IDL82 Season 2: Jerks at Work with Tessa West

From whom did you learn your leadership skills? How can a leader easily identify the real free-riders in their team? What does it take to create a genuinely safe work environment?

Today I have an incredible conversation with Dr. Tessa West, who is a professor of Psychology at NYU and the author of Jerks at Work. Together we unpack what happens when leaders don’t set a good example, and how it’s still possible to learn from bad leadership. We also get into safe work environments and creating holistic reward structures.

Meet Tessa West

Tessa West is a Professor of Psychology at New York University and a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication.

Her research focuses on understanding the nature and dynamics of human perception, in particular, how we perceive others in cross-race interactions. Tessa's multi-method approach to studying dyadic- and group-level interactions balance real-world validity with the control of experimental settings.

Tessa received her Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut and has published over 70 academic articles in psychology’s most prestigious journals. She has received several career awards, including the early career award from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Theoretical Innovation Prize from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology among others.

Tessa is also the author of the book “Jerks at Work” on coping with toxic colleagues.

Visit her website and connect on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• We’ve all been jerks at work - 03:39

• Did you learn from poor leadership? - 07:26

• Create safe work environments - 20:57

We’ve all been jerks at work

When people feel uncomfortable and insecure in a socially diverse space such as the office, they can act out in different ways, such as:

-        Becoming easily aggravated or frustrated with others

-        Seeking a lot of control over others and projects

-        Micromanaging their team

-        Being neglectful with their employees or staff

Did you learn from poor leadership?

Where does your example of leadership come from? Who set the example for you that you are basing your actions and behaviors on?

Depending on where you first worked and where you saw your early example, what kind of behavior was rewarded?

If the kiss-up and kick-down people were promoted, then you may have learned to become like that and treat others the same way.

However, remember that whatever was learned can be unlearned.

Create safe work environments

Creating safe workplace environments should be intentional. You cannot tell people it is a vulnerable place without embodying and acting out that vulnerability.

Give honest and constructive feedback with compassion at the end and ask if they have anything to add for you as the leader, and prove that it is safe and genuinely welcomed for them to do so.

Remember that if you want to dish it out, you have to be able to receive it as well.

Do you want to tell whether people feel safe in the business?

Ask your team at the beginning of the week:

-        “What work have you agreed to do?”

And then ask them at the end of the week:

-        “What work did you do that you agreed to do and what work did you do that you did not agree to do?”

Adapt the reward structure of your company because that is what people are sensitive to. Can you quantify collaboration and holistic, compassionate teamwork?

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Tessa West – Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them

Visit her website and connect on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Join the Impact Driven Leader Community

Check out the Impact Driven Leader Youtube Channel
Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn

Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com

About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.

Just own it and be vulnerable. Showcase that so that other people can see it and follow suit.

