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June 8, 2007

Creating a Jerk-Free Zone

by Celeste Blackman

Creating a jerk-free zone means getting rid of the obnoxious behaviors that demean others, destroy trust and alienate people from one another. Smart-ass remarks, whining, denying, always having the last word, yelling, or flooding with information are just a few of these behaviors. Over time, these behaviors not only destroy trust and erode relationships; they lower productivity in the workplace. They are what we don’t like about each other and are blocks to career and personal success.

It may surprise you to know that most people don’t get up in the morning with the intention of being jerks. They don’t jump out of bed and start planning how they can piss you off. In most cases people are doing the best they know how. Their intention is to be collaborative, do their best work and get along well with others, and then it happens: someone or something pushes their buttons and they get defensive. They become jerks!

The transformation from a good intentioned and well-meaning person to a jerk can happen quickly and unexpectedly. When we get emotionally triggered we go into a stimulus-response mode and act out, withdraw, or blame others. These defensive behaviors do not actually protect us from others, though it usually feels that way. Instead, they protect us from our own uncomfortable feelings and thoughts.

When people get defensive their thinking and behavior becomes rigid and they become lousy problem solvers. This leads to negative judgments which tend to alienate people from one another. Defensive behaviors are unconscious, fear-based and contagious: they are like blood in the water to a shark. Defensiveness invites defensiveness and pretty soon everyone in the vicinity gets rigid and ineffective. When the room is filled with defensive, rigid-thinking, ineffective problem-solvers the results are disastrous and expensive.

The cost of defensive behavior to an organization is huge. When people get defensive productive work slows or stops completely. People become more focused on defending their positions, winning, defeating others and being right instead of solving problems. In short, they act like jerks! Shared visions, goals and values go out the window as self-preservation takes over. In these environments teams do not thrive and people do not get excited about their work. This makes organizations less productive, often a lot less productive.

To build jerk-free zones we must support increased self-awareness so that individuals can close the gap between their intentions and their behaviors. When people are more aware they can replace their defensive behaviors with productive, collaborative and trust-building behaviors.

No Jerks: It’s a Bottom Line Issue

Jerks are costly. In his book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One, Stanford Professor Robert Sutton describes the financial implications of jerks in the workplace. He describes one employer of a highly compensated salesman in Silicon Valley who decided to quantify the costs of his star employee's jerky behaviors. The employer estimated that the cost to the business for one year was $160,000. This included anger-management training, overtime costs associated with last-minute demands, and time spent by HR professionals to mitigate his disasters. "In an organization of 1,000 people, the total annual cost of office jerks (TCJ = Total Cost of Jerks) is estimated at $750,000," says Sutton.

The high cost of jerks shows up in many ways including:

• lost productivity when people talk about the latest incident rather than working
• absences due to stress and illness
• overt and/or covert sabotaging of systems, processes and strategies
• turnover resulting in the need to hire, train and recapture lost knowledge
• difficulty recruiting internal candidates because a manager has a bad reputation
• time spent on complaints and mediation involving HR or the jerk’s manager
• less collaboration and cooperation because people don't want to work with a jerk or help a jerk

The bottom line is that these behaviors are very expensive.