There are a lot of jerks in the workplace. I should know. Over the last decade, since I began digging into the effects of incivility, thousands of pe

Memo to the CEO: Are you the source of workplace dysfunction?

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2024-06-30 19:00:06

There are a lot of jerks in the workplace. I should know. Over the last decade, since I began digging into the effects of incivility, thousands of people have asked me for advice about dealing with bullying bosses, board members, clients, and colleagues. I have, for example, been sent (and saved) some 8,000 emails that detail the range of such disrespect and intimidation, and the resulting distress and destruction. And I’ve tracked pertinent peer-reviewed research, which is growing like crazy. For example, a Google Scholar search on abusive supervision from 2008 to 2016 returns 5,670 scholarly articles and books; rudeness generates 16,300 citations—and bullying a whopping 139,000. My interactions with the targets of such abuse, plus that growing pile of research, prompted me to return to the subject in a new book, The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, September 2017).

The reasons for the persistence and spread of bad behavior are legion: a global economy, with its demands for rapid decisions and around-the-clock interactions, overburdens leaders, employees, suppliers, and customers. In this world, where email, texting, and social media replace face-to-face conversation and the compassion triggered by eye contact, too many jerks feel unfettered by empathy, guilt, and old-fashioned civility. Meantime, some rising executives believe that treating people badly is a path to personal success—a conclusion bolstered by journalists and a few academics, who celebrate demeaning and disrespectful leaders. One CEO I interviewed was worried he wasn’t enough like the late Steve Jobs and that his career and start-up would suffer because he was calm and treated people with dignity.