Jerks at Work Are Not Born, They’re Made

When you are dealing with someone who is a complete jerk at work, pretend you are a workplace anthropologist and take the time to assess the organizational culture. This assessment is crucial in planning your next steps. Take note:
 

• Do people seem engaged, excited, energized, and friendly, or grumpy, deflated and withdrawn?
• How do senior leaders interact with people lower on the totem pole and with customers?
• What is posted on the walls and bulletin boards?

And most importantly – who is a hero? Who is getting hired, promoted, or fired?

Jerks are the by-product of a company’s culture, the behaviors that are rewarded and reinforced. In his article “Your Company’s Culture is Who You Hire, Fire, & Promote” Cameron Sepah drives the point home that a culture is the result of behavioral modeling rather than a collection of fluff words and slogans on the walls. We are what we practice, not what we preach. When jerk-like behaviors are acceptable, or worse, rewarded, they become contagious turning into social norms.

As a general rule of thumb, if disrespect, rudeness, and bullying behaviors seem to be the norm and people around you seem miserable and disengaged, run! If you find yourself in a negative work environment, sounding the workplace jerk alarm is not likely to yield any positive outcomes. When a company has a bad corporate culture that trickles down from the top, and where the welfare of employees is disregarded, approaching HR or upper management would be an exercise in futility (recall recent story of an ex-Uber engineer going viral accusing the company of knowingly ignoring discrimination and harassment.) In such circumstances, don’t try to deal with the jerk du jour – cut your losses and start working on your exit strategy.

However, if the company culture is vibrant and healthy, and you have been unfortunate enough to deal with a difficult co-worker or boss, you need to come up with an actionable damage-control plan.  But who is a jerk? Typically, jerks are the grown-up version of the sandbox bully. They tend to pick on those they consider beneath them by being consistently unpleasant, critical, and uncooperative. They are ruthlessly competitive going to extreme lengths to outshine everyone around them, often playing dirty. They may be good producers themselves, but their poor behavior prevents others from maximizing their full potential. It’s very difficult when the workplace jerk you are dealing with is your own boss, the person potentially influencing your career potential. Don’t take it lightly. Stress impacts your emotional (and physical) well-being. It’s important to take action. Negative situations require a proactive problem-solving approach. This is a game of patience, finesse, and strategy.

In his book “The No Asshole Rule” Robert I. Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford Engineering School, provides enlightening insights into the phenomenon of the workplace meanies.

There are 3 steps to deal with workplace jerks:

1. Calmly disengage

Get yourself out of the line of fire, count to 10, and take a few deep breaths. Just stop and think; most likely, the incident is not worth losing your cool over. A calm, well-thought-out response always yields better results than a knee-jerk reaction.
 

2. Carefully assess

Before you allow yourself to get drawn into the ring, do some hard thinking to figure out the real issue at hand.
 

3. Determine your approach
 

#1 No Response – a reply is not always needed. At times, the best strategy is to do nothing. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. Shrug the nastiness off and let any jerk moves roll off your back. Take the high road and walk away the bigger person.

#2 DIY Response – handle own your own. In all contentious situations, exercise good judgment and be diplomatic. It takes finesse to be both direct and tactful. Don’t assume the jerk is aware of how he comes across or how his behavior affects others. Approach the jerk with caution using friendliness as your weapon. Deliver the well-rehearsed message along the lines of: “I really enjoy working with you and want to make sure we work together effectively. Is there anything I could do to ensure we have a great working relationship?”

#3 Outsource the Response: seek counsel from a trusted mentor or human resources professional. If your attempts at resolution are not successful, and the jerk remains uncooperative to the point it is affecting your performance and deliverables, take the issue to HR. But before you schedule a meeting, make sure you are familiar with the employee handbook and workplace policies. Be prepared to provide specific information about the work problem, especially if you are being bullied or harassed. Most HR professionals go into the field because they really love working with and helping people through work challenges. Their job is to support a positive work experience for employees and help create great work cultures.
 

