CEO Perspective: Balancing Results & People

Your Work Friends Podcast: CEO POV - Balancing Results & People with Alan Whitman

What does it take to drive results without driving people into the ground? Former CEO Alan Whitman joins us to share how he led with empathy, built trust across the org, and still delivered big. Alan's known for being a progressive leader. But what we we're interested in is how he was able to balance business results (he 3X'd the firm during his tenure) with the people stuff (he was voted #1 Advisory CEO on Glassdoor). 

We cover the big stuff:  WTH do CEOs actually do? How DID he balance results and people? What's critical for CEOs to nail? This conversation is a rare look inside the mind of a people-first exec who believes that culture and performance aren’t in conflict—they’re connected.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:02

When I was early on in public accounting, you always knew the people that were going to be successful because they were pukers.

Speaker 2: 0:09

Huh what.

Speaker 1: 0:12

Like grow up in a trash can before. No, what's a puker? A puker is somebody that feels like they're going to puke when something goes wrong. They care.

Speaker 4: 0:36

Well, guys, welcome to your Work Friends. We're your two HR friends, I'm Francesca and I'm Mel, and we have no filter, but we're getting you through all this work shit. And today, mel, what are we talking about?

Speaker 3: 0:48

We are kicking off a brand new series called Visionary Executives. There are a lot of cool leaders out there that are doing really interesting work and bringing people in business together in a way that everyone wins, and we wanted to start a series that started to highlight those folks and talk about the things they're doing and what you can take away from that, either as an employee or as an executive yourself.

Speaker 4: 1:16

Yeah, there's nothing like talking to people that are at the tippy top of the seats and making these big decisions, so we're excited to kick off this series with Alan Whitman.

Speaker 4: 1:25

Alan Whitman was a chairman and chief executive officer at Baker Telly US, which is a top 10 CPA firm, and the reason why Alan's a really interesting person to talk to is threefold. One Alan was the CEO of a top 10 accounting firm and if anybody is familiar with accounting, you know how volatile that industry is, not only from a business side, but also from a people side. People just really don't want to go into accounting as much as they used to, so it's a sticky situation. The other thing is during his tenure, he 3x to the business, which is huge, and at the same time, was able to have a number one employee satisfaction and CEO approval rating from Glassdoor of the top 20 advisory firms. So here's a guy that is in a volatile industry, 3x his business and also had the people saying we love this guy. So we wanted to talk about how the hell did he do that? How the heck did he balance people and results, and he did it in a pretty interesting way.

Speaker 3: 2:22

Absolutely, and you don't want to miss this episode. So here's Alan Whitman.

Speaker 2: 2:42

Hey Alan, how are you today?

Speaker 1: 2:43

I am fantastic, great to be here.

Speaker 2: 2:46

Where are we finding you Today?

Speaker 1: 2:48

I'm in Atlanta and it's a sunny, warm day in Atlanta. A little cool in the mornings but nice and warm in the afternoons.

Speaker 2: 2:55

So I'm not anywhere where it's snowing, which is great, kim my wife says that it's snowing back in Michigan, so I'm glad to be here. Yeah, I heard a friend was up in Ann Arbor at University of Michigan, so I'm glad to be here. Yeah, I just I heard a friend was up in Ann Arbor at University of Michigan and said it was snowing. So I'm like, yeah, that doesn't sound fun. So it sounds like you're well located.

Speaker 1: 3:10

I am, and I'm going to Florida tomorrow night.

Speaker 2: 3:12

Yeah, but you're a native of Michigan, right Since 1996.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Yeah, I grew up in New York and Cincinnati. I lived in Detroit as an adult but since 96, I met my wife there and my kids are from there, so I'm from there.

Speaker 2: 3:23

Yeah, you are. You are a Michigan.

Speaker 1: 3:26

I'm not a U of M fan unless I'm with my wife or my mother-in-law. I'm still a Cincinnati Reds fan and Indiana Hoosier fan, although the Lions were a lot of fun to watch this year.

Speaker 2: 3:37

Oh my gosh, I loved how Eminem totally got behind it. A big fan I am. I lived quite a long time in Columbus, ohio, which is home of the Ohio State University.

Speaker 2: 3:48

Understand the not liking the blue. I went to liberal arts college, so I don't have any skin in this game Anywho. Anywho, alan, we're here today. I'm excited to talk with you. I want to talk about the role of a CEO. It's not very common for us to be able to talk to leaders that have led global billion-dollar organizations and we want to know all about it and what it's like. What does it feel like? What do you do? What does your dailiness look like? Are you the type that gets up at 4 am on the Peloton? That's the vision everybody has, right. So that's what we want to uncover with you today is what is the world of the CEO? And, probably more importantly, is what do you think the world of the CEO? And, probably more importantly, is what do you think the world of the CEO should look like as we're going into the future? So we have a few questions we want to go through with you today. How does that sound?

Speaker 1: 4:30

All right, let's roll, I'm ready.

Speaker 3: 4:32

We'd love to hear more about your journey to CEO. How did that happen? Tell us about it.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Yeah, as both of you know, I'm a public accounting brat. I grew up in the big eight, 6, 5, 4. Went to a few smaller firms Tax guy by background and really never had the plan. I never had the professional life plan. I just always trusted that things would work out. And when I joined Virchow Kraus which is the firm that became Baker Tilly just by a names change, I had a great opportunity to lead this thing called International services and I had no idea what it was about, really had no idea what it was about, and my predecessor had no idea. His idea was it's yours if you want it. I said what is it? He goes I don't know, you'll figure it out.

Speaker 3: 5:17

And.

Speaker 1: 5:18

I did. We figured it out Before that I had just. I had great mentors, and so I wouldn't be where I am or wouldn't have had the opportunities without great people looking after me and helping me. And look again, it was. There was no plan to be the CEO of Baker Tilly. The plan was to do great work, build great relationships, build trust with the people I work with and have a lot of fun doing it.

Speaker 1: 5:40

I'm not a guy that's built on a lot of structure. I'm not a rules-based guy. I'm more of a principles-based guy and I do like to wing it and I have trust that it's going to work out. It's not that I have so much trust in my abilities that I'm going to just crush everything. I just have trust in the system that if I do the right things, everything will work out. Some would say that I'm oblivious to the outside world. I don't know, but that's how I was.

Speaker 1: 6:06

And I remember I was in a bus heading to a partner retreat and we knew we were going through a succession plan process and a former partner of mine leaned over and said, hey, you should put your name in to be the next CEO. And I laughed. I'm from a small practice, I'm new to the firm. And she said listen, everybody trusts you. You're not here to build your own practice. You were here to help everybody, including her me, as she said. And I think you'd be a viable candidate because the partners trust you, that you're here for them and for us in total, rather than trying to pad your own performance or your own book of business, et cetera. And so I said all right, I'll put my name in that.

Speaker 1: 6:46

And one thing led to another a lot of testing, a lot of interviews, et cetera. And I still remember the day I walked out of the last interview. I remember that day. And then I remember the next day when I got the call and I found myself as the next CEO of Baker Tilly and it was like wait, what just happened? And then I could talk to you about the journey as the CEO. I think the ability to visualize the future of what would we build the organization to. I'm not so sure I knew how to do it yet, but I certainly knew what I wanted to build and what the foundational principles of my candidacy. And they took a chance and I think it paid off. We did remarkable things. We everybody did remarkable things in that eight-year run.

Speaker 3: 7:36

Yeah, yeah, it sounds like there's definitely that light bulb moment. It wasn't about you establishing a practice. It was about switching what your role is completely. What exactly is the role of a CEO?

Speaker 1: 7:48

What's the role of a CEO? I think, above all, the role of a CEO is to enable the team to do more than they think they can do and to do things they're not even aware of doing. So pulling them together for a common cause and achieving twofold, threefold, fivefold, x-fold the amount of outcomes and deliverables and performance and accomplishments compared to what they think is possible. You both know that I don't ask binary questions. Can we do this, can we do that? I ask the question. What will it take? And so it opens the mind to the art of the possible. And so, above all, there's all sorts of different things strategy and acquisitions and communications, client connections, et cetera. Those are the how, the what, in my mind, is innate pulling people together for a common cause, a vision, a mission, and engaging them to believe they can do more than they thought they could. Engaging them to believe they can do more than they thought they could and, in turn, providing that pathway and the ingredients to do just that.

Speaker 3: 8:50

I love that You're bringing that visionary role to folks. You're making them feel like they're a part of something larger and you're also really building up their confidence in a space where they thought they might not be able to do it, which is really exciting.

Speaker 1: 9:03

Confidence in a space where they thought they might not be able to do it, which is really exciting. A successful CEO is somebody that enables people to have a little bit of blind faith. If he or she thinks I can do it, or he or she is totally committed to this, let's go. Let's go on the journey that she or he is describing. In my opinion, the most successful CEOs are the ones that can paint the picture of tomorrow when maybe not everybody understands even what today's all about. They come on that journey with you and they have blind faith that I trust him or her and all right, I'm going to follow, or I'm going to ride shotgun, which is even better, or I'm going to lead, which is even better.

Speaker 2: 9:47

It's interesting. You talk about vision. Marcus Buckingham wrote the One Thing you Need to Know, which is what differentiates good from great leaders, is the ability to paint a vision and get people behind it. So much of that is on trust and the compelling nature of the vision, the doable nature of the vision, where it has a little bit of I don't know if we can do this, but I think we can. You talked about trust. What makes you so good at trust? Like, how do you get people to trust you? How have you gotten people to trust you?

Speaker 1: 10:17

Look part of it is what have you done prior to becoming the CEO or the leader?

Speaker 1: 10:23

Yeah fair done prior to becoming the CEO or the leader? Yeah, fair, do you have credibility? That's the first and the second in many facets, francesca, it's being able to tell a compelling story, to not wither in the face of adversity. And if you have adversity, how do you deal with it? Don't go too high, Don't go too low, don't get too excited, don't get too down. Don't get too excited, don't get too down. Building a compelling narrative. Look, words matter, the story matters, and so having a great right-hand person to help you take your crazy ideas and organize them and build them into a compelling vision that's believable, even if it's crazy.

Speaker 1: 11:13

You separate yourself from reality a little bit and you dream. And so, look, communication is a crucial skill of any senior leader, a CEO being able to communicate. And that's with words, with emotion, with heart, eye to eye, being relatable, not demanding things, but working together on things. And look, I always thought that I was Alan, who happened to be the CEO. That's how I communicated. I'm just Alan. Yes, I'm the CEO. Yes, I probably have more experience than you.

Speaker 1: 11:47

You know, our family's a big fan of the movie Ratatouille. Our kids grew up watching it. It's a great flick about anybody can cook. Guess what? Anybody can be a CEO. Now, there's got to be some things that happen in your career, but it's not out of the realm of possibility, and so I was just Alan. I am Alan and it happens to be the CEO. I was on a personal level with people while at the same time, being their boss, or their boss's boss, or the steward of the organization, and so being willing to be relatable and being a person first. Yeah, you get the job, of course, things you do, but you're still a person.

Speaker 3: 12:24

Yeah, like that the job, of course, things you do, but you're still a person. Yeah, like that approachability piece, vulnerability as a leader. You weren't the Wizard of Oz hiding in your tower and that probably made a huge difference. How do you think the role of a CEO is going to shift in five years, 10 years, with how business is changing? Like what might be different in this role in the future years, 10 years with?

