For some, however, "returning to work" may feel daunting at most if theirs is a toxic work environment. With more and more eyes opened to the benefits of a better work-life balance and other possibilities beyond the office, the urge to leave such an environment is great.
Not to say workplace toxicity in your neck of the woods is bad, but in many countries it has become a source of concern. Revelatory articles and thinkpieces about toxic work environments and the need for work-life balance have emerged in the wake of the push for "business as usual". More and more self-help books are sporting in-your-face titles, not a few with harsh language, perhaps to emphasise the urgency of doing something NOW.
One of those books is The A**hole Survival Guide by Robert I. Sutton, an organisational psychologist and Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University who studies leadership, innovation, organisational change, and workplace dynamics.
Sutton had written two other books. The No Asshole Rule is touted as a guide for working with and surviving all manner of assholes out to make your life at work a nightmare. The follow-up, Good Boss, Bad Boss, highlights actions by the best bosses and the mistakes of the worst to guide readers to become "the great boss most people dream of having." This book completes what could be called Sutton's a**hole triptych.
After writing The No A**hole Rule, Sutton was apparently inundated by thousands of requests for tips to survive a**holes from a range of people: from professionals, members of the clergy, students, and CEOs to "my barber Woody, and even my mother."
Rough language in a title is not for mere shock value. That so many, by his account, reached out to him in the wake of the book's release, is telling. Though one can look up reports of awful workplace hijinks, the litany of bad behaviours Sutton presents on one page is gasp-inducing.
Ear flicking.
...Smiling warmly as she whispers in his ear, "You are a loser. I am going to bring you down."
...Writes an employee up for arriving to work fifteen minutes EARLY.
...Flies into a rage over a late water delivery for the office cooler.
...Tosses a lit cigarette at him.
...Grabs her and bites her on the arm "leaving a bruise."
Makes you wonder whether some of the emails Sutton received are made up. Then again, we now know practices such as bullying, sexual harassment, and discriminatory practices against women and minorities are rife in some businesses, to the extent where it's considered part of the corporate culture internally – until the backlash that inevitably ensues after such practices are uncovered.
Sutton builds a good case for why workplace toxicity is bad, and offers some insight into why some at work are such jerks. Machiavellian maneouvres in some workplaces are perhaps inevitable when one climbs to the top, but at some point people's perceptions of what powerful people should be like are warped, and toxic behaviours are seen as hallmarks of a survivor or "player" in office politics.
He cites an article in The Atlantic that lays out why one should be a jerk at work. He then cautions against such a culture, writing that "my reading of that big pile of research indicates that pundits and professors who celebrate bullies, takers, and narcissists are exaggerating the spoils and downplaying the harm that assholes inflict upon themselves (especially in the long run)."
...treating others like dirt is contagious—so if you work with a jerk (or, worse, a bunch of them), you are likely to become one too. A 2012 study documented how such shit rolled downhill: abusive senior leaders were prone to selecting or breeding abusive team leaders, who in turn, ignited destructive conflict in their teams, which stifled team members' creativity.
After walking you through some diagnostics (how serious is your a**hole problem?) Sutton volunteers "field-tested, evidence-based, and sometimes surprising strategies for dealing with a**holes" – ways to help you avoid, outwit, disarm, and develop psychological defences against jerks who endeavour to make life hell for you at work.
When one can't evade, outmaneouvre, befriend or reform one's workplace tormentors, there's a chapter on "fighting back": confront the jerks, or find ways to expel them from the company – risky last-ditch steps when things have gone too far. Mental reframing of one's situation can also end up encouraging one's tormentors or lull one into complacency.
While Sutton draws on research, his experience, and the correspondence he receives from people about the subject, he's not touting The A**hole Survival Guide as the definitive guide on surviving toxic people. "A**hole survival remains more of a craft or skill than a science," he writes. From some of the examples he gives about confronting a**holes, readers should consider themselves cautioned.
Airport staff, for one, shouldn't retaliate against a rude client by sending his baggage to a faraway location, and one should be careful when retorting against and then slamming the door in the face of a CEO's right-hand man. With people, everything is situational, and test cases will not predict what happens in real life.
If you think of yourself as a civilized person but seem to run into assholes everywhere you go, look in the mirror—you could be staring at the culprit. Remember, treating others like dirt goads people to bully you back.
Another thing to note about Sutton's book is how US-centric the examples, test cases and research are. Self-help books from abroad, particularly the United States, don't juxtapose their theories and arguments against scenarios in other non-Anglo cultures (here's one such book, which, incidentally, was blurbed by Sutton). Talking back to your superiors is even more of a career-killer around these parts, even if one is right.
Some of Sutton's strategies, especially those on "fighting back" against one's tormentors, may not yield the desired results in environments where some toxicity in workplaces is accepted as the norm. And good luck fighting sexual harassment and gender discrimination in extremely patriarchal societies.
Nevertheless, workplace toxicity and how to deal with it is a universal problem, and this guide is anything but useless. At the very least, audiences outside the US and the white Anglosphere in general can gain some insight into how things are in Sutton's neck of the woods. And the research he quotes legit warns of the hazards of a toxic workplace culture.
...although we humans sometimes express it in strange ways, we all want a life where we encounter and are damaged by as few assholes as possible, we want the same thing for those we care about, and we don't want to behave like or be known as assholes.
He does address the possibility that the reader's environment and situation would make some of his advice ineffective or redundant: "The studies, stories, and techniques here provide fodder for crafting your custom survival strategy (after all, there are no surefire, one-size-fits-all solutions)." So it's up to the reader's to create, implement, and refine their a**hole survival plan, taking into account the limits imposed by the laws, the culture, and societal norms in where they are.
We are all responsible for taking care of ourselves, Sutton adds, but we also rely on others for physical and emotional sustenance. In the process, he appears to argue, we end up expecting too much from the other person and offence is caused. Hence, the a**hole problem.
So it falls upon us to manage those expectations while being mindful of others and, where possible, being kind while staving off attempts to fight negativity with more of the same. If everyone strives to do that, perhaps the a**hole problem will finally go away.
Until workplaces the world over wakes up to the fact that a toxic work environment does more harm than good, we'll have to do what we can.
The Asshole Survival Guide
How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt
Robert I. Sutton
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
214 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-1-328-69591-8
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Book Reviews