Tessa West

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. If you're watching on YouTube, man, good to see you. If you're listening on iTunes or Google Play or Spotify, or wherever else we are, ah, wait, Audible, yes, that too, where you are, glad you're here. Glad that you're back to listen to this episode. Probably one of my, I always have fun, I won't lie to you, I have fun with these. I hope you have fun listening to these episodes, but I have fun talking with the people that I get to talk to. Tessa West, Dr. Tessa West, she is a doctor at NYU, New York University studying social sciences. She is the author of the book, Jerks at Work. Funny thing is, somewhere, somehow social media, some leadership blog or whatever, talking about books that you need to read and Jerks at Work is one of them. I'm like, that's an interesting title, and that would be a fun conversation. Before ever reading the word, I reached out to Tessa on Instagram and asked if she would be a host and today, I had an amazing conversation with her. Can't wait to have you listen to it. But again, thanks for being here as a guest, whether it's your first time, whether it's your almost hundredth time, I think we're into episode into the eighties now, at the time of this recording. I'm so glad you're here and so glad that you're a part of the community. I would encourage you this, if you have yet, please rate, review this show. Let me know what you're thinking. Let me know your thoughts, what you like, maybe what I could do better as well. I'd love for you to subscribe to the YouTube channel. You can watch it live there. There's so much more as past guests, like Joe Navarro talks about the nonverbal communication. You're going to get so much more by watching it. I encourage you to do so. But if you're listening in, if you're listening at one and a half, two speed, great. Take some notes. Enjoy this conversation with Tess West as we talk about Jerks at Work [TYLER] I realize I was an asshole. I can still be an. I was an asshole too, even given you the extent of this. So I was speaking at an event, the last two years have been such a blur. I don't even remember. I think it was January of 2020. So I'm speaking at a company event, the company that my wife and I are involved in and I was going through myself talking about leadership. I was talking about connecting and one of the things I said is I was an asshole and I have to accept I was an asshole. This is why I was an asshole. For me, it was all laid into insecurity. As I read through the book, as I read through Jerks at Work, and what's funny, the first thing that hit me in my notes, I wrote this down, first, you have to be a Finding Nemo fan. I hope you are. [TESSA WEST] Oh, yes. [TYLER] Let's just assume you are. The first thing that hit me, and I have this scene of Bruce, he's in the sunken ship, and he's standing there and he says, "My name is Bruce and Fish are my friends." I look at that as my name is Tyler, and I was a jerk at work. [TESSA WEST] Yes, the self-confessional --- [TYLER] Yes, so I was an asshole. I'm a recovering asshole. It still happens at times. I don't mean to be that way. [TESSA] We all can be. Yes, we're all assholes. I wish people would just own that and stop being like it's everybody else is an asshole and I'm a victim all the time. I think we all are asshole. I really do [TYLER] Well, I mean, so again, as the audience is now listening and wherever we're going to cut this and edit it's fine. We're having a fun conversation at this point. When I first found out about your book Jerks at Work, and I'm like, oh, that's going to be a fun conversation. I have not read a word of your book, but it's just that idea of we all have jerks at work and here's the thing that I think in that last part of it, is we've all been a jerk at work. To me, it's our insecurities, in my opinion, those are what brought me to be a jerk at work. It was my insecurities that led me to be a bulldozer as part of my Enneagram eight but I guess it just start there. Go with it, Tessa. Explain this to me. [TESSA] I think feeling uncomfortable in your own skin at work is probably the biggest predictor of workplace jerky. I think people walk into roles all the time where they don't really know what they're doing. Sometimes it's because they failed for lots of reasons. Maybe there was no one else to promote. Maybe they worked really hard to get a job before really thinking about it or they're promoted because they were good at their old job, not because they're good at this thing called managing humans, which no one actually learns how to do. I think these are all the sort of perfect breeding ground to bringing out the worst in us. When we're uncomfortable on our own skin, we tend to do things that are very extreme. We either exert way too much control over people. We become micromanagers in an effort to actually decrease our own anxiety. In fact, micromanagement is more a self-regulation strategy than a management strategy but people don't talk about it that way. It's how can I get rid of my negative feelings? [TYLER] I love that [TESSA] The same thing with like neglectful bosses. They're panicking. They show up, they micromanage to deal with their own anxiety, to regulate their own emotions. Or sometimes that regulation looks like you're way too hands off. You step out, you're totally overwhelmed, you regulate going to the gym or watching Netflix or doing whatever it takes. But I think most of the reason why we turn out this way is because we're trying to regulate our own negative emotions and someone else happens to be on the receiving end of that. But we talk about it as if we're intentionally victimizing people and my boss is trying to ruin my life. They're trying to destroy my career. My coworkers hate me. Why are they so mean to me? I'm like, no, they're in their own heads. They're not actually thinking about you at all. No, they forgot you exist. They're thinking about themselves. Most people go through life just thinking about themselves most of the time. You have to make them aware that these actions have consequences for other people. And I think that there's evidence to support this because a lot of these behaviors are just as harmful for