How to Best Handle Office Jerks
Tessa West delves into a topic that anyone who has worked anywhere can relate to. Anyone who has had to deal with peers, subordinates and bosses. Because surely, at some point, in your career, you must have encountered a “jerk” – someone whose very presence at the office or team meeting provoked shudders, so much so that you went of your way to evade him or her.
West has the right kind of academic training to not only categorize jerks but also to propose means by which we can handle them. She’s a Professor of Psychology at NYU and an expert on interpersonal interaction and communication. She’s published more than 60 articles in top-tier journals and has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. She’s won the Theoretical Innovation Prize and frequently contributes to The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.
In her book, Jerks at Work, she lays out the characteristics of one. Sasha – she’s the jerk – is not pointily talented but is good enough at many things. She’s relentless about saving money, adept at pruning budgets, even if it involves a penny-pinching approach. She’s also a toxic boss. She humiliates folks in the presence of others. Once she undercut a reportee in the presence of her subordinates. She also has erratic mood swings, morphing from charming and friendly to abruptly scathing. Worse, she’s a micromanager. “Over time, Sasha oscillated between jealous and downright patronizing, sometimes within an hour.”
Annie, who’s reporting to Sasha, for a temporary period, observes the impact on her own mind and body. Annie starts eating junk food, develops health issues, high BP and a drinking problem. As the author notes, such toxic bosses can have an “outsized” influence on your well-being.
Some might be privileged enough to quit a job. For many others, contending with jerks is a necessity. West then lays out strategies to deal with them. She approaches this as a scientist would, categorizing them to better finetune your responses. After all, as Sun Tzu puts it, it helps to know your enemy.
Types of jerks she identifies include:
Kiss Up/ Kick Downers (KUKD)
These are folks who are extremely amiable to those in positions of power. But equally toxic to peers and to those below them. They also tend to grab power early, often before you can size them up.
Tessa worked with such a person at a shoe store. Dave would steal customers away from other sales staff, even rearrange shoes in storage to ensure that only he could locate size 10s – a sought-after size among Men’s shoes. All this while completely flipping his personality in the presence of bosses.
There’s a personality trait called “social comparison orientation” – we all have it to some degree. Kiss up/kick downers have it to a pathological degree. They will do anything to get a legup. To begin with, they will find out everything about you. “Social comparison sleuths like these use their knowledge to devise clever and devastating methods of competition.”
There’s another dangerous trait that the kiss up/kick downers possess. They can “read a room.” West’s psychologist colleagues call this status acuity. They quickly gauge who the softer and easier targets are. They will then belittle those in the presence of folks who matter. KUKDs are often worse when they’re alone with you.
They ingratiate themselves with bosses, by assisting them with special jobs, particularly during crises. They deliberately bump into bosses and bosses’ bosses in places outside work – like at clubs, squash courts, supermarkets. “Kiss up/kick downers are opportunists who think outside the box.”
Why do they do it?
· Competition is stiff, so they play a canny Hunger Games to get ahead.
· Perks are huge when you climb to the top of pedigreed companies.
· They thrive on hierarchies. They relish a “social dominance orientation” – they are drawn to “competitive jungles.”
· It’s their way of coping with stress
To handle KUKDs, you need to find allies who despise the kiss ups as much as you do. When you approach the boss, acknowledge their strengths before you dwell on how their toxic behavior is more “widespread” than she or he may know.
Credit Stealers
They might help with your project but will present it as their own. They could be one of your bosses, who might seem to champion your successes, only to be erasing your contribution when showing your work to higher-ups.
Bulldozers
They tend to overtake groups and group decisions. They might bypass their own bosses and approach those in more senior positions to build their capital.
They aren’t sneaky like the KUKD, but they’re outright aggressive. To stop their steamrolling, you ought to confront bulldozers who are creating long-term or significant problems.
Free Riders
These folks get by with doing very little or nothing at all. They thrive in groups where others pick up the slack.
Free-riding is one of the most common traits found in organizations. This quality might be exacerbated by the quiet quitting movement.
Micromanagers
Bosses who award you with very little autonomy. They seem to distrust your ability to perform. Since no one can micromanage everything, they tend to be highly negligent in some areas.
West has actually seen her micromanager creep up on her as she’s typing into Google Docs. To handle these people, Tessa suggests you keep them in the loop as much as possible. Short structured meetings can reduce their anxiety.
Neglectful Bosses
Such bosses are switched off for long periods and then they become overly controlling. Many tend to be, paradoxically enough, micromanagers as well.
Gaslighters
They pick victims and persuade them of an alternate reality. They even make victims feel helpless or utterly special. They are likely to be planning some large-scale deception or fraud.
Beware of folks who are cutting you off from other people. It helps to document what they are doing to you. And to turn to other people, ignoring the gaslighter.
Myths About Jerks
West dispels myths about dealing with jerks. For instance, the notion that only novices or new entrants struggle with them. She points out that even those with many years of experience suffer from toxic colleagues. And are often as clueless about how to handle the situation as newbies can be.
Other myths have to do with the capabilities of jerks. The truth is that jerks can be as talented as other employees. Since they can also be suave or likable in the presence of superiors, challenging their power becomes trickier. Bosses might seem indifferent to jerks, but often they’re clueless about how toxic these people are. This is particularly so with kiss up/kick downers.
General Tips To Handle Jerks
- In general, to handle jerks, be willing for small battles. Having zero conflicts is usually a sign that you are too submissive or indifferent to the outcome
- Focus on behaviors rather than on motivations.
- Build a broad network that includes distant ties, and not just close ones. As West puts it: “[We] will never solve our jerk-at-work problems until we understand how to leverage our social relationships.” In other words, you take on jerks by making friends.
- Ask for feedback on your behavior. “Feedback should be small and frequent,” West says.
If You Are The Problem
If maybe you’re a jerk yourself, this book might help you tackle unsavory aspects in yourself. As West points out, many of us might have elements of “jerks” in us – there might be times when we have been dogmatic or micromanaging, and we can use her study to introspect on our methods. The author herself admits that she had become a bulldozer while orchestrating an office move. She needed to consciously shut down her own views and allow others to be heard.
Isolating Talented Jerks
A recent article in The Economist also dwells on complications posed by talented jerks. Bartleby (The Economist columnist) observes that jerks, like ice cream flavors, abound in variety. Some are “oblivious jerks” – folks who are unaware that they’re jerks. Others are “situational jerks” whose behavior tends to be toxic in some circumstances. Many are “bit-of-a-jerks” as in being only mildly or tolerably jerk-like.
The toxically talented can also be handled by isolating them – by having them work as individual contributors. The Economist suggests this might be an easy fix for the workplace and the jerk: “As the well-known philosophical teaser goes: if a jerk throws a tantrum in their home office and no one is around to see it, are they really a jerk?”
References
Tessa West, Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them, Portfolio/Penguin, 2022