, fostering connections, and cultivating understanding. In this article, the author outlines the eight most essential leadership qualities, according to Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill, one of the world's top experts on leadership. Star leaders aren't born with superhuman capabilities, Linda explains. Rather, they tend to have intentionally put themselves in situations where they have to learn, adapt, and grow - a crucible for developing the tenacity and fortitude to motivate and guide others.

Do you have what it takes to be a great leader?

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8 Essential Qualities of Successful Leaders

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Becoming a great leader is a journey of continuous learning and growth. It's a process - one that thrives on embracing challenges, seeking feedback, fostering connections, and cultivating understanding. In this article, the author outlines the eight most essential leadership qualities, according to Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill, one of the world's top experts on leadership.

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MasterClass Public Speaking Skill Builder Class Guide

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MasterClass Public Speaking Skill Builder Class Guide

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MasterClass Public Speaking Skill Builder

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MasterClass Skill Builder: Public Speaking

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MasterClass Skill Builder: Public Speaking

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HBR: The Best Managers Balance Analytics & Emotional Intelligence

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HBR: The Best Managers Balance Analytics & Emotional Intelligence

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The Best Managers Balance Analytical and Emotional Intelligence

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Being an effective manager requires balancing two networks in your brain: the analytic network (AN) and the empathic network (EN). Managers need to understand their employees and their specific challenges and they need to relate to their feelings and emotional state. They need to form and confirm their thoughts about their perspective and they need to be open to hearing and seeing what their employees hear, see, and feel. The authors point to recent research for insight into how the analytic and emphatic networks work in our brains — and how to become more adept at balancing both.

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CultureAmp: How to Build a Relationally Intelligent Company (Esther Perel)

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CultureAmp: How to Build a Relationally Intelligent Company (Esther Perel)

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Esther Perel - How to build a relationally intelligent company | Culture Amp

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In this episode, iconic psychotherapist Esther Perel sits down with Damon Klotz to discuss how to operate with relational intelligence in our workplace, takes us back to the origins of how we learn to trust, breaks down the shifts leaders need to make in order to earn trust, and shares with us the exact moment she realized she wanted to bring her decades of experience in relationships into workplaces everywhere.

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WSJ: The Performance Review is Dying. Make Way For a Fire Hose of Feedback

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WSJ: The Performance Review is Dying. Make Way For a Fire Hose of Feedback

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Workplace Incivility Is More Common Than You Think

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SHRM: Workplace Incivility Is More Common Than You Think

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SHRM: Workplace Incivility Is More Common Than You Think

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Workplace Incivility Is More Common Than You Think

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New research by SHRM revealed that 2 in 3 employees have experienced or witnessed incivility at work in the past month. With presidential elections-and political tensions-ramping up, HR professionals should understand the implications such conduct can have on both the employee and business.

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Netflix Culture Memo - Careers at Netflix

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At Netflix, we aspire to entertain the world, thrilling audiences everywhere. To do that, we’ve developed an unusual company culture focused on excellence, and creating an environment where talented people can thrive — lifting ourselves, each other and our audiences higher and higher.

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Forbes: Workers With the Most Flexibility Rate Culture Highest, Employers Still Hire For Degrees, & MOre

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Forbes: Workers With the Most Flexibility Rate Culture Highest, Employers Still Hire For Degrees, & MOre

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This is the published version of Forbes' Future of Work newsletter, which offers the latest news for chief human resources officers and other talent managers on disruptive technologies, managing the workforce and trends in the remote work debate. Click to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday!

An employee gathers online orders at a Walmart market fulfillment center in the back of a store in Grapevine, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. Photographer: Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg
© 2024 Bloomberg Finance LP

T here may be no buzzier phrase in the world of human resources right now than "skills-based hiring"-the idea that employers should hire more people for the skills they bring to the job rather than the diploma hanging on their wall. Doing so, the thinking goes, improves diversity and helps employers fill job shortages by removing often unneeded requirements. (Do you really need a four-year university degree to design a web page or underwrite insurance? You don't.)

It's a nice notion-and one that some companies are taking seriously-but the data shows many employers are having a hard time getting their efforts off the ground. The smart folks at Harvard Business School's project on Managing the Future of Work and the Burning Glass Institute, a nonprofit focused on workforce mobility, estimated in a recent report that firms increased the share of non-degreed workers hired into jobs where they had removed the degree by only about 3.5 percentage points. Overall, researchers estimated the promise of "skills-based hiring" impacted less than 1 in 700 hires last year.

What was perhaps most interesting of all in the new report is that the researchers weren't afraid to name names-identifying companies that had boosted the number of non-degreed workers they'd hired substantially, and those who seemed to be struggling to make a dent. One of the "leaders" they spotted was Walmart, which said back in September they were dropping degrees from hundreds of corporate jobs, and last week followed up by announcing a revamp to their education program in line with the efforts. The retail giant is doubling the number of short-form certificates it offers as part of its free tuition benefit while deeply cutting the number of degrees it offers, from 30 to eight. You can read my coverage of that news here.

What stood out to me in Walmart's news: Making "skills-based hiring" work is going to take a lot more than just dropping degree requirements from job descriptions. Employers will need to restructure their education programs, train managers not to be biased toward those with degrees and rethink how it assesses incoming candidates. It's a hot area getting a lot of attention right now-check out our contributors' coverage of the Biden administration's efforts to fund training for non-degree clean energy jobs, what former IBM CEO Ginny Rometty says about creative career pathways and more -but it's going to take a lot of work, too.

Hope it's a great week.

EDUCATION & CAREERS

New research from the nonprofits Burning Glass Institute and the Strada Institute for the Future of Work finds that 52% of college graduates are "underemployed" a year after graduation, my colleague Emmy Lucas reports, which means they're working a job that doesn't require or "make meaningful use" of their diploma. The long-term results are even more unsettling: 73% of those graduates who were underemployed one year after school remained so a decade later, according to the report. Perhaps getting a double major could help: In a recent feature, Forbes ' Emma Whitford examines research that finds doing double duty in college could be a ticket to job security.

WORKPLACE TRENDS

Like most living things, humans experience optimal times to work and rest based on circadian rhythms, and that doesn't necessarily sync up with the traditional 9-5 workday. Cue the latest workplace trend: chronoworking, which enables workers to define the work schedule based on their internal clocks, according to journalist Ellen Scott, who coined the term. It has the potential to improve employee well-being and productivity, but an organization must have the infrastructure to support flexible schedules to realize those benefits.

HUMAN CAPITAL

Starbucks has failed to disclose to shareholders a total of $240 million in costs and liabilities for its "anti-union activity" and unpaid wages, a coalition of labor groups alleged in a letter to the SEC earlier this month. The letter from the Strategic Organizing Center, which is itself a Starbucks shareholder, comes as the coalition has also waged a proxy contest campaign to elect labor-friendly nominees to the company's board of directors. Starbucks denied spending on anti-union efforts in a response to an inquiry from Forbes' James Farrell, and said they're in compliance with all SEC and Department of Labor requirements.

This week's layoffs include cuts at Rivian, where the electric vehicle manufacturer saw shares fall more than 15% in after-hours trading at one point after announcing it planned to lay off 10% of its salaried workforce, reports Forbes' Molly Bohannon. Contributor Ann Kowal Smith worries that the current "season of layoffs" could "destroy" the future of work, as layoffs seem ubiquitous and repeated-rather than a last resort. Meanwhile, contributor Joe Moglia explains why job cuts of remote workers can be a bad idea, hitting people who are most productive.

WHAT'S NEXT: SCOOP'S ROB SADOW AND BCG'S DEBORAH LOVICH

Scoop co-founder and CEO Rob Sadow; Boston Consulting Group's Deborah Lovich
Photos via Rob Sadow, Deborah Lovich

What did your research find?
Rob Sadow, the co-founder of hybrid work software firm , tracks company flexibility policies via an online site called the , producing quarterly reports about trends in remote work. In their most recent installment, Sadow, working with Boston Consulting Group's Deborah Lovich, compared those flexibility policies with more than 400,000 Glassdoor ratings across 554 public companies to see how workers perceive different approaches to remote and in-office work. (Flex Index categorizes companies' policies as "fully flexible," or those that give workers choice on when to come in; "structured hybrid," or those that have specific expectations on when employees come in; and "full-time in-office," or those required to work onsite five days a week.) Forbes spoke with Lovich and Sadow about their latest report-excerpts from the conversation have been edited for length and clarity.
Is it possible employees just define culture differently than their bosses? That to them it's about work-life balance or great perks rather than the fuzzier "how we do things around here"?
Lovich: The mantra of many old-school senior executives has been you can't build culture if we're not all in [the office] together. That's both wrong and right. It's wrong in that "fully flexible" workers have the highest culture ratings. But it's right a little bit in that "structured hybrid" workers are pretty close in their ratings when it comes to culture. But full-time in-office workers [rate things] noticeably much lower. We were pretty excited to see validation of something people like us have been saying.
What do you think is behind the finding that people perceive flexible employers better on compensation and benefits?
Sadow: It matters what employees think culture is, even if it's different from what executives think. ... Employee sentiment matters. Executives say "we have to be in the office to build culture" and what's interesting is the data tells you there is value in being in the office. But, the argument that we can only build a great culture by being in the office five days a week? I think the data pretty clearly says that's not how employees feel.

Lovich: It's ' I don't have to spend money on a commute. I don't have to buy nice clothes. I don't want to spend $15 on lunch every day.'
What should executives do with this information?
Sadow: There are also childcare implications. One of the most important takeaways to me is I would not be surprised if companies that require full-time in-office work find they have to pay more over time, on average, to attract the same level of talent given the relative cost differences in lifestyle.

Lovich: There's a lot of new muscle that leaders need to build to make sure they manage well in these different modalities. Make sure you meet in-person initially when you're getting to know each other. If you see a good piece of work that someone did, send them a note. If you hear something good on a call, send them a private note. Make a point to always be reaching out, mentoring, coaching. It just has to be part of a regular routine-a distributed version of the idea of 'management by walking around.'

Sadow: For executive decision makers, the arguments in favor of full-time in-office, I think, become increasingly tenuous. Whether you think about the revenue analysis work that we've talked about in the past, or about culture and engagement, the argument for why people need to be in the office five days a week versus three days is increasingly weaker. But the answer is not for every company to get more and more flexible over time, even though a lot of people would like that in theory. In practice, there's a middle ground.

STRATEGIES & ADVICE

Most managers oversee too many people. Here's what many get wrong about delegating.

Embracing AI across the enterprise is hard. Learn how venture investors have been doing it.

What remote and hybrid workers really need: A coach more than a manager.
Siemens U.S. CEO On The Critical Skills The Workforce Needs For The Future
VIDEO

FACTS & COMMENT

Despite new legislation to address the gender pay gap, a new report from PayScale Inc compiling pay data from more than 600,000 U.S. workers finds wage inequality remains virtually unchanged from a year ago:

83 cents: What women earn on average for every dollar made by a comparable man

79 cents: What women working remotely earn on average, 10 cents less than women who work in-person, suggesting a "tax" on remote work for women

15%: Working fathers earn this much more on average, compared to men without children

QUIZ

A screenshot made the rounds on X last week suggesting that Google would be "sunsetting" one of its most widely used services, but the company has since denied this claim. Which Google servicewas mentioned in the hoax?
Check your answer.