the jerk as they are for the target. So if your boss was really just out to get you, why would they do this? It's actually self-harm. So these strategies are ineffective, but they're very much self-focused. [TYLER] I think that's where, again, as I stop and I think about this idea of being a jerk at work, being a jerk, unbeknownst to me, to me it was a survival. It was me surviving life, and it was my intensity that helped get me through hard times in life. So that became my mo. It was just, that's how I got forward. I didn't know I was a jerk until years later of looking back and people explaining, "Hey, you're an asshole." There was times I understood, but it was like, oh, that's just the way you have to be. So how much of, as you look through this idea of jerks at work, how many of them is a coverup for their insecurities, we'll label it that way, or it's just the way that they learn to lead? [TESSA] We're not that different from like rats in a box where if you reward us, okay, with pellets. We're going to do the thing. We're going to hit the little lever that gives us those pallets. If you work in a place that rewards kissing up and kicking down, if people sort of roll their eyes when someone that you're destroying complains about you, there's sort of a winner takes all mentality. You're going to thrive in that environment if you're flexible and you're able to figure out what works in these environments. So I think it's easy to blame individuals, but in my book, I mostly talk about situations, context, breeding grounds for these things and smart, ambitious people figure it out. They're not, oh, I'm going to be so nice in this environment when the only people who make leaders and they end up in the C-suite and they become like top of the firm or whatever. They act totally differently. You're going to figure it out. I mean, I grew pretty scrappy. I grew up very blue collar, my dad was a construction worker, I figured it out, from like a very young age, what it takes to get ahead where you can cut corners and not where you have to really put in the hours, versus you can slack off and you figure these things out. If you're effective at work, sometimes the things you're figuring out are how to be an effectively to get ahead. It's easy to blame other people for this, but the situations can breed this and I think lots of cultures at work that have top performers have this problem. [TYLER] Well, and I think that is, you identify it, I think as I talk to other people, as I interview people for this podcast, we're in the changing landscape one by force, by two generationally. I mean, I look at it as this podcast for Gen-X, millennial leaders, myself in my early forties. It's like, understand there's this shift. I mean, just before this podcast, I was talking to a friend of mine, she works in medical care, works for this Japanese company. She goes, "It's amazing to me because they have such a different perspective to organizational structure and how we take care of people than the American counterparts that we have in pharmaceuticals." So all of that laid out, how much does this jerkism, the jerks at work, that that stuff that we learn really prolong a toxic workplace that is now being turned upside down because there's more options? [TESSA] Yes, so we're in this really weird place right now where people are leaving in droves and there's a ton of research to suggest that the number one reason why they're doing it is because of toxic colleagues and bosses. So they have options, but at the same time, they sort of don't have options. One day all the headlines are, everyone's leaving, there's a million opportunities, and the next day it's, we're in a recession, there's no opportunities. Stop what you're doing. So I think people have options, but we're also in a massive state of uncertainty right now and I actually think that psychological state trumps the sort of up and down of the economy and predicting how people behave. Even in places where people can leave, they're still going to be jerks because they're experiencing anxiety and uncertainty, just all these levels that aren't healthy. So I should follow like, there's this irony of having these options. It increases anxiety, uncertainty, it leaves me even more jerky, which is a weird place we're finding ourselves in [TYLER] To continue that thread and the conversation I was having earlier is what we're going to find? And I can think about this myself. I stepped back into my early career, early 2000’s and dealing with what I would say jerks at work and then learning that myself and realizing, oh, we're in this major financial crunch. That was back in 2006, 2007, huge volatility and then all of a sudden there's all this pressure of we have to maintain some type of profit and then this pressure becomes even more on top of us that all of the things that we know to create psychological safety in a workplace goes out the window. [TESSA] Yes, it's totally gone. There's no psychological safety. I feel like once that goes, and predictability, so people can't predict what's going to happen from one day to another. All those psychological states really bring out the worst in us. I think on top of it, I mean, you mentioned this generational shift, we have like this weird thing going on where millennials and Gen-Xers are different from each other and they're different from Gen-Zers. I think the technical term is geriatric millennial. I'm 41. I'm like right on the edge, I'm within six months. Our generation sees what qualifies as bad behavior at work is very different than a new generation. Part of me wonders when we were younger did, we see things differently, and then we just became those jerks so we're sort of redefining it as a function of who we are now? We're changing the bar as our behavior changes. I don't actually know the answer to that question, but I do know there's a sensitivity out there that did not exist when we were entering the workforce in our twenties. [TYLER] Yes. Well, and that's what I'm thinking about. And again, it's said that every generation, you go through the same things, it's just a little different landscape. I think about that as again, coming into the workplace and listening to the stories that you have