Stop and Think: is there a chance you are the jerk at work? How often do you intimidate, demean, belittle, criticize, humiliate, or sabotage others? Are you rude and short with people most of the time? Do you tell half-truths or deliberately withhold information from others? How often do you find yourself getting angry and yelling at work? Ever threw a full-fledged temper tantrum at work? If you exhibit any of these behaviors, you may want to read “10 Signs That the Jerk at Work Might Be You”.

Try and get honest feedback to get a clear picture of how you are perceived by others. And if it turns out you are the jerk, hopefully you will decide to change your jerk-like behaviors. This would help you have better interpersonal relationships with others, which will in turn make you more effective. Even if you have seen career success despite behaving badly, think how much more successful you can be when you show respect and learn to handle relationships with tact and diplomacy. It may be a gift to yourself and to those who work with you.

Career Purpose: Focus on the WHY. Define the WHAT. Figure out the HOW.

“I am Sisyphus” announced a new client. I may not be quite up to date with Greek mythology, but I do know Sisyphus spent his days ceaselessly rolling a heavy rock up a mountain, only to have it fall back down. And for some mysterious reason, my first thought was The Myth of Sisyphus essay I had to write in college as an English Major. I do not remember any of it except the famous quote “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” and saying Sisyphus was stronger than his rock. It has been many years since I wrote that essay or engaged in class discussions about the meaning of life.

But I make a living helping people build successful careers so here’s what I’ve learned: without a clear purpose, work can seem futile. Every day brings new challenges. However, when we have a clear purpose, pushing our rock up the mountain, we find meaning and beauty in those challenges. At the core, purpose is the difference between holding a job and making a career. A job is something we do to make money with no thought into the future. A career is something we actively build as we move forward towards a goal. Put differently, a job is all about what we do, but a career is all about why we do it. At our essence, we are most motivated when we discover that authentic reason of why we do things, our purpose.

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” ~ Pablo Picasso

We all have gifts, talents, and a unique skill-set. Finding a career purpose is finding the sweet spot between discovering those talents and sharing them with the world while being paid to do it. A career journey involves figuring out the why, what, and how of work life. You begin the career journey with the end in mind: why you want to go on a particular path, what you expect to find upon arrival at each stop and what you need for the road, and then you need a plan detailing how you follow the path.

Your “why” is your purpose, your unique value proposition

Your purpose drives your decisions and actions. Pause and reflect on what you are chasing and be honest about why you are chasing it. Don’t fall into the trap of confusing purpose with fame or fortune. Make sure you purpose is aligned to the unique gifts and talents you offer the world, to the song in your heart. I encourage my clients to create their own purpose-driven career statement. Try and name your purpose in up to 10 words. Mine is “Inspire others to achieve more than they thought they could.” Or try using the following formula: I am ____________(what you offer) [VERB]___________________ (why).  Mine is: “I am a professional development guide helping people find a career path that fits.”

Your “what” is your needs, the things you must have to thrive

Once you figure out your purpose, you need to consider your hierarchy of needs: what you need to have in your life, what you want to accomplish, and what you can do without. The tricky part is figuring out how much is enough, what is truly a “must have” versus a ”nice to have.” We often want more than we actually need: more money, bigger house, better car, more stuff. I am not a minimalist advocating we should only have the bare necessities of life. To me, enough is an individual choice determining what we need to have and what we are willing to give up to thrive as we live our purpose. This means having a good sense of one’s priorities in life. Taking an inventory of what you have or want to have and then asking yourself if you really need it could be eye-opening. You have to analyze what in your life is in line with your purpose and what is not. Try and make a list of everything you have or want to have in your life. You can divide the list into sub-categories such as career, relationships, health, fun/leisure, possessions/assets/stuff, etc. When you are finished, go over the list and rank each of the items in order of importance with #1 being the most important. Upon further reflection, which items can you live without and still thrive?