1. Google Drive

2. Gmail

3. Google Cloud

4. Gemini AI's image generator

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Workers With The Most Flexibility Rate Culture Highest, Employers Still Hire For Degrees And More

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The published version of Forbes' Future of Work newsletter delivers the latest news for chief human resources officers and other talent managers on disruptive technologies, managing the workforce and trends in the remote work debate to your inbox every Monday.

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Forbes: New York Restricts Employer Access to Employee Social Media Accounts

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Forbes: New York Restricts Employer Access to Employee Social Media Accounts

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Employers are prohibited from requesting or compelling employees or job applicants to disclose their ... [+]
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has recently signed into law Assembly Bill (A) 00836 and its companion Senate Bill (S) 02518A, effectively limiting employers' ability to access the personal social media accounts of both employees and job applicants. The legislation, set to take effect on March 12, marks a significant shift in the employer-employee relationship regarding online privacy.

Under this new law, employers are prohibited from requesting or compelling employees or job applicants to disclose their usernames, passwords, or other login information for personal social media accounts. Moreover, employers cannot demand individuals to access their personal accounts in the employer's presence or reproduce any content from personal accounts. The law also safeguards against retaliatory actions by employers, ensuring that employees or applicants cannot be penalized for refusing to divulge information concerning their personal accounts.

The legislation broadly defines "personal accounts" as those used exclusively for personal purposes on electronic mediums, encompassing various forms of user-generated content such as videos, photographs, blogs, podcasts, instant messages, or internet profiles. However, it exempts access to "nonpersonal accounts" used for business purposes, provided that prior notice has been given to the employee regarding the employer's right to request such access.

While the law restricts employer access to personal social media accounts, it allows for certain exemptions. Employers may access personal accounts under specific circumstances, such as compliance with legal obligations, accessing employer-provided business accounts, or restricting access to certain websites while using employer networks or devices. Additionally, employers can still view publicly available information or information voluntarily shared by employees, clients, or third parties for reporting or investigating misconduct.

New York is not alone in this legislative endeavor. A growing number of states, including California, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Maryland, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont, have already enacted similar laws to protect individuals from employer inquiries into their private social media lives. These laws recognize that an employee's personal information, especially that housed within private social media accounts, deserves protection.

While Integrating social media screening into a comprehensive background screening program can help employers make informed hiring decisions, employers are advised to review their employment policies and practices in light of these legal restrictions. By proactively revising policies and educating personnel involved in the hiring process concerning the boundaries of the laws, employers can foster a workplace culture that values professionalism and personal privacy, ultimately promoting trust and mutual respect.

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New York Restricts Employer Access To Employee Social Media Accounts

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The legislation, set to take effect in March, marks a significant shift in the employer-employee relationship regarding online privacy.

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WSJ: Want to Get More Done? The Podcast in the Background is Holding You Back

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WSJ: Want to Get More Done? The Podcast in the Background is Holding You Back

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HBR: Recognizing & Responding to Microaggressions at Work

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HBR: Recognizing & Responding to Microaggressions at Work

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Recognizing and Responding to Microaggressions at Work

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Microaggressions, the insensitive statements, questions, or assumptions aimed at traditionally marginalized identity groups can happen to anyone, of any background, at any professional level. The research is clear about the impact seemingly innocuous statements can have on one’s physical and mental…

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TED: 6 Tips to Help You Be a Better Human Now

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TED: 6 Tips to Help You Be a Better Human Now

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Ever wish you had go-to experts that you could tap for advice in all the varied areas of your life - your job, your home, your finances, even your emotions? TED has got you covered! In our As host of TED's How to Be a Better Human podcast, I've found that one of the most common reactions people have upon hearing about the show is to ask me: "What have you learned from it? And how can I become a better human?" How to Be a Better Human podcast, host Chris Duffy speaks to an exciting mix of world-class researchers, thinkers and doers (read on to find out more!) and learns actionable takeaways that we can all use to improve our days and nights. Read on to learn the advice that he's personally found the most helpful, and listen to episodes here. That being said, over two seasons and 62 episodes featuring interviews with a fascinating and diverse group of people - including a sleep researcher, a Native American chef, a data journalist and an award-winning Broadway set designer - even a lug like me has picked up some insights.
Well, actually, that's sugarcoating it a bit. If I'm honest, what really happens when people learn about the show is they raise their eyebrows and look me over, seemingly thinking: "Who the heck are you, podcast boy, to think you can tell us about becoming a better human?"

That's why I almost always quickly add, "I'm not the better human of the title! The better humans are the guests, and I'm just a regular person trying to understand their ideas."

Here are the pieces of advice that have stuck in my brain and that I've tried to apply in my own life:

1. Improve your relationship - by getting into a love triangle

George Blair-West MD is an Australian relationship expert, researcher and psychiatrist, and he's been married for 34 years. He told me that the key to a long-lasting relationship of any kind is getting into a love triangle - unfortunately, not the kind you see on a telenovela.

No, what George meant by triangle is taking the same three steps over and over in your relationship.

Step one: You have to trust that when you share something vulnerable with your partner, they will respect your trust and not use it against you.

Step two: You test that trust by sharing something with them that you're anxious about people knowing about you.

And step three: You keep building intimacy as you do this over and over and realize that your partner will still care about you, despite your shortcomings.
Go here to listen to the episode
OK, it might not seem as spicy as the other kind of love triangle - but secrets, hidden weaknesses and building a deep, meaningful, passionate love? It's still pretty good!

George's advice is something that I think about a lot. Every time I'm afraid to have a conversation with my wife or admit how I'm really feeling to her, I remember George's point that this is the whole thing! The best way to make your relationship deeper and stronger is by letting yourself be human, admitting the things you're ashamed of and saying them out loud to your partner. Because when you say them and the other person loves you anyway? Ooh, baby! That's the good stuff.

2. You are bigger than your job

Greta Morgan is a writer and musician whose musical projects include Vampire Weekend, Springtime Carnivore and Gold Motel. She's toured the world and played in front of huge venues full of adoring fans.

But then one day, she was diagnosed with a vocal disorder - one that took away her ability to sing. Suddenly, her ideas about what her life and her career would look like shifted dramatically.

So what would you do if the thing that defined you disappeared overnight? So many of us have melded our identities with our work, and in the process, we often forget who we really are. When I spoke to Greta, she made such a compelling case for how being forced to redefine herself ended up expanding her understanding of her creativity and resilience.
Go here to listen to the episode
I've similarly struggled with tying my self-worth to my output and my career. Greta offered me a reminder that if we can let go of holding onto our ideas of who we are "supposed to be," we will allow ourselves to grow and to discover our deeper, more authentic selves.

For me, that means valuing creative work I make and enjoy personally even if it doesn't sell or make any money. And it means me being open to trying new things, even if they don't necessarily fit under the umbrella of "comedy," like writing a blog post for TED about how to be a better human.

3. Never be afraid to make trouble

I have never identified with a joke more than when I heard comedian John Mulaney say: "You could pour hot soup on my lap, and I'll probably apologize to you."

I hate conflict, and I never want to make a fuss or create an uncomfortable situation. But my conversation with Luvvie Ajayi Jones convinced me this is actually not a trait to be proud of. Instead, standing up against the tide is a muscle I need to develop and grow instead.

Luvvie self-describes herself as a "professional troublemaker." She says that if we really want to improve the world and tackle the big, important issues, meekly following the rules is not going to cut it. Talking to her completely reframed the idea of "trouble" for me, prompting me to think of it as a necessary step on the path to improvement rather than as a sign that I was being difficult or not a team player. So now I'm trying to assert myself whenever I feel a twinge of "That's not right."

A friend makes a problematic joke? Maybe I can have a conversation with them about it and not just laugh awkwardly.
Go here to listen to the episode
There's a person on the street who seems lost or confused? Maybe I can check in rather than assuming that they'd ask if they needed help. (Even typing this one makes me a little nervous since I'm imagining an older man yelling at me that he's not confused or lost and how dare I insinuate he was!)

But I want to tackle these small scale, lower-stakes moments so I can get more comfortable with being uncomfortable. That way, when the big stuff happens, I'll have the troublemaking muscles to do what needs to be done. I certainly wouldn't say I'm a professional troublemaker yet, but maybe I'm an aspiring amateur.

4. Be the best at having terrible ideas

Frans Johansson has spent his career studying innovation and what makes some ideas truly groundbreaking. One of the things that he's discovered is it's easy to find support for your ideas if you're only making incremental changes.

Let's say it's 1970, and you're working on making home telephones 10 percent more efficient. Everyone at the phone company would have been likely to get on board. But if you told them you were working on an idea to make phones that could work outdoors and without any wires, you'd likely be out in the cold. And yet, looking back, we can see clearly which idea was more valuable.
Go here to listen to the episode
I've been trying to embrace that idea more in my own life - to take bigger swings. Frans says if you want to come up with novel solutions, you have to discard the first few things that come to mind, the obvious answers.

Try something bizarre! It might not work, but as Frans says, "The single most important factor is that you are interrupting your default thought." Plus, when I set my goal as simply "come up with some terrible ideas" I immediately feel better, because I am so good at having bad ideas. In fact, I've decided it's my specialty.

5. Be a better talker - by shutting up
Go here to listen to the episode
I talk for a living, whether it's hosting this podcast, doing standup or pitching jokes for a TV show. But still, one of the times I've been most terrified when doing this podcast was when I was interviewing Celeste Headlee. She's an award-winning journalist who has done everything from anchor morning news on public radio to covering presidential campaigns. She's an expert on great conversations. So the pressure was high to have our conversation be... not terrible, you know?

Luckily, Celeste made my job easy and offered plenty of practical tips including how to pick one conversational skill to work on at a time. This small step can dramatically improve your relationships and your outcomes at work. For me, I'm working on shutting up more and, as Celeste puts it, "not equating talking with conversing." Because if you want to have a great conversation, it's not about following any tips and tricks for "seeming engaged" in the conversation - you have to actually be engaged. So I will now shut up.

6. And if all else fails, try being perfect

Michael Schur is the comedy writer behind so many of my favorite TV shows, like Saturday Night Live, The Office, Parks and Recreation, The Good Place. (And, very occasionally in front of the scenes, like when he played Dwight's terrifying cousin Mose in The Office). But Michael's true passion isn't jokes; it's moral philosophy.
Go here to listen to the episode Enjoyed this article? The advice doesn't end here - we're just getting started with new weekly episodes of How to Be a Better Human throughout the year. Give it a listen to receive more delicious, useful bites of insight that can help you in all parts of your life Watch this special TED Membership conversation with Luvvie Ajayi Jones now:
In our episode, Michael talked to me about why he's obsessed with chasing after the eternal, perhaps unanswerable question of "how to be perfect" and why he believes caring about ethics - on any level - can actually make a difference. Whether it's deciding which brand of environmentally friendly toilet paper I should buy (or should I actually just switch over to an electronic bidet), agonizing over if it's OK to listen to music made by a terrible person, or deciding if it's OK to lie in a list of ways to become a better person, I'm comforted by Michael's reminder that people have been struggling over these questions for thousands of years. (Maybe not these exact questions, I don't think electronic bidets existed until recently.)