Speaker 1: 12:45

how business is changing, like what might be different in this role in the future. Just think about technology and automation and how much is going to be accomplished artificially. The stakeholder groups have never been as numerous as they are now. There's so much influence on business from the social part of humankind that the stakeholder groups have become numerous and, frankly, as I was the CEO, I was always concerned that there's going to be another stakeholder that came up on Monday or Tuesday, but we had to consider that stakeholder and so, look, business has never been as fast as it is. If Friedman wrote, the world is flat, you can use that title to describe a lot of things in today's day. Right, everything is flat, nothing is compartmentalized, everything is blending and bleeding into the other. So that's a really hard thing. I think CEOs are going to have to continue upping their game in what to communicate, when to communicate and how to communicate.

Speaker 3: 13:47

Do you see organizations moving to being increasingly more transparent? As much as they can be, of course, but do you see a change happening there?

Speaker 1: 13:57

I think there's already been a change Now. I think that, done poorly, it can blow up in your face. Yeah, right, we've seen that recently in some very poor communications about some very sensitive subjects. And, yeah, I do think that people expect more transparency. But it is interesting. Is it transparency or is it inclusion? That's the that's a big question, right? Is it transparency that you got to know everything because you can't know everything, right? Or is it better said inclusion in a lot more of the how the sausage is made or how decisions are made, et cetera? Look, you can't include everybody in decisions. I wrote about a recent post I put up on LinkedIn. You can't. So you've got to find a way to make people feel like they're part of the subject, they're part of the decision making process or the project, so they feel like, as much as they can, they're engaged. I think that is a big expectation of people today.

Speaker 2: 15:04

You talk about the power of communication. I'll tell you look at what's happening. We're still looking for Kate Middleton with the idea, Honestly which, by the way, went down a massive rabbit hole with that. But it really goes to prove that when you have poor communication and or no communication at all from an entity or a leadership position, people will make up their own narratives, and you don't want that as an organization, right? You want them to be clear.

Speaker 1: 15:31

You just wonder. You're like, who in the world is advising them?

Speaker 2: 15:36

A thousand percent.

Speaker 1: 15:38

And you know that they've got advice, whether it's legal advice or Tom's advice or PR advice. But I remember something just happened recently the university presidents when they went before Congress. I remember I was listening to that and I felt so bad for them just because of the situation they were in. That's got nothing to do with what I believe in, so we'll leave that aside. And I remember calling my good friend saying who the heck's advising them? Even I know that whatever they were communicating was done poorly. So you just wonder how are things being missed so wild?

Speaker 2: 16:12

Yeah, joking aside, we're seeing it front and center, which, by the way, will be a Harvard business case tomorrow because it's just awful.

Speaker 2: 16:20

I have a theory that when the queen mum died, the whole place just went downhill. That's just my whole thing. But you see it there. You see it happening in businesses and companies too, right, especially as some of these corporations are moving through things like mass layoffs or less than desirable business results, and some of the tone in which employees are feeling the conversation is changing internally and externally is really nailing communication. Well, and, by the way, we know how to do this. It's always just so fascinating, to your very good point, when you're like who the hell's advising them? Because they're biffing it, and they're biffing it really hard.

Speaker 1: 16:55

I've got a saying listen, you're not going to like this and it's okay not to like it. I give you permission because some of these things that I'm about to tell you I don't like Knowledge butchered in.

Speaker 3: 17:05

I don't like Knowledge is a turd in the room.

Speaker 1: 17:06

I'm asking you, you don't have to like it. I'm asking you to respect it. Yep, and what I find is if you give somebody the permission to not like something, it doesn't make them like it. It just kind of deflates their balloon because the emotion it's like he's not going to fight me, he's not going to argue with me, he's not going to engage in that. No, I'm okay with you not liking it. There's a lot of stuff that people won't like and there's a lot of stuff that I guarantee the CEOs themselves don't like. There were decisions.

Speaker 1: 17:32

I had to make, or I made, or I agreed with or endorsed that I didn't like, no question about it.

Speaker 2: 17:38

And they had to be made and I respected them and I asked the people to respect them. You're framing that as you're not going to like this, but this is where we're going to have to go. Takes it in a direction of what do we do now? Let's get into solution mode, or how do we collectively handle the situation, as opposed to getting into the emotions of it, which can be time consuming, and listen. I think everyone has to go into their hidey hole of emotions and do all that shit, but the reality is we need to move, and that's a nice way to frame it.

Speaker 1: 18:12

The reality is, the decision has to be made because it's not going to go away just because we don't like it. Right, let's get on with it.

Speaker 2: 18:18

Yeah, productive about it yeah. You talked about communication being a really critical piece for a CEO. That, to me, is someone who is really looking out for people and wanting to have a conversation around people. But you're also running a business, and you're running a global, multi-billion dollar business and you need to get business results. How do you, as a CEO, balance the need for wanting to put your people and your business results on an equal playing field? How do you do that?

Speaker 1: 18:50

Yeah, you spend a lot of time thinking about it. You spend a lot of for wanting to put your people and your business results on an equal playing field. How do you do that? Yeah, you spend a lot of time thinking about it. You spend a lot of time debating and designing and redesigning. I had a wonderful professional coach who was a little bit of a therapist. I would say. I don't know if she would want me to say that, but she did act that way because, getting through these conundrums is hard.

Speaker 1: 19:15

You know what it needs to be, you just need to figure out how to get there. Look, I know people didn't like some of the decisions I made and I'm sure some of the people said he's not a people person. Look what he did here in the instant on the micro and I tried to use both and versus but for either or a lot. I can be the people person and I can make those hard decisions and trying to get people that were the but of the hard decisions to realize that it's in the best interest of everybody. Here's an example.

Speaker 1: 19:52

I was reading Reed Hastings' book no Rules Great book.

Speaker 1: 19:57

He reminded me in the book that you need to be transparent and you need to really get to the people and if somebody is not right for the organization, make the decision and move on.

Speaker 1: 20:07

And it reminded me of a decision that I put off for five years and I look back and said, gosh, darn it. I wasted five years of this person's professional life because I was trying to be too nice, I was weighted too much to I need to do what's right by the people when in reality doing what's right for the person was to be honest with the person five years ago, and as much as we think that we're not nice to people when we make hard people decisions, you may actually be being nice, being genuine, helping them out. So it's not a binary you either are or you aren't. There's a middle ground there. So, look, I thought a lot about how to reimagine the organization, knowing that people would have to move out of their current role because the organization had passed them by and we needed to redeploy people. And that is a really hard thing to do, probably one of the hardest things, because there is emotion involved.

Speaker 2: 21:10

Et cetera, relationships, everything, all these people yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:13

And was I good at it? I don't know if I was good at it. I think that the organization's success would probably conclude that, yes, we got it right more than we got it wrong, much more than we got it wrong. But I wouldn't suggest that I captured the flag on that one. It's a constant struggle. You mentioned all hands or the live cast that I love those just adored those. I love the time with everybody because I was just again just let's be myself and that did empower me. Frankly, it did build trust and it was just so much fun that we could just be people and we're all in it together, and titles weren't part of those events there are a lot of organizations that talk about.

Speaker 2: 22:16

They're either people first or they're very people-centric. They're there for their people. You've obviously sat at the well, at the tippy tappy of the table where you're making decisions financial decisions, strategic decisions around investments in people. And I'm curious if we could flip this, because you know what this takes from an insider perspective, working with boards, working with the C-suite running an organization. I'm Jane Doe of ABC Company. How do I know? What are the tells that my company really walks the walk on being people-centric?

Speaker 1: 22:50

Features is not being people-centric, actions is being people-centric. I remember talking about development plans and I came up with the analogy of if you buy an outfit off the rack, okay, but it doesn't fit well, it doesn't hang well, you may have to have it tailored, but if you buy a bespoke or a tailored suit, it feels really good and you're on the top of your game. I was reminded at one point hey, alan, in today's day nobody gets tailored suits anymore, so your analogy doesn't make any sense. I'm like okay, got it, okay, fair. But the point I was trying to make was people-centric organizations have to come to the people rather than say we're going to get pet insurance or we're going to give you the 25 healthcare membership. Those are all features.

Speaker 1: 23:51

What if you put dollars to direct one-on-one development programs, coaches, how are you helping me? Or how are we helping you, francesca, at this company, become a better person and professional? You, it's not going up to a buffet and you get to choose what you pick. No, you're going to pick off the menu and you're going to actually pick the meal you want and it's going to be made to order for you. There's plenty of buffet style development and learning and development platforms, etc. How do we build something that is bespoke, tailored and it's not 100% of it? 80% can be buffet style and the last 20 is really focused on the person. And look, we do that for executive coaches. That's a bespoke program, sure do. Why are we doing it through the organization? If I had a coach when I was a senior, I'd have been a much better professional.

Speaker 2: 24:49

Why don't organizations do that?

Speaker 1: 24:52

Well, I think it's a pretty progressive platform. I think it's a pathway that requires a lot of confidence and trust. It's expensive, it's expensive yeah. And I think that I don't know. I'm going to say this and I'm going to get ridiculed for it. I wonder if people work to the mean Like do you get the?

Speaker 2: 25:13

degrees, Alan. Is that what you're trying to say?

Speaker 1: 25:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I, Francesca. It's a great question. I don't know why people would say it's impossible. Why do this? Why not? We can't do it. What would it take to do it? What would it take to put a program like that in place?

Speaker 2: 25:35

It's a doable. I think I agree with everything you're saying. It is a trust, it's a vision, to your very good point A lot of times because people haven't seen it. They're typically a long game. They're not something that you can turn in a quarter and see results a lot of times, but those are the things that are so meaningful.

Speaker 2: 25:52

And this is what I really struggle with is when we're doing these like quarter by quarter, needing to see results, needing to see results, how can people fight for the long tail stuff, the break the mold stuff that really truly changes and shifts industries?

Speaker 1: 26:14

I was just working with my colleague on an article about intentionality and my belief now in coaching or in tailored development programs. We all hear professional athletes have coaches. Yes, and you can see the difference. Because they're higher up on the leaderboard, they win more tournaments, they can shoot a better percentage. Whatever it is On the professional setting, as you said, francesca, it's the long game.

Speaker 1: 26:41

I don't know if you can associate a win or this to the coaching. Maybe you can, but it's less direct, it's less cause and effect. The coach helps the golfer putt better, so on Sundays they make more putts, they win the tournament. Versus building somebody as a professional. I can tell you from experience the people that I've engaged in coaching and I've pushed to coach are much better as people and professionals, much more aware than they would have been or they were prior to. So I think most think that's for the athletes, because there's a grade right, you win, you lose, you move up. I think we can learn a lot from sports or from other professions. And so, look, I think it's massively expensive. But you know what? So are all the campuses up in the Silicon Valley, the open campuses. Those things are massively expensive.

Speaker 2: 27:40

Yeah, real estate's not cheap.

Speaker 1: 27:41

Right, and so is it all making people better professionals or is it allowing them to work in a better environment? Now, some would say working in a better environment will make you more productive. Okay, I'm not going to argue that I don't know the data on that. What if you took all that money and you put it back in developing Mel and Francesca to be better people, more spatially aware?

Speaker 2: 28:06

Less smart ass. There's a lot of benefits here.

Speaker 1: 28:11

I don't like that. I like that part of you, so I would not put that in the program.

Speaker 3: 28:15

That's your sassiness, I appreciate it.

Speaker 3: 28:18

I couldn't agree with you more, alan I've always believed in coaching and to both of your points that you don't necessarily see ROI in the first quarter, the second quarter, it just becomes part of your organization's culture that everyone gets a performance coach. All the people stuff is where the problems happen at the leadership level, starting at managers and above. So if you're addressing that when someone's first coming out into their career, it's going to get them light years ahead of other people who don't have that. So when they're at a manager level, you're not trying to suddenly jam down their throats milestone programs to make up for all of the care and attention that they haven't yet received.