Your “how” is your process, the path to your purpose

To build a career based on purpose, you need to take a strategic approach to making meaningful contributions at every stage of your journey. You’d need to create an action plan and put it in writing. This is where the work really happens. Define both the big picture and the in-between action steps that would help you achieve your goals. Remember: a plan keeps you moving in a consistent direction, but plans are meant to be broken. When you are driven by purpose, your career journey is both more interesting and more challenging. Be sure to spot and take the forks in the road and dare to discover new paths. Be fluid like flowing water making its way through cracks. Adjust to the obstacles you encounter along the way as you carve your path.

Ask yourself the following 3 questions each working day:

As you start your day, first ask “what actions can I take today to support my career purpose?” and then “what is my mantra today?”

And at the end of the day, be sure to ask: “What am I grateful for today?”

Fill your work and personal life with fulfilling experiences. That’s the only real value we leave behind.

Overcoming the Forgetting Curve: Turning Training into Learning

I recently attended the HR Symposium. There are many good reasons to attend a professional conference. For me, it’s mostly about the excitement of great conversations and the sharing of perspectives, ideas, and insights. This year the focus was on the importance of the employee experience. One comment that inspired this post came from Uber’s CHRO, Liane Hornsey, addressing employee training on the HR panel. She jokingly compared training to shooting heroin – a quick fix that doesn’t last very long.

In today’s hectic work environment, short-term fixes are often favored over long-term solutions. Training is frequently just another band-aid fix, which rarely produces long-term improvements. Anyone who’s ever attended training could attest to the fact that as soon as employee training is successfully completed, the forgetting begins. In today’s knowledge-centered jobs, the learning curve is steep, yet forgetting is inevitable and quick. It is a painful fact that employees quickly forget most of what they learn in training. In fact, it was scientifically proven. Dr. Hermann Ebbinghaus in the late 19th century was the first to plot the forgetting curve. This curve predicts that we lose most of the information we learn in training within just a few short days afterward, and thus, the new knowledge never gets applied to the job. If the goal of training is long-term retention of knowledge and skills and significant behavior change over the long haul, then what is done after training is delivered is much more important than the training itself.

Most companies invest in training programs, yet despite great efforts and best of intentions, most training programs fail to produce long-term behavioral changes or a sustainable performance improvement. In my experience, this is due to lack of follow-up strategies to implement continuous support as learners apply the new skills and knowledge into their daily work. Most training programs are designed as a single intervention whereas behavior changes require repetition, practice, and continued support within the context of the job function. There’s a huge difference between delivering training and creating a learning culture. Learning is not a newspaper, it cannot be delivered. It’s more like baking a chocolate soufflé. It’s like magic. You give the same recipe to 10 different bakers, and some transform the eggs into a mouth-watering work of art while others produce an unappealing flat pancake. Learning takes time, practice, and commitment. And ultimately, the proof is in the pudding. Knowledge has to be put into practice.

So why aren’t employers making the investment? Individual talent moves incredibly fast. It seems churning and burning through employees may be the preferred investment strategy of many tech companies adopting a very short-term attitude to retention and learning. A culture of “disposable” employees may offer exciting jobs and high compensation to get employees in the door but then fails to invest in long-term employee retention programs. Long-term retention requires a focused investment in employee development and a culture that nurtures continuous learning. This means formally establishing a mechanism to capture and disseminate knowledge.

Most people don’t like change, which means they’d like to work for a company where they can grow professionally and advance along their desired career path. The majority of professionals want to improve their craft, be more effective, implement new skills, and master new competencies. This can happen when organizations take a more structured approach to individual learning and growth. In “Outliers”, Malcolm Gladwell estimates it takes ten thousand hours of deliberate practice to master a complex skill. This translates into roughly seven years on the job. Whenever people go through a specific training program, they need further practice and support. Learning happens following the training event. Training helps deliver the content, but the challenge is in putting the training into action. Knowledge is not enough. The ability to translate learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage. The key is to ensure that the knowledge and skills acquired in training are applied in practice to impact the achievement of the organization’s strategic goals. It’s less about output and more about the difference that learning makes for individuals, teams, and the entire organization. 