He argues that the right thing to do is engage with the questions rather than ignore them and try to find a moral framework that we can stand by and stick to. I'm not there yet, but I'm thinking more deeply about the ethical quandaries inevitably posed by every decision I make (and I decided I'm just not ready for a bidet quite yet. Maybe next year ...)

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6 tips to help you be a better human now

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Podcast host Chris Duffy spends his days talking to a diverse group of experts in order to answer one question: "How can I be a better human?" Here's the advice that has really st...

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Authentic employee recognition: Your role in creating equity and consistency | TLNT

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TLNT: Authentic Employee Recognition | Your Role In Creating Equity & Consistency

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TLNT: Authentic Employee Recognition | Your Role In Creating Equity & Consistency

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It's long been understood that 'recognition' is a direct line of sight into how companies value their talent.

And yet, Achievers Workforce Institute ( AWI) recently uncovered glaring gratitude gaps in many organizations.

For instance, we found that women are 28% less likely to receive at least monthly monetary recognition than the overall average.

This gap must be closed in 2024. Because when a company is not recognizing historically marginalized groups at the same rate, it sends a signal about what that company truly values.

So what must be done to arrest this?

Given the current economic climate, companies' budgets are invariably being cut, often resulting in layoffs.

For remaining staff it often means they're working in a leaner team, meaning more work for them and their colleagues. They're most likely feeling increased levels of burnout - which translates in higher staff turnover and headaches for the HR team.

How simple it would be to ramp up recognition just when staff need it most.

According to the latest AWI research, more than half of employees say feeling better recognized would inspire productivity and help maintain morale during layoffs.

However, this only spotlights how important it is that employees are recognized equally and consistently.
So is this happening?
Unfortunately not. New AWI data shows people with disabilities receive less frequent recognition than average. This is despite AWI also finding 84% of HR leaders report that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is a high priority for their organization.

How to level out the recognition playing field

The first step to making a change is being more self-aware of your recognition tendencies.

Consider how often you give praise to diverse groups across your organization and check in with yourself: do you notice a disparity?

If your company has a recognition platform tool, it can break down how and when recognition is provided, easily identifying any marginalized groups.

It's important to pay close attention to those alerts. If your platform doesn't have these capabilities this could be a call to action for your organization.

Organizations can easily identify recognition gaps and introduce specific training and campaigns to improve recognition equity by leveraging a recognition platform program.

Now, for most people, the idea of having to download or use another app for work isn't all that appealing. Recognition should be available to teams, individuals, business units, and locations, without bias and using a mobile-compatible recognition platform for everyone, including if you work from home or are a deskless worker.

Plus, it's an easy way for you and your co-workers to receive the recognition you deserve. It is paramount that organizations find a way for everyone to participate in the program and by doing so, over time, authentic recognition will instill a true culture of recognition and belonging.

Recognition can make you a dynamic future leader

People leaders make or break employees' experience at work.

While most managers are well-intentioned, many leaders haven't been provided with the tools or training to succeed in their roles, especially when it comes to recognition.

AWI found that only 53% of managers receive training on recognition best practices, and because of this, many don't know the qualities needed to make praise effective and authentic.

Manager must up-level their skills as a way of becoming an effective and dynamic company leader.

Recognition should be personal, specific, timely and impact-oriented. Managers need to be able to hone in on what workers prefer when it comes to recognition, including whether they prefer that praise to be public or private.

The first step HR can take is to provide specific recognition training (it does exist), for management.

People who say their managers regularly recognize them are also more likely to report that they, themselves frequently recognize others, making a case for a "pay-it-forward" culture of recognition.

Ultimately, the goal is not only to effectively learn why recognition is a vital aspect for every employee but also how HR can play a pivotal role in propelling a positive and encouraging work environment. Employees are the backbone of every company and managers must inspire action from the top down by establishing a culture of consistent praise. That change can start with you.

So, what does authentic recognition look like to you?

At the end of the day, all staff want authentic recognition that reflects their hard work and dedication. Without it everything that follows simply falls flat.

When managers and company leaders listen to employees, they are better equipped to roll out practices that align with employees' unique wants and needs, driving engagement and retention.

Meaningful action and authentic recognition are motivating drivers of trust and can help increase your teams' resiliency in tough times.

So, be honest with yourself and your co-workers.

What does authentic recognition look like to you?

What do you value and what doesn't resonate?

Knowing what your specific needs are can help your co-workers and managers navigate how they provide feedback, helping close the recognition gap in 2024 and beyond.

What the stats say: How does America do recognition?
(Source: AWI) Source: AWI

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Authentic employee recognition: Your role in creating equity and consistency | TLNT

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New AWI research suggests employee recognition isn't dished out equitably. This needs to change says Hannah Yardley:

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BBC: Why Some People Are Cruel to Others

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BBC: Why Some People Are Cruel to Others

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Inflicting harm or pain on someone incapable of doing the same to you might seem intolerably cruel, but it happens more than you might think.

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The Atlantic: Why Are People Acting So Weird

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The Atlantic: Why Are People Acting So Weird

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Crime, "unruly passenger" incidents, and other types of strange behavior have all soared recently. Why?

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
Everyone is acting so weird! The most obvious recent weirdness was when Will Smith smacked Chris Rock at the Oscars. But if you look closely, people have been behaving badly on smaller stages for months now. Last week, a man was arrested after he punched a gate agent at the Atlanta airport. (The gate agent looked like he was about to punch back, until his female colleague, bless her soul, stood on some chairs and said "no" to the entire situation.) That wasn't even the only viral asshole-on-a-plane video that week.

In February, people found ways to throw tantrums while skiing- skiing. In one viral video, a man slid around the chairlift-boarding area of a Canadian resort, one foot strapped into his snowboard as he flailed at security guards and refused to comply with a mask mandate. Separate footage shows a maskless man on a ski shuttle screaming, "There's nobody wearing masks on any bus in this goddamn town!" before calling his fellow passenger a "liberal piece of shit" and storming off.

During the pandemic, disorderly, rude, and unhinged conduct seems to have caught on as much as bread baking and Bridgerton. Bad behavior of all kinds -everything from rudeness and carelessness to physical violence-has increased, as the journalist Matt Yglesias pointed out in a Substack essay earlier this year. Americans are driving more recklessly, crashing their cars and killing pedestrians at higher rates. Early 2021 saw the highest number of "unruly passenger" incidents ever, according to the FAA. In February, a plane bound for Washington, D.C., had to make an emergency landing in Kansas City, Missouri, after a man tried to break into the cockpit.

Health-care workers say their patients are behaving more violently; at one point, Missouri hospitals planned to outfit nurses with panic buttons. Schools, too, are reporting an uptick in "disruptive behavior," Chalkbeat reported last fall. In 2020, the U.S. murder rate rose by nearly a third, the biggest increase on record, then rose again in 2021. Car thefts spiked 14 percent last year, and carjackings have surged in various cities. And if there were a national tracker of school-board-meeting hissy fits, it would be heaving with data points right now.

What on earth is happening? How did Americans go from clapping for health-care workers to threatening to kill them? More than a dozen experts on crime, psychology, and social norms recently walked me through a few possible explanations.

We're all stressed out

One likely explanation for the spike in bad behavior is the rage, frustration, and stress coursing through society right now. When Christine Porath, a business professor at Georgetown University, collected data on why people behave in rude or uncivil ways, "the No. 1 reason by far was feeling stressed or overwhelmed," she told me.

The pandemic has created a lot of "high-stress, low-reward" situations, said Keith Humphreys, a psychiatry professor at Stanford, and now everyone is teetering slightly closer to their breaking point. Someone who may have lost a job, a loved one, or a friend to the pandemic might be pushed over the edge by an innocuous request.

"When someone has that angry feeling, it's because of a combination of some sort of provocation, their mood at the time of that provocation, and then how they interpret that provocation," said Ryan Martin, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay who studies anger. Not only are people encountering more "provocations"-staffing shortages, mask mandates-but also their mood is worse when provoked. "Americans don't really like each other very much right now," he added.

Rudeness can be contagious. Porath has found that at work, people spread their negative emotions to their colleagues, bosses, and clients-even if those individuals weren't the source of the negativity. "People who witness rudeness are three times less likely to help someone else," she told me. She thinks people might be picking up on rudeness from social media and passing it on. Or they might be logging in to a Zoom meeting with their overwhelmed boss, getting yelled at, and then speaking a little more curtly to the grocery cashier later.

People are drinking more

People have been coping with the pandemic by drinking more and doing more drugs, and "a lot of these incidents involve somebody using a substance," Humphreys said. "Whether they're drinking before they get on the flight ... A lot of auto accidents, including aggression-driven auto accidents, come from substances."

Americans have been drinking 14 percent more days a month during the pandemic, and drug overdoses have also increased since 2019. Substance-abuse treatment, never especially easy to come by, was further interrupted by COVID.

Americans have also been buying more guns, which may help explain the uptick in the murder rate. Gun sales spiked in 2020 and 2021, and more people are being killed with guns than before. In 2020, police recovered nearly twice as many firearms within a year of purchase as they did in 2019-a short " time to crime " window that suggests criminal intent. "Put more plainly, thousands of guns purchased in 2020 were almost immediately used in crimes," Champe Barton writes at . Though owning a gun doesn't make it more likely that you'll kill someone, it makes it more likely that you'll be successful if you try.

We're social beings, and isolation is changing us

The pandemic loosened ties between people: Kids stopped going to school; their parents stopped going to work; parishioners stopped going to church; people stopped gathering, in general. Sociologists think all of this isolation shifted the way we behave. "We're more likely to break rules when our bonds to society are weakened," Robert Sampson, a Harvard sociologist who studies social disorder, told me. "When we become untethered, we tend to prioritize our own private interests over those of others or the public."

The turn-of-the-20th-century scholar Émile Durkheim called this state anomie, or a lack of social norms that leads to lawlessness. "We are moral beings to the extent that we are social beings," Durkheim wrote. In the past two years, we have stopped being social, and in many cases we have stopped being moral, too.

"We've got, I think, a generalized sense that the rules simply don't apply," Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, told me. In some places, he says, police arrested fewer people during the pandemic, and "when enforcement goes down, people tend to relax their commitment to the rules."

Though it's been a lifesaving tool throughout the pandemic, mask wearing has likely made this problem worse. Just as it's easier to scream at someone on Twitter than in real life, it's easier to rage at a masked flight attendant than one whose face you can fully see. "You don't really see a human being so much as you're seeing someone masked," Sampson said. Though one study found that face masks don't dehumanize the wearer, another small experiment found that they do impair people's ability to detect emotions.