Speaker 3: 29:00

Beautifully said, we've talked a lot about things that make people feel valued and respected, empowered in the workplace. You talked about inclusive practices, transparency, as much as you can have that, but make it really. It's like acknowledging their emotions, speaking to them human to human level. What are other things that CEOs can do or leaders can do to foster an environment where people really feel valued, respected, like they have belonging and meaningful work?

Speaker 1: 29:33

Certainly accolades and awards and the at a gal, at a boy comments. Yeah, to me the thing that got people really jazzed was the idea that they could connect with the CEO one-on-one, the idea that they knew the CEO was looking out for them and was looking to put them in different places, move them around, cared about their career. They felt part of the ingredients that were going to make the strategy reality. And once you get them bought in, they're bought in. As hard as it is to get them into the, into the room, if you do it right, it's equally as hard to get them out of the room and to have them turn away. Now, if you're a jerk and you're really not trustworthy, of course you can ruin a second, but I I had some colleagues that were just so sold on it because we activated their need for belonging and being part of the solution. I had people coming up to me and it wasn't to brag, it was. They would come up to me and tell me about all this stuff we're doing and how this is working and that is working, et cetera. It had nothing to do with their performance, they just wanted to share it. That's when you know they're in, they're so far. In Fine, you go tell the people about this. This is awesome. I don't need to be the conveyor of the good news.

Speaker 1: 30:50

You mentioned culture, francesca. I'm a big believer that culture should change. It's a living organism. It should not be the same today as it was yesterday. It should continue improving. It can deteriorate, but if you're doing everything right, it will continue to change. You Build new cultures over time. It's just critical for leadership to empower, to push more. Sit beside people and watch them.

Speaker 1: 31:22

I remember when I called a client service partner and I said hey, we want you to come lead this practice, because she was stuck in a practice. She was doing great, she was a partner, she was doing great. But I saw something in her, just like my predecessor saw in me. I called this person, said we want you to lead this and she said you realize I'm an audit partner. I have no idea about that.

Speaker 1: 31:50

I said you don't need to know about the technical aspects. We've got plenty of people that know the technical aspects. I need you to lead it and I have every confidence and will be right there with you to lead it. And she's like, okay, I really don't know what I'm going to do, but okay, and she's crushed it. There's dozens of examples where I would go into the system One because I like to shake it up, I like to get people rustled up to go do other things, but then I brought them out and boom, they became people that they never even thought they'd have the chance to become. It's a big thing of culture, trust, empowerment, and that's where people get really engaged with wow that's really cool.

Speaker 3: 32:37

He is for the people and someone believing in them. A big common red thread throughout all of your stories is not just the trust people have had in you, but your belief in them really empowered them to do it. You're advising and coaching a lot of CEOs now, but if it's a new CEO, they've never done it before. In the position you were in many moons ago, like how am I going to do advising and coaching a lot of CEOs now, but if it's a new CEO, they've never done it before. In the position you were in many moons ago, like how am I going to do this, knowing what you know now? What would you advise them to do right away in this space to establish a?

Speaker 1: 33:02

good culture. Trust your gut as much as numbers don't lie. Numbers aren't the only thing that you should be focusing on. Be willing to take a chance. We know who good people are. We always say that she has the it, and if the square peg doesn't have to fit in the square hole exactly, which is my example a minute ago this may sound a little crass. You can teach technical skills. You really can't teach the it. You can teach technical skills. You really can't teach the it. You can polish the it, you can bring the it out, but you can't really teach it.

Speaker 3: 33:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:39

And when you see somebody that has it, give them a chance.

Speaker 3: 33:43

Yeah, what is it the X?

Speaker 2: 33:44

factor. Is it X factor? Is that what we're talking about?

Speaker 1: 33:46

Yeah, the X factor, yeah yeah, when I was early on in public outing, you always knew the people that were going to be successful because they were pukers.

Speaker 2: 33:57

Huh, what, okay?

Speaker 1: 33:58

Like grow up in a trash can before. No, what's a puker? A puker is somebody that feels like they're going to puke when something goes wrong. Goes wrong, they care and your belly gets all tied up and some people probably do puke. I don't know, but is the person a puker or not? The person that's a puker, I'm going to work with that person because that person cares and gets it Part of the X factor, versus the person that just hey, okay, we'll try again tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 34:27

When you think about the people that have the X factor are the people that care enough to get nervous enough to get anxious. And yet earlier in this conversation we were talking about why don't organizations do this in macro right, in terms of caring about their people? It's because they're going towards the mean. It's because they're operating as in C's get degrees as opposed to getting the pit in their stomach and really caring. It's an interesting hilarity there. The puker story absolutely is staying in. We talked about this earlier. Like speed of business, we're in an election year. Ai, inflation, stagnation, boards, you name it. The amount of stuff and the amount of stakeholders that any CEO in any organization has to deal with is nuts, honestly. It's evolved massively, it's way more than it used to be, and it's only going to get more complex. I am curious about what are the hardest parts of this job. When you think about sitting in that seat, does the puking stay? This is what I'm wondering. Did you ever hurl as a CEO? That's what I really want to know.

Speaker 1: 35:41

Did I ever hurl as a CEO?

Speaker 2: 35:42

No, and I'm not even going to say I curled up in a ball and sucked my thumb. I've done that, maybe not as a CEO. Anyway, I had a ball and sucked my thumb.

Speaker 1: 35:50

I've done that, maybe not as a CEO. I didn't. Anyway, I had a lot of sleepless nights.

Speaker 3: 35:53

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:54

I had a lot of waking up at 2.30 in the morning with junk driving in my head or I'm not performing, I'm not performing. Look, I talked to my coach about this. I'm a big believer.

Speaker 1: 36:05

Everybody's got imposter syndrome no matter how successful we are, we all have it. I have it sure, okay, I admit it. And so I had a lot of waking up at two o'clock in the morning and never go back to sleep, and that was part of the job, because my head was swirling. I had a lot of puking experiences, not literally, but where I was all balled up in my gut because I had such a dilemma or I had such a challenge. One was when COVID came about right, plenty right. Others were when earnings were not where they needed to be, and what are we going to do with compensation and bonuses for everybody? There's all sorts of making.

Speaker 1: 36:44

One of the biggest moves I had to make, which was a personnel move. It took me four months to figure out how to do it. I remember exactly when I figured it out. I was on a plane from Detroit to Asia. Kim was sleeping next to me in the little pod and it just over Washington, where you live, francesca, and I figured it out, but it took me a long time. So, yeah, I had a lot of knots in my gut over the course of the year. Okay, I have gray hair. You can see I have gray hair.

Speaker 3: 37:07

Now I didn't have gray hair when we met. Think of presidents.

Speaker 1: 37:12

To your question, francesca people and the relationships that ensue, that will never go away. That's really hard Because, at the end of the day, no matter what business you're in, there are people in the business. It's a huge part of every ceo's routine anticipating what's next, not missing something. He always fretted that I was going to see a headline on the front page of whatever or an email, that something happened and I totally blew it. I just wasn't paying attention.

Speaker 1: 37:46

I wasn't worried about delivering good service because we had great people at the organization. I wasn't worried about delivering good service because we had great people at the organization. I wasn't worried about executing the strategy of the firm. Once we got everybody to a place where they believed in the strategy, which took about two years, once everybody was on the train, I didn't worry about that. I knew people, knew how to run the business and knew how to do what we needed to do. It's everything else. It's the ability for me to keep elevating my game in the firm's game. It was not missing something. It's not seeing around a corner and the people aspect of things, because every decision affects people, no matter what it is. It affects people, yeah, and so that was a huge part of it.

Speaker 2: 38:34

It's interesting to hear you talk about that, because we talk to employees leaders all week, every week Mel and I do and it's very similar to what we hear from them around their own craft, their own work. I was thinking when you get to a C-level, there's one of two things that happen. If it's me, I'm probably just puking my guts, which is totally fine. I love the fact that you still hold that level of care and that level of curiosity. There's this other, where there's this perception, too, that some CEOs are like have you heard this? That a lot of them are like pathological. Have you heard this? That a lot of them are like pathological.

Speaker 2: 39:10

Have you heard this? Yeah, yeah, you roll in these circles. Do you find that more people are pathological or they're more in the care? What's the split? Are we talking like 20, 80? What's going on here?

Speaker 1: 39:20

Oh, I think there are a lot of CEOs that are misjudged.

Speaker 2: 39:25

Oh interesting, Tell me more.

Speaker 1: 39:27

And look, I'm misjudged too. I've got a hard outer shell, no question about it. And if you don't know me, a lot of people think I'm a jerk. When you get to know me, you realize I'm really not a jerk, yeah, and I'm going to get things done. Look, you've got to be pretty confident, even if you have imposter syndrome. You've got to be pretty confident, pretty bold, to lead an organization and lead a journey. You got to be pretty bold and you got to be pretty tough. Now I do know there's plenty of people that are crazy.

Speaker 2: 39:58

Yeah, at all levels in the organization.

Speaker 1: 40:00

To be fair, believe me, I've met some of them, so it's yeah, but I think there are more that are caring than people give credit to.

Speaker 2: 40:08

I like that, I like it?

Speaker 1: 40:10

I really do. There's a CEO in the CPA profession there's a couple of them One that's got a bad rap and personal friends with him, and he's the nicest guy in the world and he gets a bad rap. And I can see why, because it was out of shell, but he's as caring as they come. And so the old adage okay, does the media do that to you, or is it real? I don't want to throw the media under the bus. People come up with their own stories.

Speaker 2: 40:37

Yeah, people come up with their own narratives. It does go back to. One of the keys here is to be a great communicator. Fair enough, and not that you need to be like happy joy all the time, but communication. This is one of the reasons.

Speaker 3: 40:49

You're in such a unique position too, I think, as a CEO, because every day you're in a position where you have to prove yourself to so many different people, day in, day out, over and over and not that others don't need to do that in their positions and I do think that there is a little bit of a uniqueness in that role where it's like the pressure of that has to be intense yeah, look more than anything.

Speaker 1: 41:15

All the eyes are on you right.

Speaker 1: 41:17

I remember when I became a partner I was told look, every, all the eyes are on you as a partner. Yeah, but it's not 6,000 person organization but in a hundred person team or whatever. I'll give you a story. I remember I was late to a meeting. I ran in and my coach was there. She was observing a lot of meetings for team effectiveness. I wanted her there to help me with the team effectiveness of the senior leaders of the organization Very helpful.

Speaker 1: 41:47

And so I run in and I want to get the meeting started. And so I go get a plate, want to get the meeting started. And so I go get a plate to lunch and I'm standing up eating and she's watching me and she pulled me aside before and she says what are you doing? I'm like what do you mean? I'm eating. She goes think about what you look like. They're all looking at you and even if they're not there, they're seeing you way out of control. And so again, in that little instant, you realize, holy moly, I might have gone backwards a little bit. And to your point, yeah, you are being looked at and even if you're not being looked at, you should not act like an idiot. And at that point, I was acting like a knucklehead. Slow down, sit down, eat. One, two more minutes isn't going to kill us. It was a good lesson.

Speaker 2: 42:31

There's this concept of shadow of a leader, and when you're at the top, all of your shadow casts over here, and even if it does something as simple as eating in front of people and giving the perception of we're not even going to spend time to sit down and eat, that's all stuff you have to consider and it's all part of the gig, right, and I don't know if people get that. Oh yeah, you've got a persona. I have no question about it. Mel and I were talking about this on the pod the other day. There is no one on the face of this planet that has led through what we're about to go through no one. And there's no playbook. I'm quite sure when you became a CEO, someone didn't say Alan, here's the CEO 101 book, number one and number two. You're in a context that has never existed before To me. There's a little bit of no one knows what the hell the answer is. There is no answer necessarily. It's just what are the choice points and how are you going to move through it?

Speaker 1: 43:27

So I'm advising a firm that has grown very quickly, that's exciting.

