Why jerks always win

If, on the other hand, he steals the pot and pours cups for himself and the other person, his power affordance spikes sharply. People want this man as their leader. I related this to Adam Grant. It was a comparison, actually, that van Kleef had run. When the man did just that—poured coffee for the other person without stealing it—his ratings collapsed. He became less suited for leadership, in the eyes of others, than any other version of himself.

Grant paused a quarter of a beat after I told him that. In another study, from the world of shopping, you do get to see it. What a jerk , Dahl thought. Two bottles of it. Before long, he had devised a study that asked, was it just him? Or could rudeness cause other people to open their wallets too? The answer was a qualified yes. But the qualifications were major.

A customer had to feel a longing for the brand, and if the salesperson did not look the image the brand was trying to project, condescension backfired. Finally, the effect seemed to be limited to a single encounter. When Dahl and his colleagues followed up with the buyers, he found evidence of a boomerang effect much like the one he had felt a few minutes after his purchase: the buyers were less favorably disposed toward the brand than they had been at the outset. Luxury retail is a very specific realm.

The paper had won seven Pulitzer Prizes since his promotion to executive editor a year and a half earlier. Then a scandal broke. A Times reporter, Jayson Blair, had been fabricating material in his stories. A town-hall meeting that was intended to clear the air around the scandal, during which Raines appeared before staff members to answer questions, turned into a popular uprising against his management style.

Raines himself had acknowledged as much earlier in the meeting. And that was pretty much it for Howell Raines. Which is to say: being a jerk will fail most people most of the time. Yet in at least three situations, a touch of jerkiness can be helpful.

The first is if your job, or some element of it, involves a series of onetime encounters in which reputational blowback has minimal effect. The second is in that evanescent moment after a group has formed but its hierarchy has not.

Think the first day of summer camp. It was when things got truly desperate at Apple, its market share having shrunk to 4 percent, that the board invited Steve Jobs to return Jobs then ousted most of those who had invited him back.

But here is where we should part company with the labels that have carried us this far. We have the capacity to change. Methodological flaws notably, lack of a control: I could not send a nicer version of me back into the same stores contaminated my investigation.

But the study did yield one finding: it is very hard to play against type. But the ban on pleasantries was too much. The reflex to say hello or thanks was so ingrained that I found I had to muffle the words as they leaked out under my breath. Practice helps, too. Perhaps no one better exemplifies this than my old friend Jim Vesterman. Vesterman took a break from his business career to enlist in the Marine Corps, joining its ultra-elite Force Recon unit and seeing combat in Iraq.

Now he runs a Houston-based tech company. Prior to joining the Marines, Vesterman told me, he had a pretty middle-of-the-road business personality, never running too hot or too cold. Upon joining the Marines, he recalled, he entered an environment in which he might suddenly be told to start fighting a fellow cadet with a padded stick while yelling at the top of his lungs—and then, just as suddenly, to stop, sit down, and straighten out a tiny wrinkle in his uniform.

When he reentered the business world, Vesterman said, he was different. But he also became more forceful. He described a recent conversation with a lawyer who was resisting his idea of applying for a trademark. Vesterman cut the lawyer off mid-sentence, with the word stop.

Vesterman then brought his tone down, and apologized for raising his voice. Vesterman recalled him saying that he wished more of his clients were as passionate and direct.

One other distinction sticks with me from an earlier conversation with him: when I used the word aggression , he said he preferred the word aggressiveness. Aggression is both a behavior and a feeling.

Aggressiveness is just a behavior, and can be turned on or off. The first serves as an outlet. The second is simply a tool. Yes, he brought great spoils to a great many groups. And yes, he hurt a lot of people while doing that. What most everyone can agree on, though, is that Jobs was an outlier. He just wants his point to be understood. The result is that you do your homework.

You come prepared. The distinction that needs to be made is this: Jerks, narcissists, and takers engage in behaviors to satisfy their own ego, not to benefit the group. Take the initiative. Tweak a few rules. Steal cookies for your colleagues. Let the other person fill the silence. Get comfortable with discomfort. Be tough and humane. Jathan Janove, J. If you have questions or suggestions for topics for future columns, write to JathanJanove comcast.

You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page. JathanJanove comcast. By Jathan Janove, J.

September 1, Image Caption. I recommend they be applied in two ways: For managers to guide their own behavior and the behavior of those they manage.

For HR professionals to use when coaching managers and others. Rule 1: Keep It Civil Treating people with respect is the bedrock. In other words, don't make assumptions! Rule 3: Keep It Solution-Oriented When problems arise, address them promptly, directly, and with a view to what caused the problem and the remedy, both short term and long term.

Rule 5: Talk First, Write Second Nicholas Epley at the University of Chicago has conducted fascinating research on written versus spoken communication. Conclusion In organizations, people will sometimes rub each other the wrong way.

Counseling Employee Conduct. You have successfully saved this page as a bookmark. OK My Bookmarks. Please confirm that you want to proceed with deleting bookmark. Delete Cancel. You have successfully removed bookmark. Delete canceled. Please log in as a SHRM member before saving bookmarks. OK Proceed. Your session has expired. Please log in as a SHRM member. Cancel Sign In. Please purchase a SHRM membership before saving bookmarks. OK Join. An error has occurred.

This term denotes individuals who engage in inappropriate conversation and behavior or who use racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive language. Piggish behavior should not be tolerated. You have the right to go to work and do your job without anyone—boss or colleague—creating a hostile work environment.

Take note of piggery, and report it as necessary to protect yourself and your colleagues from creatures whose mission is to push you into the mud. Note: in using this metaphor, I mean no disrespect to actual pigs, which are totally adorable.

Jerks tend not to mean you any direct harm, but their behavior offends. For example, I once went to a networking reception where I saw two professionals with whom I wanted to speak and perhaps work. They were facing each other and chatting.

I inched up and tried to find an appropriate way to insert myself into the conversation. Had they been classy, they would have moved their bodies to face me and form a triangle, at which point I could have officially joined their conversation. But instead of being thoughtful and welcoming, they acted like jerks and turned away from me.

So I moved a little closer to the duo. They turned again—this time, so that they were now standing shoulder to shoulder and I was directly behind their backs! They simply have inflated egos and a giant sense of entitlement. Of all the creatures listed here, jerks are the least nefarious. With some jerks, it is even possible to forge a partnership—provided that you can mindfully manage jerks.

To do so requires an extremely strong sense of self, and sound expertise in diplomacy, negotiation, and risk assessment. If you pursue encounters with jerks and can still craft win—win alliances with them, then you have forged a silver bullet.

The skills you have gained in collaborating with these challenging individuals will help you in many professional scenarios later on. Diversity in science and engineering is something we should celebrate and embrace.

Being able to share ideas and reach solutions with a variety of people is essential to your career. But the creatures described above are not going to help you or your team. So keep your eye out for intelligent, kind, and respectful professionals with whom you can collaborate, and eschew the zombies, haters, pigs and many of the jerks. Let those dastardly beings assemble their own research cabal and go work claw-in-claw together in some distant cave. Alaina G. Levine is a science and engineering writer, career consultant, and professional speaker and comedian.

Networking for Nerds , her new book on networking strategies for scientists and engineers, will be published by Wiley later this year. She can be reached through her website or on Twitter at AlainaGLevine. AAPM is a scientific, educational, and professional nonprofit organization devoted to the discipline of physics in medicine.