Mental illness can't explain this

Some of the strange behavior that has attracted the most attention seems to involve people suffering from delusions or hallucinations. A few weeks ago, Twitter seized on a story of a flight attendant who subdued an unruly passenger by hitting him on the head with a coffeepot. It was a moment of seeming righteousness, of a jackass getting what he deserved. But the fuller story is more disturbing: The man told flight attendants that "people were attempting to hurt him and they followed him on the plane" and that "he heard the individuals harming his family over the telephone." The man who shoved a woman in front of a train at Times Square in January-another incident widely cited as an example of the uptick in assaults-showed symptoms of schizophrenia and had spun through a cycle of jail stints, psychiatric hospitalizations, and discharges to the streets.

The pandemic has had some measurable effects on mental health. Though the most common issues among people who contracted COVID-19 were anxiety and depression, a small percentage of people infected with the coronavirus appeared to develop psychosis for the first time. Throughout the pandemic, treatment for severe mental-health problems, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, has been harder to access. In early 2020, some psychiatrists suspended group therapy and other in-person programs; later, emergency rooms filled with COVID-19 patients, limiting capacity for psychiatric intake. Hospitals have periodically repurposed psych beds for COVID patients, leading to shortages nationwide. At one point last year, Virginia's mental hospitals were " dangerously full," and several had stopped admitting new patients because of a lack of staff. Staffing issues have also plagued hospitals in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

The majority of people with mental illness, though, are not violent. Most people with mental illness who commit violence have other problems, such as anger issues, substance abuse, or a recent trauma. People with severe mental illness are only a tiny percentage of the population, and past research shows that they commit only 3 to 5 percent of violent acts, so they couldn't possibly be responsible for the huge surge in misbehavior. According to the FAA, 72 percent of unruly-passenger incidents last year were " mask-related," suggesting that they have more to do with politics than paranoia. Regarding the people causing scenes, "I think those are assholes," said Tom Insel, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health and the author of Healing. "It's so important to distinguish people who have a mental illness from people who just do egregious things."

Some of the antisocial behavior Americans are seeing will resolve itself as the pandemic loosens its grip. In most of the country, masks are coming off, people are resuming normal gatherings, and kids have returned to school. The rules and rhythms that kept America running smoothly are settling back into place.

Improvement may be slow. But experts think human interaction will, eventually, return to the pre-pandemic status quo. The rise in disorder may simply be the unsavory side of a uniquely difficult time-one in which many people were tested, and some failed. "There have been periods where the entire nation is challenged," Insel said, "and you see both things: people who do heroic things, and people who do some very defensive, protective, and oftentimes ridiculous things."

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chairlift-boarding area of a canadian resort

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Crime, "unruly passenger" incidents, and other types of strange behavior have all soared recently. Why?

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Financial Times: The Menace of The Overblown Job Title

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Financial Times: The Menace of The Overblown Job Title

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Terrible epithets confuse and infuriate, but they are also on the rise

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HBR: Giving Negative Feedback Can Make Empathetic Leaders Less Effective

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HBR: Giving Negative Feedback Can Make Empathetic Leaders Less Effective

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We all know how it feels to receive negative feedback - but how does giving negative feedback impact the person delivering it? The authors conducted a series of studies with nearly 500 leaders and found that the impact of delivering negative feedback depended on how empathetic the leaders were. They found that high-empathy leaders became less effective at core leadership tasks after giving negative feedback (especially if the recipient had a strong negative reaction), while low-empathy leaders actually became more effective. Based on these findings, the authors offer several strategies for organizations to better support both high- and low-empathy leaders, including encouraging more-empathetic leaders to take breaks after giving negative feedback and training less-empathetic leaders on techniques for delivering feedback more compassionately.

Sharing negative feedback is a critical component of effective leadership - but while the benefits of receiving constructive criticism are clear, it's less obvious how giving such feedback impacts leaders. While some leaders enjoy giving negative feedback, one survey found that 44% of managers find it stressful or difficult.

This isn't just about feeling a little uncomfortable. We conducted a series of studies with nearly 500 leaders from a wide range of industries exploring the hidden consequences of giving negative feedback. We found that for some leaders, their effectiveness took a significant hit immediately after they gave the feedback.

Why might this be? Our research suggests that a key factor is empathy. While the ability to empathize is a critical leadership skill in many contexts, we found that high-empathy leaders actually became less effective after giving negative feedback, while low-empathy leaders became more effective. Interestingly, prior studies have shown that empathetic leaders are better at giving negative feedback helpfully. Their ability to anticipate how the recipient is likely to think and feel, and to express genuine care and compassion, make these leaders more likely to communicate the feedback in a constructive manner. And yet our studies demonstrated that the leaders who give feedback that will be most beneficial to the recipient are likely to become less effective themselves after giving it.

To better understand the factors driving this phenomenon, we asked leaders to report their levels of distress and attentiveness after giving negative feedback. We found that the higher they scored on standard questionnaires designed to measure empathy, the more distressed and inattentive they became after giving the feedback, leading them to report that they became less effective at their jobs and less able to inspire their teams. In a follow-up study, we also found that the more upset the recipients of the feedback seemed to be, the worse high-empathy leaders performed at tasks designed to measure critical leadership skills such as time management and the ability to focus. This makes sense: Since being more empathetic essentially makes leaders more likely to "catch" others' emotions, a strong negative emotional reaction from the recipients could spill over onto the high-empathy leaders, affecting their own emotional states and thus their performance.

Taken together, our research suggests that for more-empathetic leaders, providing negative feedback can be a stressful, energy-depleting experience, which in turn can compromise their subsequent effectiveness at leadership tasks that require energy and attention. In contrast, less empathetic leaders are less likely to take their employees' perspectives or emotionally register how receiving harsh feedback might make people feel bad. This means they are not as affected by the negative emotions that employees experience when receiving negative feedback. As a result, these leaders reported higher energy levels and, in some cases, exhibited improved performance after giving negative feedback - suggesting that for less empathetic leaders, giving negative feedback can actually be an energizing experience, rather than a depleting one.

Different Leaders Benefit from Different Forms of Support

In light of these findings, how can organizations empower leaders to give helpful feedback while minimizing the toll it can take on their mental state and effectiveness?

The first step is to acknowledge that high- and low-empathy leaders face different challenges, and thus will likely benefit from different forms of support. Importantly, while in an ideal world, we might wish for leadership to be exclusively the domain of the highly empathetic, the reality is that most organizations are likely to employ a mix of higher- and lower-empathy managers and executives. Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that lower levels of empathy are more common among senior leaders than in the general population, so it's a relevant consideration to keep in mind when developing policies designed to support a broad range of leaders.

Strategies for higher-empathy leaders

Organizations should acknowledge the energy and performance costs of giving negative feedback and explore strategies to minimize those costs. For example, one approach is for leaders to intentionally carve out time to recover after providing negative feedback. This might mean providing this feedback before a scheduled break or at the end of the workday to give themselves time to recuperate before taking on important decisions or tasks. Alternatively, if taking a break is unrealistic, leaders can focus on tasks that require less energy and attention, since these are tasks for which their performance may be less likely to suffer immediately after providing feedback.

Another approach is to proactively reduce the impact of giving tough feedback by following these discussions with tasks that leaders expect to be enjoyable or energizing, such as networking, volunteering, or working on a passion project. This can help replenish leaders' energy banks, so they are better equipped to tackle the remainder of their workday.

Strategies for lower-empathy leaders

Our research suggests that giving feedback is less likely to harm performance for these leaders. However, prior research has shown that more-empathetic people generally provide negative feedback in a manner that feels more useful to recipients than less empathetic people do. Coupled with our findings that less empathetic leaders are more likely to be energized by giving negative feedback, this suggests that organizations could potentially fall into a vicious cycle, in which those who are most excited to give negative feedback are, on average, the worst at giving it.

To address this, organizations should provide training and coaching for lower-empathy leaders on how to be helpful and compassionate when delivering feedback. There are several specific skills and tactics that these trainings can help leaders cultivate:

Developing these skills and following best practices can go a long way in helping leaders give feedback more effectively. But alongside these efforts, our research suggests that organizations should also incorporate training designed to help leaders recognize and manage the emotional demands of providing negative feedback. This will not only benefit the well-being and performance of high empathy leaders, but will also help the leaders who are best-equipped to provide helpful feedback feel more comfortable giving it - ultimately benefiting leaders, their employees, and entire organizations.

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Giving Negative Feedback Can Make Empathetic Leaders Less Effective

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We all know how it feels to receive negative feedback - but how does giving negative feedback impact the person delivering it? The authors conducted a series of studies with nearly 500 leaders and found that the impact of delivering negative feedback depended on how empathetic the leaders were.

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Lifting up both individuals and teams and recognizing emotions builds stronger communities, more trust, and helps people feel cared for. With the environment continuing to feel uncertain, engaging employees in this way is more important than ever. While calls to reduce burnout, implement systemic fixes, and increase retention mount, managers in any industry can implement the authors' 10 strategies immediately to listen deeply for emotions, reflect that understanding, and provide appreciation, connection, and community. These tactics can be used in both in-person and virtual environments, on a regular basis or as needed, in whichever order works for your team.

Today's tumultuous environment - the pandemic, the economy, war, divisive politics, the changing nature of work, and continued uncertainty - generates emotions in just about everyone. And those emotions undoubtedly have an impact on people's engagement at work. According to Gallup, employee engagement has dropped over the last several years to 32%, and 17% of employees are actively disengaged.

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Lifting up both individuals and teams and recognizing emotions builds stronger communities, more trust, and helps people feel cared for. With the environment continuing to feel uncertain, engaging employees in this way is more important than ever.

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HBR: What Employees Need from Leaders in Uncertain Times

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HBR: What Employees Need from Leaders in Uncertain Times

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What Employees Need from Leaders in Uncertain Times

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It’s one thing to lead through a normal range of uncertainty with its ups and downs. But how do you lead when the inflections, disruptions, dislocations, and other threat conditions pile up, as they have in the last few years? While the leader has little to no control over the external competitive environment, they have astonishing influence over the internal performance environment, including employee engagement, morale, and productivity. How can leaders help their people flourish during extreme uncertainty? The author presents four practical strategies to help you engage employees under the most unforgiving of circumstances.

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With the increasing demand for cloud employees, AWS Educate provides an academic gateway for the next generation of IT and cloud professionals. AWS Educate is Amazon's global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related learning.

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HRZone: Leadership: Why Kindness is an Underrated Quality at Work

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HRZone: Leadership: Why Kindness is an Underrated Quality at Work

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Workhuman: 5 Reasons Kindness Matters at Work

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Workhuman: 5 Reasons Kindness Matters at Work

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MarketWatch: Why It Pays Off to Be Kind at Work

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MarketWatch: Why It Pays Off to Be Kind at Work

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Forbes: Kindness at Work: The New Link to Engagement & Performance

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Forbes: Kindness at Work: The New Link to Engagement & Performance

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In the popular show from AppleTV+, Ted Lasso is a coach who takes a different approach to leading his team to victory - kindness. The plot centers around how those around this character are shocked, confused and ultimately positively transformed by the character's commitment to facing the challenges, setbacks and betrayals from a place of kindness. Many fans responded to this show and helped grow its popularity because this spotlight on kindness felt so different, yet desperately missing from our society, as a whole.