Speaker 1: 43:32

Yeah, it's wonderful. And the CEO brought me in to talk to the board and one of the comments he made is he did what we want to do. He led a firm and then he admitted to his board. He goes I've never run a company this big and I've never run a company that's bigger than this. Now he has, and so one. I gave him a lot of credit for realizing that he doesn't have all the answers and he's willing to take input. He doesn't follow my advice all the time but and he listens but to your point he's never run a company like this. And it's interesting. There's this concept. I don't know where I saw this be like this and it's interesting. There's this concept. I don't know where I saw this, but gradually. Then suddenly, gradually they grew. Suddenly they're a half a billion dollar firm. Gradually they're going to be a billion dollar firm. And if you're not focused on what's happening gradually, you won't be prepared for suddenly.

Speaker 2: 44:24

You talked earlier that you live by a set of principles, and when I think about companies that are in hyper growth, leaders that are in unprecedented times, how important are a core set of principles in leading oh, I think they're critical One, because it will demonstrate consistency to your stakeholders.

Speaker 1: 44:47

If you communicate appropriately, it will be the foundation to everything you do, because they'll know the type of person you are.

Speaker 3: 44:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 44:56

And it won't be just haphazard, it'll tie everything together. So I think it's critical.

Speaker 2: 45:01

Yeah, yeah, I've been thinking about that too, just like when I look at some of the best leaders and the best strat and the best comms, like there's this undercurrent of principles that run through it and you can even make mistakes, you can make, you can biff, you can eat in front of your C-suite, right. There's like from small, something like that very small to. We made an investment in this company and it was a stinker. Oh, move on. You know what I'm saying. There's a lot of forgiveness or elasticity in the culture when you do that.

Speaker 1: 45:34

Look, if your stakeholders know your principles, know what you stand for, whatever you want to say it, they'll understand the reasoning and they'll understand that these decisions were made with the right principles in mind or at the core. And again, not everything goes perfectly, but at least they'll understand why the decision was made, or how it was made, or what was made upon, etc.

Speaker 2: 45:59

Yeah, and that's inclusion to your point yeah.

Speaker 3: 46:19

All right, Wow rapid round. Well, this was meant to be fun, Alan, hopefully. Okay. Is it lonely at the top?

Speaker 1: 46:27

Doesn't have to be.

Speaker 2: 46:29

Good answer. Family Feud Good answer.

Speaker 1: 46:31

I think, look, you need to surround yourself with a lot of people, and they don't have to be people that work for you. You can't tell things to everybody, and if you surround yourself with the right people, have the right advisor, even internally. No, it's not lonely at the top. I wasn't lonely.

Speaker 3: 46:51

You have your community.

Speaker 1: 46:53

I really wasn't. I thought I was very connected to a lot of people and I engaged them as I could, but no, I wasn't lonely.

Speaker 2: 47:00

Can I ask a question? Did you have someone that would say, Ellen, that's nuts or no, you're absolutely wrong.

Speaker 1: 47:06

Oh, yeah, yeah, more than one. Some I gave permission to do that and some I didn't, or some did it before. They asked for forgiveness. Yeah, and I wanted that. I don't have all the answers. So, yeah, I wanted people to say, hold on Really, but now I push back. It would push back. What would it take? Why not?

Speaker 3: 47:30

They keep you honest and help you out by your blind spots. Yeah, yeah, would you recommend that your kid become a CEO?

Speaker 1: 47:39

I would recommend that my kids figure out what they wanted to do every day. Yeah, and I won't tell them to shy away from being a CEO if the opportunity presents itself. And I won't tell them to shy away from being a CEO if the opportunity presents itself. But the only way you're going to become a CEO, unless you start your own company, is if you're really good at doing what you want to do, because it takes head and heart and don't shy away from it. I didn't like me, I didn't plan for it and it's very rewarding and complicated and pukey and you know all these things.

Speaker 3: 48:13

Okay, Hot topic item CEO compensation. And not every CEO is paid $30 million a year, but this is a hot topic in the news these days. Do you think CEOs should be paid as much as they are?

Speaker 1: 48:30

All right. So I'm going to apologize to my mother because she told me don't answer a question with a question, so I'm going to play around here. If you're going to ask should CEOs be paid what they are paid, then should athletes, should movie stars should? Where does it stop? Now to your specific question. Yeah, I do think they should be paid a lot of money because look at what they're overseeing, Look at what they're stewarding, Look at the effect that they have and the multiplier effect that they have, whether it be for careers, whether it be for the public product or services. That doesn't happen by chance and if you think about skilled athletes, their careers are, on average, much shorter. They're taking a huge risk. In my profession, you take a huge risk when you become a senior leader because you give up your binky, your comfort, you give up a book of business.

Speaker 3: 49:28

Yes, if they're performing, they're performing they're making such the effect that commands a significant top level. I'm going to move, then, to layoffs, because I think there's a connection here to your point. You mentioned that if they're performing they should get that layoff. What's the best way for CEOs to show accountability during a layoff?

Speaker 1: 49:49

Layoffs are caused by a number of different things. They could be caused by a company not performing, bad strategy, bad execution. They could be caused by a pandemic. When I was leading the firm, we didn't do layoffs for a few years and I took the most significant cut in pay because I didn't want to take layoffs. I didn't want to execute layoffs. I didn't think it was the right thing to do in light of what was going on. So I don't think it's a one size fits all answer. Having said that, I would think that performance pay would be adjusted in situations where workforce had to be reduced because of an environment. I don't know if that happens all the time, yet I would think that would be. There would be an and to that. There were layoffs and senior leadership didn't make the money that they made the year before.

Speaker 2: 50:46

It's so interesting because you see this in the news where layoffs are happening, earnings are through the roof. Some of that might have been through efficiencies with layoffs, and a lot of these C-suite executives are like crickets we take accountability but they don't tell you how, and so they may be taking these cuts. But again, going back to the red thread throughout this whole conversation that you keep coming back to, alan, which I think is amazing is communication agreed.

Speaker 1: 51:19

I I think that there should be more communication around that. I think that there should be some how to the what of accountability. How are you going to take accountability?

Speaker 2: 51:30

No.

Speaker 1: 51:31

I'm convinced that if people were more communicative around that you don't need to give exact numbers, but you can give directional comments Right, there wouldn't be a withdrawal from the trust bank. Yeah, yeah, look at times, layoffs or rifts or whatever you want to call it. It's a necessity because of the business. I realize the employees are, the team members, are integral to the business, and this might be one of those things that you're not going to like. The business is a persona, as a being itself, too.

Speaker 2: 52:04

Yes, yes, corporations are, yes, they are. Yes, yes, corporations are, yes, they are.

Speaker 1: 52:07

And unfortunately people get caught in the squeeze. So the only way to at least make it understood, not agreed with or not liked or respected is, yeah, better communication.

Speaker 3: 52:30

Even you taking the pay cut before having to pull that lever to try to do everything you absolutely can goes a long way with employees when they see that or hear that. Is there a CEO?

Speaker 1: 52:35

that you admire and, if so, why. You know there's a couple of people I admire. They're both males, so I apologize for that. I think Ed Bastian at Delta has been fascinating. I fly Delta all the time. I love their customer service. I love what they stand for. I love his messaging. He seems to be a CEO of the people. I do think he came out of the public accounting world, which is pretty cool. I also like Jamie Dimon.

Speaker 2: 53:00

JP Morgan.

Speaker 1: 53:01

Yeah, I'm not anything like Jamie Dimon, other than there's some similarities. He says it the way it is. He's very matter of fact, he's very you're not going to like this, and that's some of the principles that I live by, so that's where I'll stop the comparison. I think he's great. I think he's just a real, true person and I've heard he's a real person outside the ropes. He's just a dude that happens to be the CEO of JP Morgan and he's crushed it. He's just done so well. There's so many others. As an addendum to this question, I love reading books by leaders, not leadership books, necessarily, books by leaders. I want to know their story. I said read Hastings' no Rules and David Cody and the book by Imbolt, and there's just so many books that I've read because I want to know their journey. I want to know how they did it and the stories are fantastic and I learned from them, and so the idea of passing it along through a book is wonderful. But those two I admire quite a bit. I really enjoy watching them.

Speaker 3: 54:04

What's the best leadership advice you've ever read?

Speaker 1: 54:07

I don't know if this is leadership advice or not. There's a book it's called Extreme Ownership.

Speaker 2: 54:13

Yeah, yeah, jocko.

Speaker 1: 54:15

Jocko Willick and in there. There's a lot of great stuff, but the one that I find myself using a lot in my coaching and helping teams and leaders get their shit together is discipline equals freedom. People think that discipline or structure ruins entrepreneurial spirit or it ruins. No, if you're disciplined in what you do and you set the plan and you execute it, it does allow you to have some freedom on the edges. So let's build that plan as opposed to just being all over the place, and it does allow you to have some freedom. So I like that From my point of view, just as my advice is read the books by the people that came before you. So read books by leaders that have been in the seat. It's amazing how much you learn. I was never a big reader as a kid by now. I can't stop.

Speaker 2: 55:11

I love reading it's so nourishing, right it is it is alan, it was awesome to talk with you today. Thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for being here, friend.

Speaker 1: 55:30

My pleasure. This is a great venue. I wish y'all luck in the world and I'm really humbled by you asking me to join you.

Speaker 4: 55:43

Thanks so much for joining us today, mel. We're back with new headlines next week. Yeah, yeah, we are All right. In the meantime, hit us up on TikTok, instagram, linkedin and YouTube at yourworkfriendspod and Mel. What else can they do?

Speaker 3: 55:56

Email us at friend@yourworkfriends.com. Send us a message, folks. We do reply.

Speaker 4: 56:03

We do reply. All right, Bye friends, Bye friends, Bye friends.

Jerks at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Jerks at Work with Dr. Tessa West

Jerks are everywhere…

The micromanager. The drama queen. The sly saboteur. Toxic coworkers come in all forms—and they’re not just annoying, they’re disruptive. Ever wondered how to handle that gaslighter or micromanager in your office? Well, we’re exploring these challenging workplace dynamics with Dr. Tessa West, a psychology professor at NYU and author of "Jerks at Work."

In this episode, Dr. West shares her journey from the high-end retail world to academia, offering practical advice and engaging anecdotes that illuminate the complex nature of dealing with difficult colleagues. We unpack how to deal with jerks at work without sacrificing your sanity, success, or standards. You'll walk away with actionable strategies to not only survive but thrive in your professional environment.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Every jerk I've talked to, because I've been brought in by a lot of companies to do de-jerkifying coaching and most of these people are actually like lovely, and you're like I was expecting a monster and I'm just getting a sad person who is shocked.

Speaker 2: 0:15

The worst kind of thing.

Speaker 3: 0:28

Mel, what's going on? Hey, y'all have a heat wave.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Yeah, we have a heat wave. Yesterday we had an advisory for the air quality. Always a fun alert to get. Fantastic Remember when New York City, though, was in the wildfires last year, you know yeah, I happened to not be home during that time, but my husband sent me pictures. The sky was just completely orange over here, so it's just wild, ah fun with climate change.

Speaker 3: 0:55

Fun with climate change, yeah, good times, yeah. Well, speaking of New York City, we talked to someone from New York City, didn't we? We?

Speaker 2: 1:02

did, we did, we did. We spoke to Tessa West, who is a professor at NYU, and we wanted to get down on the topic of work, jerkery all the jerks at work.