Here’s how:

The first step is to facilitate learning communities. Practice is the hardest part of learning. Learners need to be given opportunities to connect and network long after the initial training session. There should be follow-up interactive workshops to supplement and enhance the training curriculum. These meetings should be structured as a series of interactive training sessions with a cohort of peers who can share their experiences, gain new insights, and form an internal network of support.  These are designed to the cohort’s specific needs such as functional area, experience level, and learning objectives. Participants are expected to incorporate the new skills taught into their daily behavioral repertoire and to continue to refine and master the skills over time.

The second is to invest in individual coaching and mentoring. Mentoring offers the benefit of learning from someone else’s experience whereas coaching empowers the person to implement the knowledge and use the ideas in unique new ways. Coaching is the essence of transformation, which is an essential component of an effective professional development program. Coaching focuses on outcomes. A coach creates a safe space in which deep reflection and learning can take place with the goal of creating an individual action plan to implement the newly acquired knowledge and skills to enhance performance. Organizations can utilize professional coaches, or train internal coaches, who although not professional coaches would be able to apply coaching principles into the company’s work environment. Internal coaches are trained in coaching skills to support the specific needs of the business. The main benefit is the in-depth knowledge of the business and the job. It is also the most cost-effective long-term strategy to help a large number of employees reach their full performance potential.

In a knowledge economy, companies with the best talent win. Thus, developing that talent should be top priority. In a learning culture, the responsibility for employee learning is shared by each employee, each team, and all leaders. Professional development efforts should have a great impact and ROI beyond the individuals trained. Embedding learning into the organization on all levels will enhance communication and teamwork, improve execution, and increase employee morale and engagement. This should be a continuous process; the more people learn, the more value they bring.

And final word of advice from Brian Tracy: “Take all the training you can get; one good idea is all you need to save yourself years of hard work.”

Don’t Just Lean-in, Tune-in!

We live in a noisy world filled with conversations (virtual and otherwise) vying for our attention each and every moment of our waking hours: office chats and meetings, cell phone notifications, emails popping up, news and social media alerts - all forming a universe of “all you can access” information. So with huge volumes of information at our disposal, how do we tune-in and pay attention to the right information? How do we identify the right conversations to join? How do we sift through the noise to find the golden nuggets of truth and to spot the pearls of genuine wisdom?

In a world buzzing with information, noise is the background hum of our work lives (in an open-space work environment and in the digital space.) As the level of noise increases so does the level of information clutter we have to deal with on a daily basis. To succeed in the modern work place, we need to learn to tune-in. It’s not about accessing information; it’s about effectively processing it. Managing information overload is like drinking from a water hose. Knowing how to tune-in and process information effectively will give you a major competitive advantage when making decisions and taking the right action. Here’s how:

1. Tune-in: develop sensory perception

To tune-in means to not only look but to actually see, to not only hear but to truly listen. Seeing and listening require focused attention with the intention to discover and to understand, to fully tune out and ignore the irrelevant and to zoom in on the right conversations and the things you really need to know.

2. Sort out: develop the ability to synthesize information

Sorting out information is all about sifting through a lot of garbage to separate the golden from all that glitters that’s not so golden. This requires effective interpretation, integration, and organization of data. Effectively integrating information, knowledge, and insights is the key to achieving better results.

3. Take action: develop the courage to act in a noisy yet ambiguous world

Even when you master the skills of tuning in and sorting out information, it’s not likely you’d ever be able to corral all the facts and combine all the pieces of information to reach full certainty. To succeed in a noisy world, you have to get comfortable with the fact that you are never going to have all the facts. Thus, you need to get comfortable with uncertainty and making decisions when you don’t have all the information. Stay-tuned to keep taking action on all the nuggets you uncover as you carve out new paths as new information becomes available.

Information is not something we acquire. It’s something we tune into. The more we know, the more we need to fine-tune our game.