Can this approach work in the workplace? When popular phrases such as, "nice people don't get the corner office," run rampant in our business culture, it's a tough switch to make. Many executives will hear that caring about their staff matters but then in the same breath be told to get results and not be afraid to make the tough decisions. This tends to lean towards telling people where they are not making the cut and sometimes letting them go from the job entirely.

Kindness is a combination of several different behaviors and mindsets. In fact, we all demonstrate our kindness in different ways. So how do we get a sense of how to use kindness without it being a weakness or being interpreted as being 'too soft' on the job?

Research is showing that kindness is not only a nice to have but a critical factor to workplace success. Kindness.org, a nonprofit that explores the science and psychology of the benefits of kindness. A meta-analysis of over 200 studies has shown that 'organizational citizenship behaviors' (OCBs) - "altruism, courtesy, conscientiousness, civic virtue, and sportsmanship" - are associated with happiness at work, as well as company productivity and profit.

Dr. Oliver Scott Curry, Chief Science Officer at Kindness.org, explains that, "Humans are a very cooperative species. Kindness in all of its various forms is a way of kickstarting that cooperation. Kindness can be seen as fluffy but it's essential to keeping those relationships in tip top condition." So how do we apply this on the job while balancing the need to produce a profit, meet deadlines and achieve our career goals?

Kindness.org also conducted a study, sponsored by Beekman 1802, to investigate the link between kindness and employee satisfaction, with 1365 employees participating from six companies. Key highlights from this survey showed that kindness at work predicts happiness at work, and happiness in life. It even surfaced the theme that kindness at work is a better predictor of happiness than income.

Some key principles to keep in mind to integrate kindness as an effective approach in the workplace includes:

1. Practice extreme kindness with yourself. Jaclyn Lindsey, co-founder of Kindness.org, shares that, "If you're unhappy in your work life, you bring that to every other aspect of your world. But if we create kind workplaces, it impacts the business and the wellbeing of the employees, while contributing to the overall wellness of our society." This can start with developing a practice of mindfulness and observing the things we tell ourselves when we make mistakes or are out of our comfort zones. If you can't be kind with yourself, you'll have a greater challenge being truly kind to others.

2. See the whole person, not just what they do or don't do for you or the business. We can get stuck lasering in on what's not working and what needs to be fixed. Most workplaces over-emphasize 'firefighting' creating a reactive culture vs. proactive one. However, when we focus on seeing another's strengths, not just their perceived flaws, we have a greater chance of being inclusive of different views, styles and perspectives. This also extends a more psychologically safe dynamic between you and others. Knowing that someone sees the best in us can inspire us to want to achieve even greater levels of success and support for all involved.

3. Debate work, not one another. A critical opportunity to exhibit kindness on the job is how you choose to view differences of opinion or approach to work. When we debate the 'how' and 'what' of the work, while viewing the other person as an equal and valuable partner, we have a greater chance to innovate together. But the key is to ensure we avoid accusing others of negative intentions. We have to own that we don't know another's motivations or thought process. We also have to own that we choose how we feel about situations and what we decide to do in response to someone disagreeing with us.

4. Approach feedback like a game of catch. Kindness isn't about ignoring issues or avoiding tough conversations. In fact, silence can often be experienced as 'violence." This means that the lack of feedback can be seen as punishment or at the bare minimum, neglect. To ensure feedback helps build the relationship, while still inviting a candidness you'll need to approach the dialogue like a game of catch vs. a game of tennis. When we play catch, the goal is to keep both people in the game by throwing the ball in a way that is easy to catch. When we play tennis, we are hitting the ball to ensure the other person loses the game. The latter is what destroys relationships and the former is what builds them.

5. Foster a growth mindset. Dr. Curry highlights that, "It's a mistake to think of work relationships as zero sum or competitive. The more people realize that they are interdependent the more willing they are to cooperate." When we approach work with a growth mindset, everything becomes a chance to learn and grow. This includes mistakes we make, as well as mistakes others make that may have an initial negative impact on you. When we engage from a place of curiosity we are less likely to get offended, triggered or stressed. This enables our brains to focus on finding and creating solutions vs. how to defend itself.

Lindsey emphasizes that, "Every human has the capacity for kindness. It's in our genes, the relationship, well-being, Kindness is a choice. Reminding people there's nothing too small to make a difference. It's up to us how we're showing up at work." Even if your work culture doesn't lead with kindness now, you can make a major difference by the way you engage during tough times and the micro-moments like a kind smile in the hallway or encouraging attention during a meeting. Every act of kindness counts.

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Kindness At Work: The New Link To Engagement And Performance

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When popular phrases such as, "nice girls don't get the corner office," run rampant in our business culture, it's a tough switch to make to lead with kindness.

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HBR: Don't Underestimate the Power of Kindess at Work

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HBR: Don't Underestimate the Power of Kindess at Work

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Don’t Underestimate the Power of Kindness at Work

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Organizations benefit from actively fostering kindness. In workplaces where acts of kindness become the norm, the spillover effects can multiply fast. When people receive an act of kindness, they pay it back, research shows — and not just to the same person, but often to someone entirely new. This l…

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NYTimes: Finding Ways to Thwart the Jerk at Work

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NYTimes: Finding Ways to Thwart the Jerk at Work

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Finding Ways to Thwart the Jerk at Work (Published 2015)

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Some employees are what researchers call “de-energizers,” spreading a dispiriting attitude around the office. In nonacademic terms, these people are known as jerks.

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NYTimes: How to Deal with a Jerk Without Being a Jerk

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NYTimes: How to Deal with a Jerk Without Being a Jerk

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How to Deal With a Jerk Without Being a Jerk (Published 2019)

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It’s natural to get defensive, but that only escalates the cycle of aggression.

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Vox: A Stanford Psychologist on the Art of Avoiding Jerks

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Vox: A Stanford Psychologist on the Art of Avoiding Jerks

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The world is full of assholes. Wherever you live, whatever you do, odds are you're surrounded by assholes. The question is, what to do about it?

Robert Sutton, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has stepped up to answer this eternal question. He's the author of a new book, The Asshole Survival Guide, which is basically what it sounds like: a guide for surviving the assholes in your life.

In 2010, Sutton published The No Asshole Rule, which focused on dealing with assholes at an organizational level. In the new book, he offers a blueprint for managing assholes at the interpersonal level. If you've got an asshole boss, an asshole friend, or an asshole colleague, this book might be for you.

I sat down with him recently to talk about his strategies for dealing with assholes, what he means when he says we have to take responsibility for the assholes in our lives, and why he says self-awareness is key to recognizing that the asshole in your life may be you.

"You have to know yourself, be honest about yourself, and rely on people around you to tell you when you're being an asshole," he told me. "And when they are kind enough to tell you, listen."

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing

How does a Stanford professor come to spend so much of his time thinking about assholes?

Robert Sutton

Well, there's some intellectual logic to it. I've done a lot of research on the expression of emotion in organizational life, including how to deal with assholes. I wasn't using that word at the time, but that's basically what I was doing. I even did some ethnographic work as a telephone bill collector, where I was dealing with assholes all day long. I was also part of an academic department that had a no-asshole rule - seriously. And we actually enforced it.

Sean Illing

Wait, what? What does a "no asshole" policy in an academic department look like?

Robert Sutton

We would talk about this explicitly when we were making hiring decisions. Stanford's a pretty passive-aggressive place, so it wasn't really in your face. But if someone was acting like a jerk, we would gently shun them and make life difficult for them. The idea was to avoid hiring assholes if it all possible, and if one squeezed through the cracks, we would deal with him or her collectively.

"One of the simplest - but admittedly hardest - things you can do is simply learn not to give a shit. Not giving a shit takes the wind out of an asshole's sails."

Sean Illing

Before we can talk about surviving assholes, we need a proper definition of assholery. Can you give me one?

Robert Sutton

There are a lot of academic definitions, but here's how I define it: An asshole is someone who leaves us feeling demeaned, de-energized, disrespected, and/or oppressed. In other words, someone who makes you feel like dirt.

Sean Illing

So an asshole is someone who doesn't care about other people?

Robert Sutton

I would make a distinction between temporary and certified assholes, because all of us under the wrong conditions can be temporary assholes. I'm talking about somebody who is consistently this way, who consistently treats other people this way. I think it's more complicated than simply saying an asshole is someone who doesn't care about other people. In fact, some of them really do care - they want to make you feel hurt and upset, they take pleasure in it.

Sean Illing

How many people looking for asshole survival strategies fail to notice they're part of the asshole contingent?

Robert Sutton

A great question. The reason that I have this definition of assholes as somebody who makes you feel demeaned, de-energized, and so on is that you've got to take responsibility for the assholes in your life. Some people really are so thin-skinned that they think everyone is offending them when it's nothing personal. Then the other problem, which you're also implying, is because assholeness is so contagious, that if you're the kind of person where everywhere you go, the people objectively treat you like dirt and treat you worse than others, odds are you're doing something to prompt that punishment.

You can see this with Donald Trump. I don't want to talk about him too much, but I think that's part of what's going on with him. If you insult virtually everybody, they're going to throw the shit back at you.

Sean Illing

Well, I'm not going to call the president an asshole here, but I will say that he's checking all the asshole boxes you've set forth in this book.

Robert Sutton

Yeah, I won't call him one either, but I agree with your assessment.

Sean Illing

What's the surest way for someone to recognize that they're being an asshole? I assume that most of us are occasionally assholes but prefer not to be.

Robert Sutton

Absolutely. There's some evidence in the book about how few people will say that they're assholes compared to how many people will say they're oppressed by assholes. There's a huge disparity. The main thing this research on self-awareness says is that the worst person to ask about someone's assholeness is the asshole himself, and the best people to ask are the people around him or her who know that person at least fairly well. Bottom line: Assholes need someone in their life to tell them they're being an asshole.

"We have to take responsibility for the assholes in our lives"

Sean Illing

Being an asshole isn't a great relationship-building strategy, but it does seem to correlate with professional success. I'm thinking of a famous asshole like Steve Jobs. Why is that?

Robert Sutton

Yes, if you are in a situation where it's an "I win, you lose" kind of game in the organization, then you don't need any cooperation from your competitors, and leaving people feeling like dirt might be worthwhile.

But there are two problems with that. One of them is that in most situations, you actually need collaboration. And we have plenty of research that shows that people who are givers rather than takers tend to do better in the long term. If you're playing a short-term game, then yeah, being an asshole might pay dividends - but I'm fairly convinced that doesn't work in most situations.

Sean Illing

And, to be fair, there are examples of assholes in business being upended by their own assholery. I'm thinking of Uber's former CEO Travis Kalanick.

Robert Sutton

Right. There are typically costs for being an asshole in the professional world. When you're climbing the corporate ladder, for example, you might be destroying the organization around you by driving out the best people, undermining their productivity, creativity, and so on.

Sean Illing

Let's get to the meat and potatoes of the book, which is about how to deal with assholes. So tell me, what's your best asshole neutralization strategy?