Speaker 3: 1:18

Yeah, this is something that I'll tell you. One of the big themes coming out of a lot of our conversations and a lot of our work, especially on the pod, is how do I deal with these people at work that we will broadly categorize as jerks? The on the pod is how do I deal with these people at work that we will broadly categorize as jerks the gaslighters, the credit stealers, the micromanagers, all the jerks that we deal with. And so we called up Dr Tessa West. She is a professor of psychology at NYU. As Mel mentioned, she's also a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. Mel mentioned, she's also a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. She has written two books One she just dropped that's very cool called Job Therapy Finding Work that Works For you, and the other, mel. What is it? Jerks at Work, jerks at Work. Dr Tessa West has literally written the book about jerks at work, the type of jerks you meet. What do you do about them? What did you?

Speaker 2: 2:06

think about this episode, Mel. I really loved it because I think we've all been jerks at work. I don't think anyone's immune to being a jerk. I think it's on a spectrum, like we say, with a number of other things. But we've all been there. We've either been one or we've experienced it, or both. It's really insightful to think through what that looks like, how that shows up and how you can deal with it.

Speaker 3: 2:28

Loved everything that Tessa walked us through in terms of the types of jerks. What do you do about it? Stick around for the round Robin, because she absolutely gave the best one-liner for how you respond to someone being a jerk that I've ever heard in my life. I'm getting it embroidered on a pillow Awesome, yeah, it's awesome.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Well, with that, here's Tessa. Welcome, Tessa, to the your Work Friends podcast. Tell us your story. How did you get into what you do?

Speaker 1: 3:06

I'm a psychology professor at New York University and I study uncomfortable social interactions. So everything from feedback conversations with your boss to having an uncomfortable interaction in the doctor's office to working with an international group of people on a team and I've been doing this for 20 some odd years. I actually got started really studying this kind of topic of how we handle uncomfortable interactions and how they play out at work by working in retail myself and selling men's shoes at Nordstrom. I have an academic life but a non-academic path to get there, and I think if anyone's ever worked retail high-end retail in downtown Santa Barbara was where I worked. That is just the sort of perfect breeding ground for all difficult people jerks at work, status climbers, customer stealers, all that juicy stuff. I joined a lab at the same time at UC Santa Barbara. That did nothing but put people in these horrifically uncomfortable situations where you're interacting with someone who is giving you dirty looks while you give a speech on why you're a good friend. I was actually the person who gave the dirty looks.

Speaker 1: 4:15

That was my job, and so I learned academically how to study these things and study the physiology underlying people's stress they're under the skin responses while living it out in my own life working in retail, and eventually brought these worlds together to study these topics in the workplace. In the last maybe five to 10 years I've really focused on those really difficult moments we have at work, trying to figure out why we're stressed, why stress threads from one person to another and what we can do about it. And so now I have a good 30 some odd years experience uncovering all the difficult things people go through in the workplace.

Speaker 2: 4:51

One. Anyone who's been in retail myself included, also in shoes, I will add that is a very interesting experience. If you've been in any sort of customer service facing role, I'm sure you've had to have the most insane conversations. So I love that. I know, francesca, and I hear often from people am I a jerk at work one, and how do I deal with jerks at work? Which inspired us to reach out to you because we saw that you wrote a whole book on jerks at work and now job therapy. So in your study I love that you won. Your job was to give people dirty looks Interesting experience.

Speaker 3: 5:28

Sorry, but I'm thinking about. First of all, I know the exact Nordstrom you worked out is the one down in, like the city center of Santa Barbara. Really, yes, I can't imagine like that clientele selling shoes, selling men's shoes, especially when you're a pretty woman as well 18.

Speaker 1: 5:45

I didn't know what I was doing at all.

Speaker 3: 5:48

The dynamics there and the idea of. I love how this started, with this idea of like, awkward dynamics. I'm just wondering how much of that started with either you feeling awkward or you feeling like this person is awkward. Was it a mutual thing or is it more of like? Why do I feel awkward in this situation?

Speaker 1: 6:04

I think at first it was very much. Why do I feel awkward? I'm in my own head a lot and I think there's a lot to play around with there. One.

Speaker 1: 6:12

I grew up in Riverside, california, which is not a fancy place. My dad was a construction worker. I was not used to interacting with these rich Montecito men who would come in and say I need shoes for my gardener and buy like $600 shoes. So there were all there's a lot of status cues going on. So one thing I ended up studying later on was how we have cross status interactions with people who are richer or poor than us or more educated, and how we leak out our social class and all these subtle ways. So I think one of the reasons why I found those interactions so uncomfortable is because I grew up very blue collar and now I'm at UC Santa Barbara selling shoes to this like rich, white, older male population and I was asked to do all kinds of really weird things. I got down on the ground and pet someone's poodle and let it lick my face while I was putting shoes on and I just thought to myself I guess this is just what you do.

Speaker 3: 7:03

I'm okay. I'm okay, this is normal.

Speaker 1: 7:06

This isn't degrading at all. Totally fine. Totally fine, I'm going to make $60. It'll be totally worth it off the sale.

Speaker 1: 7:12

So I think a lot of that awkwardness lived in my head. It came from a lack of understanding norms, not getting the hidden curriculum of how one ought to behave in front of wealthy people. I didn't get that kind of training. And was I awkward? I'm sure I was, but I think most of us walk around with a lot of it living in our heads, more so than it actually becoming a dyadic or interpersonal phenomenon, and I definitely. For me, I try to turn lemons into lemonade and try to make a whole career out of all that really uncomfortable shoe sales experience I had. But yes, I think that the awkwardness is layered on with social cues and status issues and gender dynamics. I was the only woman in whole shoe sales, like in the men's shoes. They never let women sell men's shoes. They had a bro culture. I was brought in because I worked in the store in Riverside where I was also the only woman and convinced them that I could hack it with these bros.

Speaker 3: 8:09

So there's a lot going on, yeah, but what a great story, because I don't think you're obviously not alone in this and not alone in the awkwardness, not alone in the figuring out how to work with people and what those dynamics can do, especially in a work environment.

Speaker 2: 8:22

What was one of the most surprising things that you learned through all of your work.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Yeah, I think one finding that I kept seeing over and over again and I learned this by studying physiology and behavior at the same time is that when we're the most uncomfortable and we could see this in the lab because we measured people's blood pressure so you would get those readings live and measure their heart rate when you're the most uncomfortable, when you're the most stressed, you're the nicest readings live and measure their heart rate.

Speaker 1: 8:45

When you're the most uncomfortable, when you're the most stressed, you're the nicest, most over the top version of yourself, and my colleague, wendy Menez started calling this brittle smiles effect. So like you're so great, this kind of high pitched voice over the top smiling, and what's fascinating is because you're feeling stressed. At the same time, the anxiety still comes out, but in these kind of like weird creepy ways where you smile but not with your eyes right, so you don't have a douche and smile. We have a kind of lower half of you is smiling or you're fidgeting and avoiding eye contact, but saying the right thing and so if you're on the receiving end of one of these things.

Speaker 1: 9:17

It's like the words coming out of the person's mouth are nice, they're supportive, but it's all oozing out through these anxious cues. And what we started realizing is there's the controllable behaviors what we say and then the ones that are difficult to control how we say it and those two often misalign and that can lead to very difficult communication between people. And even talking to your jerk at work, you're probably really nice to that person if you were to go up to them. And we see this in all kinds of contexts and it's a pretty universal phenomenon, also cross-culturally. It's not just in America. I've seen it in Abu Dhabi with people from 50 countries. They do the same thing. I think that's one of our more consistent tried and true findings we found.

Speaker 3: 9:56

That's fascinating.

Speaker 2: 9:59

That's so interesting because I think one. I know I've done that when I've had to present somewhere like the over nicety to people in the room. Oh my God, but it's so interesting, Just the body language that people exude. You can't hide the body language.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Yeah, you can't control it. If you tell people okay, take a deep breath, don't look anxious, it makes it way worse. We tried that. We even tried telling people your partner's not anxious. They just had a ton of coffee today, so they're a little fidgety, they're like anxious coffee, oh my God. No, it actually makes it worse. And then they see even more anxiety than is actually there. It's really hard to get rid of this. It's a super sticky phenomenon.

Speaker 3: 10:37

It's very difficult to undo you just wrote Job Therapy, which we're super stoked about, and in the book you talk about some of the sources people have in terms of the frustration with work is actually due to some of those interpersonal relationships. When I think about people looking at a job pivot or they're unhappy in their career or they're thinking this isn't working for me anymore a lot of times people think it's because I'm not doing the right job or I'm not at the right company, not necessarily about the people you're surrounding yourself with.

Speaker 1: 11:30

I think relationships are everything at work, and I mean that in a lot of ways. So one of the main things that turns on or off our work happiness is our interpersonal relationships with people, and that doesn't just include your boss or the people on your team. That includes the people that you see day in and day out. I think that even if you're an individual contributor and I hear this a lot I'm an individual contributor. I don't need relationships. Of course you do, we all do. It doesn't matter what the nature of your work is. Those dynamics are at play and we know social networking is an important part of the work process, but we don't really understand how. So that's another component is, in addition to the one-on-one interactions you have, where you learn new information. You learn the hidden curriculum. You figure out whether your kiss-up kick-downer has a widespread problem or if it's just you.

Speaker 1: 12:11

All of those things, those kind of sticky interpersonal issues, can really turn our stress on and off. And when it comes to exploring new jobs, people often think about it very structurally I want something hybrid, or I want to work in this new city, or I need a better compensation package. They don't think about the relationship part so much, even though that's actually one of the biggest predictors of what leads us to actually drift apart psychologically from our jobs is the change in interpersonal dynamics at work. But we don't focus on that. We focus on how much we're getting paid or whether we can get promoted. But those things matter, but not as much as those interpersonal relationships, and those relationships are key to doing complex things like developing a new career identity.

Speaker 1: 12:52

Like you can't do that by reading websites or taking courses to improve this and that skill. You really have to sit down for 15 minutes and talk to a stranger and say tell me what your day-to-day looks like. That's really how you develop clarity around things, like a new identity at work, and so I really encourage people even shy people, even awkward people, even people who are individual contributors to really embrace the relational component at work in lots of different ways, and I don't mean you need to be best friends with anyone at work. You can think about relationships in different ways of serving these different purposes, but they're absolutely essential to feeling good at work and feeling good about yourself. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:31

I've absolutely felt that right, especially when I've been in organizations for an extended period of time. Where you feel like you have the relationships, where you feel like you have the network, it's so much easier to get things done and, quite honestly, a lot of times, work is just so much more enjoyable. Yeah, but the thing we talk about a lot too in terms of career development or even getting promoted, is you have to have sponsors, you have to have a board of directors. People need to quote unquote know who you are. That doesn't just happen and that isn't typically just based on your great work. It has to deal with do people want to vouch for you? Do they like you? Do you have the relationship to your point?

Speaker 1: 14:06

Are they willing to expend social capital to?

Speaker 1: 14:09

stand up for you. You know we often don't think about how getting promoted, you know and I don't just mean like literally getting a new job title, but having someone in the room vouch for you is costly for them. You know, even if it's, even if you're good and everyone agrees you're wonderful, if they are going to put their neck out for you and argue that you should get promoted, that means that they can't do it for the next person. In academia, it's like every time the chair goes to the dean and asks for money for a person, that's one less person that they can then ask for the next time, because we have a zero-sum amount of stuff that we're working with and we have to think about. Are we earning these relationships that are helping us in the moment but also helping us build our careers out? And every recruiter, internal and external, that I talked to for this book said that they love developing relationships with people in different stages of their careers, because they will place the same person five times. It's like a real estate agent.

Speaker 1: 15:05

They will sell you a house five times over your life and it is essential for them to get to know you and know if you're going to actually stay in a job. Do they want to place you? Because they don't get a bonus if you don't stay for six months, and so they're going to place the person they know will stay because they stayed in the last thing they placed them in. And those kind of lifelong relationships are also essential for us just in terms of our whole kind of life career trajectory, and we often don't really think about those lifey relationships outside of our specific job context.

