A Stanford Professor Reveals How To Deal With Jerks At Work

“We need to be slow to label others as jerks but quick to label ourselves as jerks.”

Bob Sutton

I host a weekly radio show on SiriusXM 111, Business Radio Powered by Wharton, called Work and Life. We publish edited versions of my conversations as free podcasts. I invite you to listen to the episode (embedded below) that is my conversation with Bob Sutton, Professor of Management Science, Engineering, and Organizational Behavior at Stanford, where he co-founded the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP)and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (which everyone calls “the d school”). He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from The University of Michigan (just a bit ahead of Stew). Bob studies organizational change, leadership, innovation, and workplace dynamics. He’s authored several bestselling books including The No Asshole Rule, which has been translated into more than 20 languages. His new book is The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt.

In this conversation, Stew and Bob talk about surviving assholes at work and in other parts of life. Assholes hurt job performance, family life, and civil society. TCA (total cost of assholes) is a big problem! Bob provides proven, evidence-based strategies and tactics you can use to overcome people who treat you like dirt. But it starts with ourselves: But helps us see how we might be part of the problem and what we can do to overcome the bias that leads us to think others are assholes and we’re not. In the second half of the episode, Bob provides helpful advice to listeners struggling with assholes in their lives. Check out his web site for more.