Robert Sutton

First, it depends on how much power you have. And second, on how much time you've got. Those are the two questions that you have to answer before you can decide what to do. Assuming that you don't have Dirty Harry power or you're not the CEO and can't simply fire people you don't like, I think you have to do two things in terms of strategy.

To begin with, you've got to build your case. You've also got to build a coalition. One of my mottos is that you have to know your assholes. We already talked about temporary versus certified assholes, but another distinction that's really important is that some people, and you mentioned this at the outset, some people are clueless assholes and don't realize they're jerks, but maybe they mean well.

In that situation, you can have backstage conversations, gently informing them that they've crossed a line. This is simple persuasive work. But if it's somebody who is one of those Machiavellian assholes who is treating you like shit because they believe that's how to get ahead, in that case you've got to get the hell out of there if you can.

Sean Illing

Let's make this more concrete. Say you're someone who's struggling against an asshole boss. Obviously, there's a power asymmetry, so it's not as simple as telling him or her they're an asshole. I imagine this is a common situation for many readers interested in this book. What's your advice?

Robert Sutton

The first question is, can you quit or transfer to another department? If you're stuck under a certified asshole, that means you're suffering. And if that's the case, you should get out - it's that simple.

The second question is, if you must endure, are you going to fight or are you just going to take it? If you're going to fight, you need a plan and a posse, you need to collect your evidence, and then you have to take your chances. In any case, I tell people to try to have as little contact as possible with assholes, and I offer strategies for doing that in the book.

One of the simplest - but admittedly hardest - things you can do is simply learn not to give a shit. Not giving a shit takes the wind out of an asshole's sails.When an asshole's being nasty to you, ignore him. Think about when you'll get home later that night and the fact that that asshole won't be there and won't matter. Think about how a year from now that asshole won't be in your life, but he'll still be the asshole he always was.

Sean Illing

What if you've got an asshole as a peer or a colleague? Does that call for a different strategy?

Robert Sutton

Your chances of getting rid of them are higher because you have more power. But there's a simpler way to handle a situation like this: just freeze them out. I'm in academia, which means there are lots of assholes we can't fire, but we can absolutely freeze them out. We don't have to invite them to events or gatherings. We can shun them politely and smile at them as necessary, but other than that we just ignore them. That's how we deal with assholes.

But there are some situations in which you may have to be an asshole to survive because you've got no choice but to push back against them. This isn't ideal, but if that's what you have to do, then that's what you do.

"Sometimes you have to speak to the asshole in the only language they understand, and that means you have to get your hands dirty"

Sean Illing

That dovetails nicely with my next question: Is it ever appropriate to out-asshole an asshole?

Robert Sutton

Sure. I try to see this from the perspective of the reader. If somebody has a long history of hurting you, and they have a Machiavellian personality, the only thing they understand is a display of force. If that's the case, the best way to protect yourself is to fire back with everything you've got.

Look, some people deserve to be treated badly. More importantly, they need to be treated badly. Sometimes you have to speak to the asshole in the only language they understand, and that means you have to get your hands dirty.

Sean Illing

Most of us don't want to be assholes, but sometimes we are. When I wake up in the morning, for instance, I'm frequently a grumbling asshole. I don't want to get up for this or that reason, so I roll out of bed and spend the first 30 minutes of my day stampeding around like an asshole. Not every day is like this, but it happens and it's embarrassing. So I guess my question is, how we can better check our own asshole tendencies?

Robert Sutton

First, it sounds like you're self-aware and that's a good thing. But look, there are certain situations that turn most of us into jerks, and we have to be aware of that and work on developing techniques to calm ourselves down. Sleep deprivation, for example, is one of the most reliable ways to become an asshole. If you're tired and in a hurry, you're likely to be an asshole. If you have an excess of power in a situation, you're at risk of becoming an asshole. One thing I've learned is that great differences in power bring out the worst in us.

Ultimately, you have to know yourself, be honest about yourself, and rely on people around you to tell you when you're being an asshole. And when they are kind enough to tell you, listen.

Sean Illing

Plato famously argued in The Republic that a tyrant, however powerful, ultimately suffers in the end by corrupting his own soul. You make a similar argument about assholes - that they might win at life but still fail as human beings.

Robert Sutton

Wow, I've never heard the Plato connection. That's not a question I expect to hear from a journalist, but I guess that's the former political theorist speaking. I have to say, I love that connection. We know that assholes have a corrosive effect on the people around them. There are longitudinal studies that demonstrate pretty clearly that people who, for example, work under assholes for many years end up being more depressed, more anxious, and less healthy.

So there's compelling evidence that assholes are terrible human beings who do harm to other people. I think the way you described Plato's analogy is far more elegant than anything I could say.

At the end of the day, if you're an asshole, you're a failure as a human being because you promote unnecessary suffering. What else is there to say?

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A Stanford psychologist on the art of avoiding assholes

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The world is full of assholes. Wherever you live, whatever you do, odds are you're surrounded by assholes. The question is, what to do about it? Robert Sutton, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has stepped up to answer this eternal question.

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Psychology Today: The A**hole Circumplex

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Psychology Today: The A**hole Circumplex

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How to make generosity contagious (w/ Chris Anderson)

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If you’ve ever opened up social media in the hopes that it would cheer you up only for it to leave you upset, angry, or tired, you are not alone. So what if we could turn that special power the internet has to change our emotions – and use it for good? The head of TED, Chris Anderson, joins Chris Duffy to talk about why he believes in what he calls infectious generosity. Join the two Chrises as they discuss how we can turn outrage back into optimism by tapping into one of the most fundamental human virtues. Chris Anderson’s book, Infectious Generosity, is out now. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts

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James Rhee: The value of kindness at work

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Kindness can go a long way when it comes to reshaping a business. Having saved a fashion company from the brink of bankruptcy, entrepreneur James Rhee shares the value of investing in a culture of compassion at work -- and shows why we should all lead with our hearts.

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Talk Nerdy: Jerks at Work with Tessa West

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Talk Nerdy: Jerks at Work with Tessa West

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Listen to this episode from Talk Nerdy with Cara Santa Maria on Spotify. In this episode of Talk Nerdy, Cara is joined by NYU psychology professor Dr. Tessa West to talk about her new book, "Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them."

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315. Jerks At Work: How To Deal With Difficult Colleagues, with Tessa West

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Listen to this episode from The Brainy Business on Spotify. In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, host Melina Palmer is joined by Dr. Tessa West, a renowned expert in social psychology and communication. They dive deep into the topic of workplace jerks, exploring the different types of jerky behaviors that exist and providing valuable insights on how to address and prevent these behaviors.

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10% Happier Podcast: Jerks at Work with Amy Gallo

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10% Happier Podcast: Jerks at Work with Amy Gallo

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TED: Do You Work with a Jerk? Here Are 6 Things You Can Do.

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TED: Do You Work with a Jerk? Here Are 6 Things You Can Do.

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Even in the best workplaces, rude coworkers may occasionally appear. But you don't need to smile and suffer in silence, says management researcher Christine Porath.

Oh, coworkers. We spend intense amounts of our waking lives with them, but while we voluntarily chose to be with some of these people, many of them are strangers foisted upon us.

As we know, these random collections of colleagues can frequently result in the best kind of professional fireworks: sparky, rewarding collaborations, meaningful friendships, and fleeting yet fond acquaintances. But every once in a while, you'll find yourself stuck with a non-team player - a bully, a jerk, or someone who is just consistently belittling or condescending.

Although your rude coworkers may be few in number, they can drain a disproportionate amount of your time and energy. The costs associated with uncivil behavior in the workplace are high, according to Christine Porath, a business professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace. "As you might expect, it impacts creativity, performance and focus," she says. "But it also has a negative effect on emotional well-being, mental and physical health, even personal relationships outside of work."

Porath and Christine Pearson, a management professor at Arizona State University, surveyed nearly 800 people across 17 industries to understand the impact of incivility at work. Their conclusion: When employees don't feel respected, their performance suffers. In their findings, 80 percent of respondents said they lost work time worrying about the incident, 63 percent lost work time in their efforts to avoid the offender, 50 percent deliberately decreased the time spent at work, and 66 percent said their performance declined. More worrying still, 25 percent admitted to taking their frustration out on customers, and 12 percent said they resorted to leaving their job because of incivility.

Incivility has also been shown to erode people's cognitive abilities. "Even if they want to perform at their best, they can't because rudeness hijacks focus and creativity," says Porath. In one study that she conducted with University of Florida-Gainesville management professor Amir Erez, participants were divided into two groups: one which was belittled, one which wasn't. People in the belittled group performed 33 percent worse on word puzzles and produced 39 percent fewer creative ideas during a brainstorming task. In a second experiment, participants were again divided into two groups: en route to the experiment, people in one group encountered a "busy professor," who reprimanded them for bothering him; people in the other group didn't have this encounter. For the reprimanded subjects, their performance was 61 percent worse on word puzzles, and they produced 58 percent fewer ideas compared to those who hadn't been berated. Interestingly, negative effects can persist even for those who witness moments of incivility: in three studies, they performed 25 percent worse on word puzzles and produced nearly 45 percent fewer ideas in brainstorming tasks.

Now, if you've ever had to deal with a jerk in your workplace, it's not news to you that they can bring down morale and productivity. But what can you do about them? Porath shares these 6 research- and experience-backed tips.

1. Don't meet rudeness with rudeness.

Even for the most enlightened among us, the reflexive response to rudeness will be to retaliate with the same. In its own way, incivility can be just as contagious as the seasonal cold that sweeps through your department, says Porath. But please check that instinct. You may have the sharpest zinger ready to fire, but remember that a withering takedown will not subdue the office jerk, just inflame them - and potentially escalate their one-sided rudeness into open conflict. Let your wiser, calmer self prevail. Ignore their barbs, minimize your encounters, and when you do have to deal with them, be brief, friendly and firm.

2. Spend time with the colleagues you like.

Your positive professional relationships can directly counterbalance the effects of incivility and give you a much-needed emotional bolster. Across industries, organizations and levels, "de-energizing" negative relationships have four to seven times as much impact on an employee's wellbeing as energizing positive ones do, according to a study conducted by French researchers Andrew Park and Alexandra Gerbasi and Porath. Whenever there's a debilitating de-energizer in your office, make sure you have a cluster of energizers to offset them. Who are the people in your workplace who support you? Who are the ones who embody why you took this job in the first place? Spend time with them, even if it's for a quick coffee break or walk around the block. And don't let your dealings with the de-energizer drive you to cancel plans with friends and family. Your nonprofessional relationships play an important role in keeping you buoyed.

3. Cultivate your own sense of thriving.

Another factor that can offset the ill effects of incivility: cultivating what Porath calls "a sense of thriving," or focusing on your own well-being. "In studies conducted across a range of industries, I've found that people who experience a state of thriving are healthier, more resilient and more able to focus on their work," she says. "When people feel even an inkling of thriving, it often buffers them from distractions, stress and negativity."