Speaker 3: 15:34

Yeah, and then you meet these people that have these massive networks of people and they're so much better off typically than people that don't. I see this a lot too. This is such a small microcosm of this, but when you see people get laid off and then all of a sudden they're starting their LinkedIn profile, or all of a sudden they're starting to reconnect back, and it's like you should have been doing this all along, or nurturing these relationships all along to have that network to fall back on, it's a very small example, but something we see all the time.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Oh yeah, like you don't maintain those relationships and you only turn to them when you're laid off or you blast your whole network one message Like please help me. Like without those interpersonal connections. It just feels like relationship spam and I think no one likes to feel like they're being spammed in any context, especially with someone they know Not at all my parents used to say like relationships are, it's like a garden, it's a reciprocal thing.

Speaker 3: 16:24

Right, you have to tend to them, you have to nurture them and you have to give to get. You can't have it be only when I need you. So nurturing those very strong relationships obviously huge, and also giving your data something that really makes meaningful careers. And then I'm wondering on the other side of it too, where what happens when those relationships turn out to be with people that are just dicks and I've had that experience too, where you're like you're a dick, you're a jerk. And I am curious about how not even neutral relationships, but adversarial, jerky relationships impact people's careers and what they think about their careers.

Speaker 1: 17:06

I think when we have these failed relationships, losses loom larger than gains and we can perseverate on a turned relationship. For years and years I've talked to people that were like I had a best friend and then he became my boss and then I overheard him talking about me in the bathroom and it killed me. I said when did that happen? 1987. I'm still thinking about it and that's normal. When we feel like someone betrays us, we really hang on to that and to the point where we maybe have a bit of a spotlight effect, where we think it's going to damage us more than it actually does and we start to get a little conspiratorial and thinking about how they can damage our networks and things like that.

Speaker 1: 17:46

One of the people I talk about in Jerks at Work is a gaslighter and they're like the masters of trying to damage your network. Right, they don't just go after you, they go after your reputation and by doing that they hit everyone. That's a node in your network. Most jerks we deal with have less power than we think they do. Even if they tell us they're full of power and full of status, a lot of it is more bark than bite, so you need to actually do the work to figure out if there's a real concern there about that reputational damage and then be proactive about not trash talking the person but just information gathering.

Speaker 1: 18:19

We often have this instinct of they're going out there saying bad things about me.

Speaker 1: 18:22

I'm going to go out there and correct that by saying bad things about them.

Speaker 1: 18:26

But stop and take a breath and think, ok, I'm just going to information gather and get the lay of the land of my own reputation so then I can correct it and not make it about them at all, even if the person deserves that kind of negative reputation.

Speaker 1: 18:39

You have to just be super careful with gossip because you just never know how it's going to be used in the future. And we all gossip and it serves an important purpose. But the retribution piece, the piece that the it inside of you really wants to go crazy, is where you just have to focus more on controlling the narrative around your own reputation, figuring out how white for the problem is, and then I'd say these relationships fail fast. If you are getting red flagged that this person is saying negative things or credit stealing or whatever, disengage as quickly as you can from that. We all have stories I have some of when I first started going too far into a relationship with someone who is weirdly competitive or had some other tick that just didn't align with me and letting that relationship stay for too long.

Speaker 1: 19:20

And I think that's where we get a little messed up at work. We think people need to be our best friends and sometimes you figure out they're not and just disengage. I think is key. But yeah, it can hurt. I still have my stories from 20 years ago I still think about so I think it's pretty normal.

Speaker 3: 19:35

I have a reoccurring dream about somebody and it's just like why won't this go away? I see your face.

Speaker 1: 19:44

I understand. I understand it's like an ex-boyfriend they got a weird breakup with and there was no closure, none.

Speaker 3: 19:51

Yeah, and I still. There's certain things. I can't listen to. A certain song You're just like oh, I am burned. You're like I can't. Nope, nope, nope, yeah, but taking away that power to your point around when you're in it, disengaging like you don't need to keep working at it. Disengage number one and number two.

Speaker 1: 20:17

Focus on your own PR and not bad-mouthing them, right, ie Taylor Swift trash-chakes itself out at some point, hopefully, or just be very strategic about the nature of the bad-mouthing. I'd say if you do go to HR, you want to bad-mouth, don't focus on your feelings about the nature of the bad mouthing. I'd say if you do go to HR, you want a bad mouth, don't focus on your feelings about the person or your kind of description of their personality. Focus on exactly what they've done. When I have conversations with leaders about difficult people, I'll say something like okay, I'm going to tell you what happened, and if I start to editorialize this a little bit, just let me know, because I don't mean to. And then followed by we had this meeting and this is what was said, leaving my emotions aside and I don't use words like they're untrustworthy or they're disrespectful. Those are very eye of the beholder and not everyone's going to agree with you about what those things look like. So I just described the behaviors and then it makes me look like a more mature person.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Stick to the facts. But all goes back to the golden rule right Is like focus on yourself.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Don't worry about others. I'm curious, why do people show up like this? I'm a firm believer that most people who are jerks don't actually know it, because it harms them a lot to not have solid networks and good reputations. I'm dealing with a jerk right now at work and we just got some feedback about the people who report to her and it's all pretty terrible and she's been here for a long time and I asked her closest colleague what's going on. He goes oh, no one tells her. No one's ever told this person what's going on and I said why not? Because she gets a little scary and defensive.

Speaker 1: 21:41

So it's like one sign that this is going to involve some conflict or a little bit of social finesse to maneuver around and everyone's like, no, thank you, they're not getting rewarded for giving her this feedback. They don't win. She's powerful. So they could actually lose social capital. And I think most of us walk into those conversations thinking I could lose a lot if this goes poorly. And what am I gaining really by being honest with this person?

Speaker 1: 22:04

And most feedback is delivered pretty poorly and it takes the form of what I just mentioned. It's things like you're not trustworthy or you're disrespectful and no one really knows what. Some of them are out to draw blood, but I think most of them aren't. They just aren't very socially perceptive either. They don't pick up on cues that maybe, like other people, are unhappy with them. Every jerk I've talked to because I've been brought in by a lot of companies to do de-jerkifying coaching and most of these people are actually like lovely and you're like I was expecting a monster and I'm just getting a sad person who is shocked the worst kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Yeah, we talk about that all the time how the feedback just doesn't happen. Renee Brown's clear as kind is for a good reason and real time, and not just those big words, as you mentioned, but like actionable things that they can truly address, like clear feedback that's actionable, not just feelings. What's the worst kind of jerk that you've seen in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 23:16

The one that causes the most psychological damage, I would say, is the gaslighter.

Speaker 1: 23:21

And that is a word that like took on its own. It had its own moment. It's very much in the zeitgeist, but those are people who are lying with the intent to deceive on a pretty big scale and they socially isolate their victims. And so a lot of the people who've been gaslit. It's been going on for a very long time. They've been cut off from their social networks and also it's not always in the form of an insult, or you're not good enough or you're going to feel a lot of it's fiery feedback.

Speaker 1: 23:48

You're a special person. I'm only bringing in one member from the team to know about the super secret mission that we're on together. Before you know it, you've stolen company secrets and general counsel's at your door, but you had no idea. You thought you were a part of a super special secret mission. So I think people have a complicated emotional reaction to being gaslit, partly because there's a guilt that they have done some unethical things, that they felt silly, that they were talked into, and then they have no idea what other people actually think of them and who they can trust to to get an understanding of their reputation and they feel very lost and many of them, because of that, have so much trauma that they don't trust anyone ever again in any workplace. So for these folks this is really a traumatic experience. I think it's fairly rare to run into a true gaslighter. It's different than someone who lies, but that is a very damaging one.

Speaker 2: 24:40

Yeah, I've experienced that before, francesca, you have too, I think. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 24:45

Do you think a gaslighter is like pathological?

Speaker 1: 24:47

Yeah, I think it's like access to personality disorder stuff. I think it's a lot of these are contextually based.

Speaker 1: 24:56

Jerks can be bred at work, but I feel like you have to have a special combination of some dark triad traits or whatever to really thrive, because and a lot of these gaslighters are quite good at their job- and they're very powerful and they're well-connected and they know how to frame up themselves to be protected from whatever they've asked you to do in aiding and abetting, and they usually walk out with pretty clean reputations at the end of the day and that's very frustrating for people. There's not like a sense of procedural justice.

Speaker 3: 25:29

One thing I've been having a hard time, and I am someone that is there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women. That is my thing, and so it pains me to say this, because this is just my observation. What I have been trying to suss out, though, is most of the gaslighters I have met have been women, typically, I'd say 40 plus. I know there can be male gaslighters that are 18 years old like that, so that's fact right. What I've been trying to suss out, though, is how much of that type of behavior has been the world that they've grown up in and had to fight for and compete for in a male dominated world, yada, yada versus the pure pathology. And then where's the line where it's no, this is just who they are versus this is what they've been bred to?

Speaker 3: 26:10

do that's hard sometimes for me to suss out.

Speaker 1: 26:14

There's a lot of research on queen bee syndrome and things like that right, so you get these women in male dominated fields, and I'd also say that discrimination against women is there are no gender differences in who actually does it, and so people are like women shouldn't be discriminating against women. They do just as much as men do.

Speaker 1: 26:33

There are almost no documented kind of gender of the perceiver effects, meaning the person who does it. But when women do it, it stands out, it's much more salient and it also often takes more of a social aggression form, because the way women tend to be aggressive is much more sort of convoluted and social. And it starts when we're six years old and we learn these tactics of aggression through. Little boys hit each other, little girls gossip about each other, and there's a developmental trajectory of how we learn to be successfully aggressive that we can then take to work and the queen bees the women who've made it in these male-dominated fields. They have often suffered quite a lot. That they think earns them the right to then behave the same way. I have had a very similar experience where the people who I felt discriminated against me the most were more senior women who felt like they went through the gauntlet. It's now my turn and I need to just suck it up.

Speaker 1: 27:27

So there's a lot of kind of stereotypes about what one ought to do as a woman, when you're allowed to have babies, how you're supposed to behave and dress and no one's ever told me how to dress, except for other women showing up in job interviews. So I do think there's like a special dynamic that I think happens there with these women who have succeeded in these male dominated places.

Speaker 3: 27:47

Yeah, I like the term queen bee though, because I think that gives a nice frame for that, because it's hard Sometimes it's hard to assess. You talked about the gaslighter. In your book you write about other types of jerks at work and I'm wondering if you could give us a bit of this survey. What are the other types of jerks people meet at work?

Speaker 1: 28:05

My favorite is the kiss-up kick-downer, and this book is actually based on someone I worked with at Nordstrom's. This is why I love this person. They are very good at their job and they're super socially savvy, and so they're high on what we call status acuity. They can read the room. They can walk into a room and tell you who has status, who has respect and admiration and who doesn't. They can walk into a room and tell you who has status, who has respect and admiration and who doesn't. They can figure that out pretty quickly. So the boss tends to love them. They tend to be top performers, and if you are to complain that they are mistreating you so they kick down people at their level or beneath, you're going to get a lot of eye rolls and you're just jealous, and so they're very clever and savvy and Machiavellian and are able to get ahead through these kind of tricksy ways. They're very careful about who they gossip to and about, and they only do it in a very strategic way. And so if you have a workplace with a hierarchy which every workplace does these individuals tend to be very good at climbing up that hierarchy and then reading who has the status within that hierarchy. So that's my favorite.

Speaker 1: 29:04

I think some of the more straightforward ones are like the credit stealer who we are all probably pretty familiar with, and this person is also savvy. They tend to actually they don't just steal all their credit, they'll give you public credit for certain things so that when you then go complain it's much easier for them to say what am I talking about? I just gave them this whole speech publicly about all the hard work they've done. So credit stealers have a bulldozer type in my book as well. So this is a person who takes over meetings and agendas. They can usually work power structures behind the scenes, so you have a lot of things that end in an impasse and you're not quite sure why or what's happening, and these can all be team members.

Speaker 1: 29:43

And then I have two types of bosses. I have the micromanager, who I think most of us are familiar with, those insecure bosses that oversee all your work and they tend to do a lot but not get anything done. And then the neglectful boss, who, ironically, tends to also be a micromanager. So that's usually one person who oscillates between micromanagement and neglect. While they're micromanaging you, they're neglecting someone else, and so the neglect really gets operationalized as ignore, ignore, show up at the 11th hour, top-down control, change everything. Everyone freaks out, has a stress response and then they leave again for six months. So they go back and forth. So micromanager and neglectful boss are two people, but often one person.

Speaker 1: 30:27

And then the gaslighter who we just talked about.

Speaker 2: 30:37

I feel like I've encountered all of those in my career At the same time, sometimes all in one. I'm curious do you think every employee has been a jerk at work?

Speaker 1: 30:51

Yeah, if you've worked long enough, you are a jerk. We all have our own Achilles heel. We all have the worst version of ourselves that we can bring to work. And maybe that's a person who gets jealous and insecure and so it gets lashy outie. Or my son would say you're lashy outie. Or it's someone who feels like they need massive certainty and they're not getting it from their boss and so they hover over your Google page as you're working and they call you and you have to hide under your desk. I think we all have that version of us. When we get stressed and anxious, and some of us, that instinct is to try to overpower, to get that internal sense of control. Some of us disengage completely and become neglectful, and then some of us just have an inner instinct to be a little bit Machiavellian.

Speaker 1: 31:36

It's what we've seen, If you work in a law firm, anyone who's made partner probably is a little bit on that Machiavellian scale and thinks it's okay to kick down to climb ahead. And I think the key is just knowing what that ugliest version of you is on the inside so that you can then not make it go away but put steps in place structurally to prevent that person from coming out. But I do think we all have our inner jerk and that can be a different person at different stages of your career as well.

Speaker 1: 32:03

When you're more or less secure in a role versus completely overwhelmed, but plenty of security psychologically. But I'm a cynical person and I study the dark side of human nature and put people through really egregious social interactions to bring out the ugly version, because the nice version is not so interesting for me. But yes, I do think most of us have some inner jerk.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Yeah, I think it makes sense. Right, we're human beings, you show up that way. But I think, to your point, it's the self-awareness that's so critical, just knowing what that is what can come out. So how do you tame that, focusing on that? For employees, specifically, what are some of the ways that they can identify a jerk? Because, as you mentioned, there are covert jerks. They might not even realize that person's a jerk. And then there are some in your face jerks. One of my favorite things that you say is work jerkery, right, is this an environment full of work jerkery or not? Starting in the interview process, can they start to see that?

Speaker 1: 33:00

Yeah, I used to study first impressions. What can we get from the first 30 seconds? And actually thin slices of human behavior are actually pretty accurate predictors of the future. One thing is most work jerkery shows up a little bit ambiguous. In fact it is rare to say they're prejudiced. You don't you got to add up all these behavioral cues and then blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 33:27

Work jerks are a little bit like that, where you're going to have maybe a gut instinct that there's an ambiguous situation that could go either way. The first thing I tell people is do not just trust your instincts, that you can magically read what's going on in someone's mind simply by looking at their nonverbal behavior. I've done a lot of research on interpersonal accuracy and what it really takes to know what someone's thinking or feeling, and there is no magical thing. You simply have to ask, and in the case of work jerks or in an interview, you need to ask around. You need to ask networks of people. I think if you're interviewing for a job, you want to ask at stage two or three of the interview to not just talk to the hiring manager or your boss but to talk to their team members and to talk to people who've cycled out of their team at some point. You want to gather as much information as you can by people who have what's called non-overlapping social information, so they're not always in the same room at the same time with the person. They've known them at different time points in that person's career. They've known them at different jobs or on different teams and look for the signal and the noise there.

Speaker 1: 34:31

Don't trust your instinct based on what they say or their nonverbal behavior or whatever. Base it on data that you can collect. We aren't great at information gathering in an interview stage because we want to impress so badly that we just try to put our best foot forward and say the right things. But once you get far enough in the process, you should feel confident enough to ask for other connections of people and people who know those people to gain that kind of like reputational map of the individual.

Speaker 1: 34:53

What you're looking for is like cross situational consistency across these 15 different interactions, across these 15 people. When they're stressed, they do X, when they're relaxed, they do Y. And you need as much data as you can get because any one person could have a weird experience, and so you're just looking for some consistent patterns of behavior. But really don't trust your instinct. I think that's where most of us go wrong is oh, I saw them give me side eye, or they looked bored. I think they're a jerk. No, none of that stuff is actually predictive. Gather information from the networks of people in the interviews.

Speaker 2: 35:23

Okay.

Speaker 3: 35:25

Yeah, all of us with a resting bitch face appreciate that answer.

Speaker 1: 35:28

Thank you, I have an RBF. There's a science behind the RBF, folks. If your upper lip turns down when your elastic mind does, that gives you RBF. That's the magical ingredient, and so do we want to assume that everyone with a downturned upper lip is a bitch?

Speaker 2: 35:42

No, we do not. I was in a meeting once and I had a leader IME as I was presenting like fix your face.

Speaker 1: 35:49

I'm like what? That's not cool, that is bad behavior.

Speaker 2: 35:53

Yeah, I'm like I don't even know what's wrong with my face. I can't see it so cool, not helpful, yeah. Okay, I'm curious psychologically because you even mentioned something earlier. Some folks might not even ever recover from the damage that this does to them. Like, what are the long-term psychological impacts on the individual, but even teams and organizations? What happens when there's a culture of, like, jerk culture?

Speaker 1: 36:22

Yeah, I think people learn what it takes to get ahead, and the smart ones will do it, and so jerk cultures, beget jerk cultures. If a place is a place where jerks can thrive, then they will hire and they will stay there and they won't ever cycle out because nobody wants to recruit them outside of that place. And this happens with a lot of high performing jerks. There's a reason why snakes in suits is a phenomenon that we actually talk about that you get high up enough you become a little bit of a psychopath. That's not true for every organization, but it's really hard to correct an organizational cultural reputation. That can take years, and you can even wipe everyone out of the organization that was a jerk and hire a new, and it will still take forever.

Speaker 1: 37:05

We know from the science of social network and reputation spread that removing those people with a negative reputation actually does very little to change what people think of the network as a whole. And if you can think of organizations that have had Title IX issues or Me Too issues, simply getting rid of those people isn't sufficient. And it's because people know that firing is easy, but actually promoting from within and proving that you don't breed that is hard and that takes years and years. And a lot of organizations went through this with me too. They just fired all those executives that sent those nasty text messages or sexually harassed women or whatever.

Speaker 1: 37:49

That seems like too easy of a solution to most people. They think, well, why did that person get away with it for 20 years? I don't care that you're firing them now. And there's a bit of a moral licensing effect that happens. Okay, now you feel like you got rid of them. Now you're going to really go crazy because you checked off the box right, like you're feeling good about yourself, morality wise. So I think there is damage that can last years and decades. And to the individual, they're just going to be super sensitive for looking for anything that is similar to their past, jerk and even incidental similarities that have nothing to do with it or are going to cue them up. I've talked to people who go to the same hairdresser. I can't trust that person.

Speaker 1: 38:23

Or they're wearing a similar jacket or they went to the same university or are trained by the same manager 20 years ago. Incidental similarities loom large for us and we often see correlation and inferred causation from that, and so people will start to get a little bit too triggery with those things and it can really hold them back right. Or they develop lay theories about why that person treated them in a certain way that are not ever really tested or explored. But we just have our theories and then we believe them and they're idiosyncratic and we stick to them, and I think that can really lead us astray as well.

Speaker 3: 38:57

What do you do? What do you do if you have that person? Let's take my example. I have a reoccurring dream about this dumb person. I know what do I do you?

Speaker 1: 39:04

don't have any closure in that relationship. Did it just end one? I have this with like exes. It just ended one day and you never saw them. You never did the exit interview where you said all the things or it's really hard to let go of these. Like the social psychologists would call this a goal incompletion.

Speaker 3: 39:39

You didn't complete the goal of ending the relationship, and so it's this kind of subtle, incomplete goal that you have, like never jumping off a high dive, and so you're just going to perseverate on it, or it's going to like sneak into your subconscious every once in a while, and that's true for all things that we don't complete.

Speaker 3: 39:46

Should you call them up? Who is this? I don't even know who this is. No, it's super fair. Super fair, I think, even just knowing, look, it's going to pop in. That's it. Let's just know what's going to happen.

Speaker 1: 39:51

I still dream about, like people from sixth grade that I feel like I didn't have like closure on, and that's normal. It's actually totally normal. It doesn't mean that this person is still haunting you in any meaningful way. It just means that there was something incomplete that you are not able to fully move on from because you just didn't finish the goal of ending that relationship in some kind of formalized way. And that's how most relationship ends. I think that's like just how relationships are. We don't usually have some kind of light switch that goes off where it's done. It's just like a lot of ambivalence, a lot of feelings that go up and down, and then eventually we move on. But what does move on me? I don't. Yeah, it means you're still dreaming about the person, but you're functional, so it's nice.

Speaker 3: 40:34

A thousand percent. I'm glad I'm not the only one, though, so I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 40:37

Just write them a letter saying all the things you need to say and throw it into a fire and release it.

Speaker 1: 40:43

She's going to be dreaming about the fire and talk to the fire to get the letter back Will be a worse nightmare than it started as.

Speaker 2: 40:52

Okay, scratch that All right. So with say, you're in a new job, it's the first 90 days and you're like, oh shit, I thought I did my due diligence in the interview process. I talked to people but it is clear no one gave me the real story here. What can people do? What do you do to protect yourself if you start to identify work-jerkery happening?

Speaker 1: 41:19

I think, first off, a lot of people try to go at this alone. They think that the negative treatment happens in a vacuum. And I think I've done a lot of research on what it's like to be a newcomer at work and newcomer status and the newcomer hump, and knowing what that hump is will help you strategize of what to do next. The first thing is, when you're a newcomer and you experience this, you assume that everyone around you knows it's happening and they don't care. And so first you actually need to test that assumption. Probably people don't know what's happening because they're in their own world. There's not actually an awareness of what you're up to and how you're being treated by other people, even if it happens in a meeting. Most of us spend most of our time in meetings rehearsing what we want to say next, and we almost never pay attention to what other people are actually saying. So we can remember what we said and when we were interrupted. But if you were to say, hey, mel, did you interrupt your buddy Tom, or when was he interrupted? You'd be like I don't know. All I know is when I was interrupted. So I feel like we have these spotlight effects on ourselves, so you need to break that a little bit and actually break that assumption that everyone knows what's happening except for you.

Speaker 1: 42:26

There's also a lot about norms in the workplace and hidden norms and things like that you probably aren't aware of, and so the best thing to do to learn about norms of treatment of people at work is to take what's implicit and make it explicit and just explicitly ask about how people ought to be treated.

Speaker 1: 42:41

And that sounds silly and dumb, but there could be a culture of sarcasm here or a culture of treating each other a little roughly. That is just does not sit with you well and you need to know if you're being mistreated or if this is just a normative way people act around here. I remember in academia we make people go through this like terrible two day interview process and there's a job talk that's an hour long and in some microcultures you can interrupt every three seconds and that's a good sign. It shows engagement and others. If you interrupt every three seconds, that means you're done, that means they hated the talk, and so we often have these little microcultures at work that we assume are bigger and more industry-wide than they actually are, so people could be assuming that you understand a norm that you don't because it's weirder and more idiosyncratic than they even realize.