A sense of thriving can make it easier for you to reframe your coworker's putdowns and disrespect so they won't feel as destructive. "How much are you going to let someone pull you down?" asks Porath. "In large part, you really do get to decide how you interpret incivility, the meaning you assign to it, and the stories you tell yourself. You also get to control whether it makes you feel bad or not." People who focused more on thriving following an incident of incivility reported that their performance suffered 34 percent less than people who didn't, she says.

You can build up your sense of thriving in many ways, including getting adequate exercise and sleep, eating a varied diet, and prioritizing your non-work interests and hobbies. At work, make beneficial changes, such as seeking a mentor or doubling down on your personal goals.

4. Think about sitting down with your rude colleague.

In some cases, you might decide to talk it out with your abrasive coworker, particularly if there's a specific encounter or pattern of behavior you can refer to. Porath suggests you ask yourself these questions before you do:
Is their behavior intentional? Is their behavior unique, or is it part of an overall culture of incivility?
The answers to these questions aren't always clear, especially if you're upset, so you may want to discuss them with a colleague, friend, mentor or family member.

If you've opted for a meeting, find a good time to talk and choose an environment in which you'll both feel comfortable. One point to consider: Would it help to include other people as witnesses or mediators (e.g., your supervisor or someone from HR)? If so, invite them. And you may find it useful to rehearse your phrasing, ideas and approach first, even role-play the conversation.

In your discussion, you want to focus on the issues - not the individual - and how your colleague's specific behavior is harming your professional relationship. Your goal is for the two of you to identify and agree on norms for the future so you can work together as effectively as possible.

As you speak, stay focused on understanding their perspective. Does your rude colleague feel they are being mistreated or disrespected? How conscious are they of their behavior and its impact? Is there something outside the workplace - it could be completely unrelated to the job - that's pulled them off track and affected their mood and ability to be civil?

Be mindful of keeping your words and nonverbal communication neutral, and try to listen as much as you talk. Paraphrase what you hear your colleague say, and run it by them to make sure you're taking it all in. "In experiments, I've found that people gain credibility and are perceived as more likeable when they ask humble questions this way," Porath says. Any information you gather can help you two move forward.

5. If you decide not to talk to your rude colleague, tell someone else about them.

If you're unsure about having a sit-down, you should still confide in one of your coworkers. In the survey conducted by Porath and Pearson, they found that less than half of respondents reported incivility to anyone, often out of fear or a sense of hopelessness. "Much of incivility stems from a lack of awareness," says Porath. "So if you, your boss or leadership hasn't given the instigator of incivility the information about how they're perceived, they may not change their behavior." Your feedback could possibly motivate the rude colleague to look at their interactions and change what they do. You might also find that you're not the only victim.

And if you decided against a conversation because you worry you'd be putting yourself in an unsafe situation, or if your coworker has crossed the line of incivility into harassment, bullying or abuse, immediately notify your supervisor, human resources personnel or workplace manager.

6. Know when it's time to leave.

If rudeness is the rule in your workplace and not the exception, leaving may be your best option. But Porath advises anyone who's thinking of quitting to answer these questions first. Talk them over with someone you trust.
How easily can I move to a better workplace? What would I gain or lose if I left? How would leaving affect my career? Does my current workplace appear destined to remain uncivil? Is incivility at work depleting my life outside work? Is workplace incivility injuring my self-image? Is incivility causing me stress?
Ultimately, "incivility is in the eyes of the recipient," says Porath, and it's up to you to decide if you should quit your job. When you do, you can make it your lifelong mission to foster a culture of true civility wherever you work. "Simply not being rude is about being neutral, but civility in its fullest sense requires something more," she says: "positive gestures of respect, dignity, courtesy and kindness."
Watch her TEDxUniversityofNevada talk:

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Do you work with a jerk? Here are 6 things you can do

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Even in the best workplaces, rude coworkers may occasionally appear. But you don't need to smile and suffer in silence, says management researcher Christine Porath.

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CNBC: 7 Types of "Office Jerks" - Here's How to Tell Which One You Work With

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CNBC: 7 Types of "Office Jerks" - Here's How to Tell Which One You Work With

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A psychologist says there are 7 types of ‘office jerks’—here’s how to tell which one you work with

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Drawing on decades of research, social psychologist and communications expert Tessa West breaks down the seven types of jerks you’re most likely to encounter at work. From gaslighters to credit stealers, here’s how to identify — and work with — each one.

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Forbes: 7 Types of Jerks at Work and How To Handle Them Successfully

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Forbes: 7 Types of Jerks at Work and How To Handle Them Successfully

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Jerks at work can wreak havoc on our job satisfaction and our ability to succeed in our roles
Getty Images/iStockphoto

Anyone who has ever worked for a manager who is terrible knows the pain and difficulty it can cause. And when we are on the same team or staff with a colleague whose behavior is negative, demeaning or disruptive, it can make our work lives miserable and prevent us from succeeding. Study upon study has shown that when people leave an organization, it's more often than not about their manager, not the work or role itself.

In a recent SHRM study, for instance, the findings supported the age-old workplace adage that employees leave managers, not companies, as 84% of U.S. workers say that poorly trained managers create a great deal of unnecessary work and stress. One phrase I've personally heard countless times over the past 16 years in my work as a career and leadership coach is this: "My boss is a complete jerk."

To learn more about the key types of jerks at work and how to deal with them successfully (and not get fired doing it), I caught up with Tessa West.

Tessa West is a Professor of Psychology at New York University, and leading expert on interpersonal interaction and communication. West has published over 60 articles in the field of psychology's most prestigious journals, and has received multiple grants, including from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. She is the recipient of the Theoretical Innovation Prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and writes regularly about her research in The Wall Street Journal.

She is also the author of the book, Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them, which explores the seven key types of "jerks" or difficult and conflict-creating individuals in the workplace and offers a definitive guide for dealing with (and ultimately breaking free from) the overbearing bosses, irritating coworkers, and all-around difficult people who can make your work-life miserable.
Here's what West shares:
Kathy Caprino: Tessa, can you share a bit about why you decided to write a book about jerks at work?

Tessa West: I've been studying the ways we handle conflict in our relationships for two decades. Five years ago, I noticed a trend: People were quitting jobs because they didn't like the people they worked with, but the same problems cropped up at their new jobs. Most people don't learn how to have healthy conflict conversations at work. They either try and fail to address issues or do nothing and stew in anger. I thought a guide would be a good starting point to help people.

Caprino: In your book, you explore the 7 types of jerks. What are they are what are their key hallmarks?

West: Here are the 7 types of jerks I've identified that are most common:

Kiss-up/kick-downer: They climb to the top by any means necessary, which includes sabotaging the people who work at the same level as them and below. They question your expertise in front of a client or insinuate to the boss that you could use more "hands-on training." But they are top performers who can read the room, so the boss loves them.

Credit stealer: Teammates, friends, and bosses who gain your trust, and then steal your good ideas or take credit for your hard work. Some cover their tracks by complimenting their victims publicly. The credit-stealing occurs behind the scenes.

Bulldozer: In meetings, these folks talk over people and control the agenda, but the sneakier ones go behind the scenes to overthrow group decisions they don't like. Many do this by claiming that the process through which decisions were made was either unfair or unclear.

Free Rider: Charming and well-liked coworkers who are experts at doing nothing and getting credit for it. They distribute their work equally, so no one person feels the burn. Teams full of conscientious people and those with "hands off" bosses make great targets.

Micromanager: Impatient taskmasters for whom everything is equally important and equally urgent. If you have a micromanager, you struggle to meet long-term goals. You also work the hardest and get the least done.

Neglectful boss: Bosses who follow this cycle: a period of neglect, a build-up of anxiety from being out of touch, and a surge of control to alleviate their anxiety. If you work for one of these, you're in a constant state of uncertainty. When will they show up, and how disruptive will they be?

Gaslighter: Bosses with two signature moves: Lying with the intent of deceiving on a grand scale, and socially isolating their victims. The reasons why bosses gaslight people vary-from covering up their own unethical behavior, to convincing people to do work that they later claim credit for.

Caprino: Which type is the most common and why?

West: Free riding is the most common; it's a human universal to slack off. Smart free riders target conscientious people who are slow to complain. People freeride because they're pulled in too many directions, suffering from mission creep, or work for a boss who doesn't measure contributions.

Caprino: What are your top three strategies for dealing with jerks and toxic coworkers?

West: These are some helpful first steps:
Embrace small conflicts
Most of us are terrified of conflict; we see it as a red flag that a workplace is toxic. But social science has shown that having no conflict is the red flag-it means that you aren't communicating. Frequent, small conflicts are a normal part of the working process; the key is in learning how to do them well.

When you confront, focus on what the person did, not on why they did it. Be as specific as possible and avoid broad generalizations. "I felt like you interrupted me three times in that last meeting" is better than "Why do you constantly talk over me?"

To move forward, frame the behavior around a shared goal you both have instead of what they need to do to change. And at the end, ask the person, "Do you have any advice for me?" Conflict conversations go more smoothly when they feel like a give-and -take.
Feedback should be small and frequent
No one likes giving or getting feedback that is negative. It's uncomfortable for both involved. If you take issue with someone's behavior at work, bring it up immediately, and focus on the behavior in question-not on why you think the person did what they did. People feel a lot less threatened when we focus on small acts, not big issues, and we don't make assumptions about their cause. From your perspective, reducing that threat is key to getting them to hear your perspective.
Create a network that is broad not just deep
Most of us seek advice from a few close coworkers who we know and trust. But distant social contacts-people who aren't our best friends, but we do consider potential allies-are important sources of information and support.

Imagine that you're having a conflict with your boss, and you don't know how to get them to care about your issue. A distant tie, like your boss's colleague, has some insight into what tactics will on your boss. Most of us work in little silos-we know how our jerk treats the other five people we work with, but we have no idea what this person's history was like before they showed up. Distant social ties will help you get the lay of the land.

Caprino: How about when your immediate boss is a jerk or a narcissist (which I've experienced directly as have many of my coaching clients). What's your take on the best approach to deal with that personality type?

West: Narcissists have self-esteem that's unstable; they're very sensitive to rejection. When dealing with narcissists, I recommend a very utilitarian approach. How can you frame your requests in a way that will appeal to their self-interest? It doesn't feel good, catering to the needs of a narcissist, but just focus on your end goal.

Caprino: You write about the importance of having a network of allies at work which is different from having a lot of friends at work. How is it different and what are the best ways to build that ever-important network?

West: Distant ties give us reputational information about people; they also can connect us to other "central nodes" at work (people who have a lot of influence). The best way to form these relationships is informally. Ask a distant tie out to coffee or lunch just to chat and hear their perspective. Offer advice to newcomers at work to help you network.

Caprino: As a former therapist and now in career and leadership coaching, I've written and trained extensively about the 6 toxic behaviors that repel people and opportunities and how to recognize these damaging behaviors in ourselves and others, and also how to protect ourselves against narcissists in life and work. From your view, what are some tell-tale signs we might ourselves be a jerk at work?