Speaker 1: 43:28

And this is even true for jargon at work. People assume everyone in an industry uses jargon. Jargon is team-based. The five people are using the same weird words. So you want to just test your assumptions around that If it is widespread and everyone agrees it's okay behavior and you don't like that, that's your red flag. You are not going to change the whole organization and get them to all behave differently. So those are like the two key pieces of this job is probably not going to work out for you.

Speaker 1: 43:53

Widespread and everyone's okay with it, not okay with it not widespread, then you have hope. Then you can proactively work with your network or your boss or whatever. But almost everyone assumes behavior is both more widespread and more acceptable than probably others realize and they're shocked when they hear about it and a little bit surprised. So test those assumptions before you jump ship and start something else. But it is pretty normal to think you're hired into one culture and show up and get something different. I'll say all that with one major exception being. A huge problem that came up during COVID and still happening is engagement issues. You thought this would be a really engaged workplace where everyone was on board and they were active and they were in, and then you show up and like literally no one is there. That is a really tough kind of cultural level of disengagement or neglect. That is hard to fix and I wouldn't try to take that particular issue on.

Speaker 2: 44:44

What if it's your boss in those first 90 days?

Speaker 1: 44:48

Yeah, you can talk to other team members to see how they're being treated. But my favorite lay of the land networking reality check tactic for bosses is you don't want to go to your boss's boss, you want to go up and over. You want to find people who know your boss, who are at the same level as them, and so they can give you insight into this treatment. No-transcript, I have all these kinds of like little tricksy rules based on marital therapy of how to do it. But before you're even there, you want to know oh, is this what all middle managers do, or is this just mine? Going two levels up is a little bit difficult, but up and over at their level in the network is useful to just get feedback from other bosses who have a similar role as yours.

Speaker 2: 46:00

I really like that because then you're comparing and you have data to compare it against, and it isn't just the assumption that your boss is the problem, so to speak. Not saying their behavior is great if it's common either.

Speaker 1: 46:13

But yeah, but you want to know. I think when people are like, how do I know if the jerk problem is too much, I, my first question is how widespread is it? How culturally normative is it? Are they hiding their behavior Cause they know it's bad, which is a good sign for you, because that means this organization doesn't actually like it. It's so scary to deal with, but that's a good sign that it's not just the whole well has been poisoned, it's just this one person. And is it OK to give any kind of feedback to bosses and some organizations? They have a very tight hierarchy and it's completely unacceptable to ever have a real conversation with your boss that is not just about your own career path and your own performance, but about theirs. So you want a place that actually does like bite-sized, normal conversation, organic feedback across all levels.

Speaker 2: 46:59

I know we're talking about like how leaders can manage this one-on-one with folks on their team. But what do they do if they see that the team is developing this culture of jerkery together? What can they do to address it without killing?

Speaker 1: 47:15

morale on the team or trust within the team. I think you know I teach this little program called the tricky situations, and it's just a bunch of these workplace dynamics and one of them is I actually give people an example of a situation like this where you think you know who the jerk is. Bob is constantly taking on the work of senior people. It seems like there's a free rider problem at work. Why is Bob doing everyone's work, even though he's the most junior person? How do you deal with this potential free ride problem? And half the people will come to me and say, oh, clearly these senior people are taking advantage of Bob and they're offloading work. And the other half will say, oh, I've had a lot of Bobs before. These are these go-getter junior people who steal the work of senior people in an effort to climb up, and they do this in a systematic way. And so we have our lay theories of who the actual jerk is in the situation. But we should probably test that out a little bit.

Speaker 1: 48:10

I don't love the idea of bringing people in one by one and interrogating them and asking them what's going on. I actually more like to keep track of the structure of things who's doing work and when Was this work you were assigned to do or not? Let's talk about the feedback interactions you're having and focus on the little behaviors and work together with everyone as a group. One-on-one meetings end up with conspiratorial thinking often, and sometimes you eventually have to get to that, especially if HR is involved. But you want to hear. You want your whole team to hear one message from you at the same time and not assuming that the jerk is the high status person or the low status person or you even know what's going on. So I'd say, like a lot of information gathering and put your stereotypes aside of what you think is happening before you do. But I do think that teams that there's a lot of structures and systems that we can put in place to prevent jerks and not allowing things like informal networking behind the scenes to pull levers of power good old boys club networking, things like that that used to work to get people's way and so far as we continue to reinforce that and we don't have real procedural justice around rules and decision making, I think we're in trouble.

Speaker 1: 49:15

And I'd also say for bosses and leaders, if you want to make a jerk free place and you want to prevent Machiavellianism and things like that on your teams. You need to lay out super clearly what the structure is for determining raises and promotions at your organization, down to things like certain bosses don't have the status and power to do it until they've been here for five years Really clear. And then I'd say the other thing is we need more failure pipeline data so that when we aren't promoted or when we're not succeeding, we're not bitter about it. We don't start to engage in kiss up, take down behavior to get ahead. We understand that it takes five times to get this promotion and we're only on time three or we know who our social comparison others are.

Speaker 1: 49:54

So there's procedural justice around decisions that don't often favor us, because what happens when people aren't getting ahead is that's when they turn to this jerk behavior to try to do whatever it takes. And transparency, I think, can move mountains with just explaining to people, even if they don't like the rules. If they understand them, they're less likely to turn to jerk behavior to get ahead, and that's usually where we see it actually to get their way to get ahead, to pull levers of power. That's where most people turn into jerks at work.

Speaker 2: 50:20

We can see that Francesca and I talk often about the power of transparency in the workplace, because you're removing the confusion for folks immediately and they don't have to fill in the blanks and suddenly they're in survival mode every single day because they don't know what the story is or they don't have clarity on the situation. So now it's just an unsafe environment. Do you think organizations are doing enough to address jerks at work?

Speaker 1: 50:45

No, they wait till the problem crops up and then they play whack-a-mole. There's not a lot of prevention. Think about this through the lens of healthcare. Right, we wait for the heart attack to happen and then it's time to lose weight. There's not a lot of prevention and early detection and conversations to see the early red flags, to see their warning signs, and I think that's just because most of us don't know, and often the early red flags are not what ends up being the problem later. Those early signs are not often perfectly aligned with what ends up getting you reported to HR. Anxiety and stress and feeling overwhelmed is often an early red flag of micromanagement. But that could be anything. So I don't think so. I think people talk about it a lot, but they don't do a lot to actually address the issue. One of the dark reasons why is because a lot of these jerks are high performers.

Speaker 3: 51:32

At the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 51:33

We are very much yoked to performance metrics and that if you have a board, they care about that. If you're publicly traded, that's what matters, Not nice people, not so-called soft skills. And so there's good reason for people to just say I don't care about all this stuff. I have to answer the board and if our numbers stay low, I don't care. That we have jerks, we can't afford this. Bring in the Machiavellian people who will bring our numbers back up. Sorry, that was a little bit dark.

Speaker 2: 52:00

We've seen it.

Speaker 3: 52:05

Yeah, I know, there's the whole Gary Veer chat. If your best-selling salesperson is a total asshole, go in and fire him tomorrow. No one's doing that, and you can absolutely do the long-term analysis of how much that is costing you by having someone be a jerk right Turnover and we know all the stats. But that's a long-term play and we live a quarter mile at a time in corporate America. Okay, all right, tessa, we do this with all our guests. It's called Rapid Round. They're quick, short answers. They're meant to be fun. Are you ready to play Tessa? Sure, okay, six questions, so no pressure. In your opinion, who's the biggest jerk of all time?

Speaker 1: 52:52

Donald Trump, is that basic?

Speaker 3: 52:56

Depends on who you talk to that guy. Oh, that guy.

Speaker 1: 53:02

Yeah, that guy. There's no redeeming qualities, there's just not.

Speaker 3: 53:07

I can't, I can't, I can't, can't, I can't, I can't believe I know, okay, yeah we're here again. We're here here we are here, we are, here, we are, and this is why I'm looking for eu citizenship. So, looking at property in italy, looking at property in spain, just in case shit hits the fan, there you go all right, I right, I have a Canadian husband.

Speaker 1: 53:27

I'm good, I'm covered.

Speaker 3: 53:30

Nice, excellent move, excellent. Toronto's looking really good these days. That's so funny.

Speaker 1: 53:38

What's the fastest way to identify a jerk in the workplace Ask around, just ask around. Don't trust your instincts. Gather data.

Speaker 3: 53:46

What's the best one-liner response to a jerk's rude comment?

Speaker 1: 53:50

When someone's rude to you and I wish I could go back and do this the last time someone did something awful to me that I just met I would say how many other people have you said that to?

Speaker 3: 53:59

Oh, I love that.

Speaker 1: 54:04

That's great. It's a good zinger and it really gives you the power back and makes it look like you're just judging them for the behavior. But you're not internalizing it. Oh, that is the shit.

Speaker 3: 54:16

How many people have you said that? To Just give me goosebumps. I'm like, oh, that's good.

Speaker 1: 54:19

That's very good I love that. I love that For more mean girl advice, come to me yeah.

Speaker 3: 54:26

So awesome. What's the best way to get subtle revenge on a workplace jerk without getting caught?

Speaker 2: 54:31

Does that just make you the jerk?

Speaker 1: 54:33

Yeah, this is an easy one, guys. You make friends with building maintenance and you either make sure their trash never gets taken out again or you make their office incredibly hot or incredibly cold. Attack the creature comforts. Those are actually what stresses us out the most at work, and the best way to get someone to quit a job is to move their office somewhere uncomfortable or take away their parking spot. Whoa, I know how to get people to retire. That won't retire. It's parking spot and inconvenience office and a faraway bathroom that's in a weird spot or an office next to the bathroom.

Speaker 1: 55:10

Either too close or too far.

Speaker 3: 55:14

It's so simple and so brilliant. Yeah, what's your biggest pet peeve when it comes to workplace behavior? What's the one thing you're just like? Come on.

Speaker 1: 55:22

Trash talking on social media Slack or email, but will hide from you in person. I hate it when people do that. If you're gonna do it, just own it. Just do it to my face it takes a special kind of spinelessness to do that read about me and then, yeah, not, but work right next to me as you're tweeting about me I know a place that will uh mail that person poo.

Speaker 3: 55:47

I will send you that address. Just trope load if you need that. Okay, if you could give just one piece of advice to someone dealing with a difficult coworker, what would it be?

Speaker 1: 55:57

You are not alone. You're probably the 500th victim of this particular person, so don't feel like you're being isolated. Most jerks actually isolate people and make them feel very alone and that there's something wrong with them. You're not. You are probably the 500th person on the receiving end of this jerk. The best thing you can do is ask around and figure out how many. But I think that sort of feeling stupid and alone is the shame that comes along with being victimized by jerks. That we often don't talk about, especially if you're new at work and you feel like you're being bullied.

Speaker 1: 56:29

It's like back in school. Why am I being bullied? It's not about you, it's about them.

Speaker 3: 56:34

Yeah, it's nice to frame it that way, because you can honestly almost get a little bit more objective about the situation and what you can do to get yourself into a healthier place, if you know that's what this person is like and it's not about you place. If you know that's what this person is like and it's not about you. It's been so lovely to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, this is so fun you guys are awesome.

Speaker 1: 57:00

I love the vibe of this. I feel like I need a drink of prosecco or something in my weird cubicle right now.

Speaker 2: 57:06

Delicious. Next time, next time, come back.

Speaker 3: 57:14

Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at friend@yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and, if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends and checkout yourworkfriends.com.

Speaker 2: 57:29

We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.