West: Honest, negative feedback is rare at work; the absence of positive information is more common. If you suspect you might be acting like a jerk, ask for specific (behavior-based) feedback, and ask broadly-think lots of people who've been around you at work, not just one or two. We all have a worst-case-scenario version of ourselves lurking deep within. It's important to know what brings out this version, so we can watch out for the warning signs. We often can't control those signs, but can we control how we respond to them.

Caprino: Any last words about how to overcome (and even bypass altogether) the pain and challenge of working with jerks?

West: Most of the approaches I advocate for are uncomfortable at first; they take time to perfect. Be patient and try not to jump to a new job until you've tried them. If your jerk isn't motivated to change, or there is a climate at work that encourages their behavior, then I would consider thinking about the exit plan.

For more information, visit Tessa West at tessawestauthor.com and hear West speak about this topic in depth here.
Kathy Caprino is a career and leadership coach, speaker, executive trainer and author of The Most Powerful You.

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7 Types Of Jerks At Work And How To Handle Them Successfully

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As a career and leadership coach over the past 16 years, I've heard this phrase countless times: "My boss is a complete jerk." What do you do when your boss or coworker behaves badly on a regular basis and makes your work and life very difficult?

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NY Mag (Intelligencer): Nasty behavior spreads much faster than nice behavior

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NY Mag (Intelligencer): Nasty behavior spreads much faster than nice behavior

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We are living in a world full of assholes. To be sure: There are no census figures to back this up, no national registry from which to draw statistics, but one need only look at the headlines to see that the asshole population has not only grown in recent years but also spawned some new and rather alarming mutants. I mean, Martin Shkreli? Travis Kalanick? PewDiePie?

"You can make the argument that we are living in Peak Asshole," says Robert Sutton, a Stanford professor who, as the author of the iconic 2007 book The No Asshole Rule, is perhaps the world's leading expert on the species. According to Sutton, the problem of "disrespectful, demeaning, and downright mean-spirited behavior" is "worse than ever," which, while it may be bad news for humanity, is good news for The Asshole Survival Guide, the book Sutton came to New York to promote. And he has a point, citing the recent "fiascoes" at Uber and Fox News as examples of "assholes running wild." Then, of course, there's "the degeneration of American political discourse," as Sutton delicately puts it. We are sitting, on a Monday afternoon in mid-September, in what may arguably be the red-hot center of an Asshole Heat Map, if one existed: the pink, veined lobby at the base of the colossal penis that is Trump Tower.

Sutton is not a Trump supporter, but, sipping an iced tea from the building's beleaguered Starbucks, he is hesitant to outright label Trump an asshole, although his definition ("a person who leaves people feeling demeaned, deenergized, and disrespected"), he agrees, "certainly applies." But Sutton doesn't want to be, you know, an asshole: "Most of politics is everybody calling everybody else assholes." And assholism, after all, is contagious. "Nasty behavior spreads much faster than nice behavior, unfortunately," Sutton says. As he points out in his book, research shows that even a "single exposure" to negative behavior, like receipt of an insulting email, can turn a person into a "carrier." "Literally like a common cold," he adds. Similarly, when the president calls his detractors "haters and losers" in a tweet, when the wallpaper of life is made up of faces that belong to certified assholes like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Don Jr., etc., etc., ad infinitum, it most likely has a trickle-down effect. "The more assholes you're around, the more asshole-y you get." But there are other factors that have led to this explosion of assholes, Sutton points out, everything from heat and crowding to imbalances in power and the wealth gap. "The research says that when we're in those situations, there's envy going up, and sort of disdain goes down." Research also shows that technology has increased the "asshole problem," as Sutton puts it, because people are much more likely to be mean if they don't have to make eye contact. And because technology has created the expectation for things to happen faster, and at all hours of the day, hurriedness and sleep deprivation have become major factors.

"That's the other thing with him," Sutton says, lowering his voice in reference to the insomniac-in-chief, as though he might be swarmed by a team of guys in MAGA caps any minute, although the only people in evidence are European tourists. "Sleep deprivation is one of the most reliable ways to put someone in a bad mood. So maybe he should only be allowed to tweet after he was certified that he had eight hours of sleep three nights in a row."

Sutton wasn't always "the Asshole Guy," as he somewhat reluctantly calls himself. As a psychologist, he has always focused on the expression of emotion in the workplace. But in the course of working in academia among tenured professors, and in talking to his wife, who spent time as a litigator at a large firm, the subject of assholes naturally came up. And back in 2003, when a friend at Harvard Business Review approached him about contributing to its "Breakthrough Ideas" feature, he said he had one idea but he wasn't sure it was a breakthrough - assholes having been around since the dawn of man - and the journal probably wouldn't print it. It did. When the article came out, Sutton received an "incredible storm of emails," he says. This may have had something to do with the fact that 2004 was also a banner year for assholes, with the Iraq War and the Martha Stewart trial in the news and Fahrenheit 9/11 and Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ in theaters, but in any case, interest was sufficient that, when Sutton finished a long book about "evidence-based management," he turned back to the subject for The No Asshole Rule.

Nasty behavior spreads much faster than nice behavior, unfortunately.

The book was a best seller, and its titular coinage has since sunk into the lexicon. Today, a company that doesn't at least claim to have a "no asshole rule" would be as odd as a person who doesn't have, well, an asshole, although it does not seem to have had much of an effect on their proliferation. Sutton is frequently approached by people touting the rule who are clearly assholes. "It's even worse when they say they have it and they're assholes, because then, as I say, they're assholes and hypocrites," says Sutton, noting that in the decade since, the breadth of academic literature focusing on "all things asshole" has expanded considerably. "It's a real growth group," he says. Now there's Berkeley professor Geoffrey Nunberg's Ascent of the A-Word; Assholes: A Theory, by University of California professor Aaron James; Dacher Keltner's The Power Paradox; and Sutton's friend Adam Grant's Give and Take.

Again, there's no data proving that this academic boomlet is indicative of a worldwide increase in assholes, but studies in related areas, like workplace bullying, suggest it's possible, and Sutton himself was soon drawn back to the topic. It may, he allows, have something to do with his increased exposure to the growing tech industry through his work at Stanford, where he co-founded the Technology Ventures Program, which puts him in contact with many present, past, and future employees of Silicon Valley tech companies. "We produce a lot of those bros who become assholes, unfortunately," he says, although finance and health care also rank high on the list of professions in which "power differences and time pressure and fatigue" combine to create toxic environments. His favorite strategy for coping with assholes comes from a Stanford administrator whose equanimity Sutton always admired. "I never could figure out why he was so serene in the face of certain assholes, especially in particular a petty tyrant we have in our midst. But what he does is he pretends when people are nasty that he's a doctor who specializes in studying assholism. And he says to himself, 'Oh, what a fascinating subject or specimen. I can't believe how lucky I am to see this close up,' which is funny, because I guess that's partly who I am." He also likes a strategy he calls "time travel": "Think about it like it's tonight and you're looking back at it, and it won't seem so bad."

Although the new book seems exceptionally well timed, Sutton finished writing before the election, and he notes in it that he doesn't buy into the adage that assholes finish first. The presence of a major-league asshole in the Oval Office would seem to prove him wrong, but Sutton stands by this theory. "The evidence generally is that when you treat people badly, the only time it really seems to work is if you're in a zero-sum game and it's a shorter-term game," he explains. "And my perspective is that even if you're in the zero-sum game, where the assholes get ahead, there's all this negative carnage. The people around them, their physical and mental health and personal relationships, they all suffer. And I don't want to go to Trump too much, but God, look how many people he's gone through." In the long run, he concludes, "people who treat each other with some civility generally do better."

But what about when the long run is, you know, long? It could always be worse, Sutton says, as we step on the escalator that will take us down through the tower's pink innards, back into the breathable New York City air. "One thing I could say about Trump is that the duration of it is really long, but there's some that are even longer," he says. For example: "I'm with all these colleagues that are all tenured, and Stanford has no mandatory retirement," he points out. "So when I'm with an asshole, all I can do is hope."

*This article appears in the September 18, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.

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This Stanford Professor Has a Theory on Why 2017 Is Filled With Jerks

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According to Robert Sutton, the problem of "disrespectful, demeaning, and downright mean-spirited behavior" is "worse than ever."

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Inc: Stanford Professor: Here's Why You're Suddenly Surrounded by Jerks These Days

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Inc: Stanford Professor: Here's Why You're Suddenly Surrounded by Jerks These Days

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HBR: 6 Ways to Reenergize a Depleted Team

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HBR: 6 Ways to Reenergize a Depleted Team

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Microsoft’s annual Work Trend Index, a survey of thousands of workers worldwide, shows people around the world have a new “worth it” equation, with 53% of respondents saying they’re more likely to prioritize their health and well-being over work than before. And they’re taking action: The number one…

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Bob Sutton: How to Outwit Workplace Jerks

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Bob Sutton: How to Outwit Workplace Jerks

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Bob Sutton: How to Outwit Workplace Jerks [Entire Talk]

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Rachel Feintzeig | Photo illustrations and video by Aaron DuRall for The Wall Street Journal

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Don’t Be a Jerk at Work. (But Don’t Be Too Nice, Either.)

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How devolving into people-pleasing can hold back your career.

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HBR: 5 Jerks at Work & How to Deal With Them

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HBR: 5 Jerks at Work & How to Deal With Them

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When we're new in the workforce, we're often forced to figure out how to climb up the ladder while managing a variety of "difficult personalities" with little or no preparation. In her book, Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them, author Tessa West profiles five specific difficult personalities that you're likely to encounter at the office. Though each "jerk" differs in terms of behavior patterns, they all have one core psychological trait: They threaten your sense of certainty and control at work - your ability to predict what your day-to-day looks like. Here are a few strategies around how to understand their inner workings and weak points, as well as effective ways to manage them.

The Kiss-Up / Kick-Down: Reach out to well-connected or seasoned workers at your organization - people who are aware of the office politics and reputations of other employees. Your goal is to build an understanding of how widespread the problem is and get the names of other potential victims whom you can follow up with. If you gather enough information, approach your boss.

The Credit Stealer: Credit stealing is best handled outside of the room where it occurs. Before your next meeting, get together with your peers and make a plan. Promise to echo the contributions each of you share and give credit where credit is due.

The Bulldozer: Prevent yourself from being bulldozed by learning how to "hold the floor" early on in a new role or organization. Small acts of leadership, like stepping up to spearhead a project or lead a presentation, will help establish your reputation as an authority figure among your team members. Once that label is in place, your actions and behaviors will carry much more weight.

Micromanager: Confrontation will be necessary, but there's an art to confronting a Micromanager. When you do approach your boss, don't lead with micromanagement like them. Rather, lead with a conversation about getting aligned on your big-picture goals.

Gaslighter: Record everything. Gaslighters are allergic to record keeping. Documenting their behavior serves as evidence of what the Gaslighter told you privately and in person. This forces them to confirm things in writing, making it more difficult for them to change the narrative later on.

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5 Jerks at Work and How to Deal with Them

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When we're new in the workforce, we're often forced to figure out how to climb up the ladder while managing a variety of "difficult personalities" with little or no preparation. In her book, Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them, author Tessa West profiles five specific difficult personalities that you're likely to encounter at the office.