and jerks at work and like, oh yes, I remember that is like the, my superior, he took advantage of us to get his promotion and it's like he was going to do whatever to throw us. I look at it as I was this cannon fodder. You go out there, you embarrass yourself, you make yourself the fall guy, and I'm going to reap all the benefit and I'm going to get promoted. But your career is pretty much ground into oblivion because now you have this perspective about you. That's what I experienced in my viewpoint, and it's my view. But I look at that again now and say, yes, we're probably going to see that for the workplaces that have not evolved because they were allowed not to. [TESSA] Oh, for sure. I think we're definitely going to see that. I think also the perspective of sort of, you saw your boss is taking advantage of you and stealing credit essentially to get ahead. I've certainly been in this situation. I felt that way too. I've also been accused of doing those things at which, of course, my defenses go up and I say, "I wasn't taking credit for your work. You're giving yourself way too much credit for that work. I was actually like the invisible person holding you up the entire time and you're thinking, my ideas are so wonderful. Look at all these papers I published in academia." That's sort of our standard of success. I've been, "Why did you give this talk as if this was your own thing?" I'm like, "What's my own thing? Who do you think paid for that? Who do you think wrote all those edits?" So I really think a lot of this is very much eye of the beholder and we shift our mindset around these things as we sort of develop. I noticed when I wrote the book that, the shoe people, I felt very victimized. But if I was in that situation now, I probably would look at my old self and say, she sucks. Why can't she just like, show some initiative and figure out the damn shoes. It's not that hard. Instead, I sat there just whining that somebody was mean to me. So I do think there is this funny life trajectory that changes how we think about jerks at work as a victim and also as perpetrator. [TYLER] So we've spent obviously the first 10 minutes, 12 minutes of our conversation relating, connecting. Why did you, what drove you to really enter into your study and then ultimately write this book? You've written so many other publications, but this book, why did you like, "Man, I need to write this. People need to know this." [TESSA] Honestly, I wrote this because I was really feeling sorry for myself. [TYLER] Sorry, can I laugh at that? Is that ok? [TESSA] Yes. People need my knowledge. I want to save the world. I was really having a sad, I was really feeling sorry for myself that I had taken all this leadership role and I felt like I was working my ass off at it. I think most people who've stepped into a major leadership role for the first time feel like it's a thankless job; you work very hard, you do a lot of little things that no one seems to care about. You either get no feedback or negative feedback and people don't read your emails. Why didn't they just read the email? All that yucky business that comes along with being a leader and I got to a point where I was so frustrated with the inability to get people to do what I wanted, to show up to meetings, to vote the way I wanted that I just started getting really pissy at work. I became a little mean. I made two people cry, people who are in their sixties cry. [TYLER] Can I check off the list, as I've been there as you're going along? So I have two checks now. I've made people cry. I've made a lot of women cry. Again, my name is Bruce. [TESSA] I've made men cry. [TYLER] I haven't done that yet, but there's always tomorrow. So going through that, what was that desire though, that oh, there's got to be a different way? [TESSA] So I realized, I study social interaction for a living. I put people in uncomfortable situations all the time. I have for 20 years and I look at how we can make them better communicators and what it takes to make people not read the world better, but get the world to give them what they need so they can figure out what to do next. I couldn't figure this out and I was feeling sorry for myself. So I figured if I'm struggling with this and no one gets training, no one else is going to be able to figure this out. I'm going to sit down and I'm going to own all my mistakes and I'm going to own all my weird experiences and just give people what I felt like was a pretty hands-on guide that sort of demystifies why we go wrong and what really drives this behavior. I felt like it felt good to do that, but also turn my tears of sadness and do something useful for other people. I know I'm not alone in that experience. I know lots of people have had that for me, what is me experience when they step into a leadership role. It's really hard. [TYLER] I think that's what drives a lot of jerks. I think creates it because it again comes back to the why am I here? What am I supposed to do? I'm going to look for the models that I've seen right or wrong. This point of overwhelm that so often I think hits any role. I would say it, the same thing can happen as a parent. It's, you get into this parenting and you're like, the first time you have to deal with something and everything's boiling over and you flip out. So how recognizing this, and for yourself, what did you do to, you talked about you owned it, but what else did you do to say, hey, I have to point this out, but create something better because people don't deserve it? Because ultimately that's what I feel like you were saying is people don't deserve this version of me. [TESSA] One thing that I really struggled with was figuring out exactly what damage I was doing. Because I do a lot of research on status and power. We know that the minute that enters the equation, people will not give you that negative feedback. They won't tell you you're being a jerk. It's through these subtle things like a colleague of mine who I trusted and loved came and cried because I gave her an office that had like this weird pole in the middle of it so she would have to like look around the pole. [TYLER] I'm not going to go anywhere with that. I'm not going anywhere with that. What office did --- [TESSA] It's Manhattan real estate. You don't know what that room used to be but imagine what that room used to be. But we have to be flexible with our space and not critical of what it used to be, these kinds of things that I'm like, wow, I feel like I'm doing terrible job at communicating and I can tell people are mad at me, but they're not actually telling me. You alluded to this earlier, that you didn't find out you were a jerk until 10, 20 years later. So one of the things I really set out to do is figure out how to improve the feedback process, how to get people to give you honest feedback about how you're doing at work and how to ask people or give people that feedback and that's a very messy tough situation, especially when you're saying something negative to someone. So a lot of that is about all the time do it, don't wait till the end of the year or the end of the month or whatever. Make it small, make it specific, these little life hacks that are actually drawn from close relationships, literature and marital therapy. How people can best deal with conflict. And I think my main life hacker on jerks at work is whether you're the jerk or the victim. You have to learn how to talk about the thing, the behavior that's causing a problem in a way that isn't super threatening, won't damage the relationship and where you can actually be honest. Because if you're low power, you're going to want to lie. That's just the way it goes. No, you're still wonderful. I love working with you, that thing. That's going to be what your intuition is. [TYLER] So a way that I would turn that is it's appropriate vulnerability on both sides. It's really, and one of the words that I wrote down and I think is this creating this safe workplace, creating this safety. To me, vulnerability only comes from safety but what are you doing that either as a leader or a participant is a role, someone, a worker in this culture to elicit more vulnerability. It's like, what are you doing to create safety as opposed to feeding into the perpetual? Is that a proper way to turn that jerkism? [TESSA] I think that's good. I mean I love jerkism. We can use jerkism as a noun, a verb, an adjective, all the things, all of them. I think a lot of workplaces sort of talk the talk. They have these sort of like, we are vulnerable, we are open, but they're full of bullshit. They don't actually really need it. [TYLER] Sit down. Come into a room, sit on a pillow and share your deep thoughts. [TESSA] Or the CEO will get up and be like, "Here's a mistake I made 20 years ago. Luckily, I haven't done it since. The last 20 years have been perfect." So you have to actually do it on a day-to-day basis with small things. It can't just be these grand gestures where the CEO stands up, the annual company dinner, whatever, and says the thing. You have to do it small and then I think you also, people don't like this, but when you're giving someone feedback, you want to give them feedback. At the end you have to end with, do you have anything from me, any feedback you would like to share. People are like, I don't want to do that. I don't want that feedback. I'm like, if you're going to dish it, you have to learn to take it to play both roles all the time and it's super uncomfortable. I actually learned this strategy with my husband, who's my colleague. Before we decided to date each other, because our offices are next to each other and we're both tenured, so if it didn't work out, it'd been like a complete disaster. we had to have these radical candor conversations where we found out very specific things about each other. I think I learned a lot about how getting over that discomfort is really important for setting the stage of a relationship and I try to do that with people who work for me now too. [TYLER] I mean, well, what's hard about it is, let's go back to that person we talked about that are looking for a new career. They're like, I'm out and then they go the next place and they're like, "Is this just more of the same or is this different?" That hesitancy to be vulnerable, to be authentic appropriately and walk down these doing small things to build trust and like, am I going to get run all over like I saw in the past, that's something that we can't talk enough about, in my opinion. [TESSA] Yes. I feel like people, there's an issue with this transferring jobs where they just don't interrogate their next job as much as their current job. We go through this stage where, and we don't really learn that much about new jobs in the interview process and the onboarding process. It's very much, we go through these things as if we're being interrogated and we're interrogating, but we're actually pretty ignorant when we show up on day one. Then we have to go through this phase of should I project on my bad experiences from the passed on to this person, like when you go through divorce, which I've been through. It takes you a while to like not hate everyone that's wearing the same cologne as your ex-husband that you encounter because they just remind you of that person. You have to get over that and start with a clean slate but that's very difficult to do from a psychological perspective. I think what our tendency to do is assume the worst but keep our mouth shut. So we have a hypothesis that things are probably going to be bad or we see one or two clues that remind us of what things used to look like and instead of testing this hypothesis by pushing it further or seeing what happens if I do X, we just sort of sit on that, assume it's correct, and then keep our nose down and then we often just repeat the cycle over and over again. We keep our nose down because we're in a precarious position because we just started. So it just creates the cycle or we just do the same thing over and over again. [TYLER] So how do we one as that person break that cycle? Then two, as a leader, how do I make sure that I don't perpetuate that cycle? [TESSA] I think as a leader, I'll start with that, it's a little bit of an easier answer, as a leader, I think there's a couple things leaders screw up and get wrong when it comes to communicate. There's a lot of things leaders screw up, but there's a few things that they're doing that are actually coming from a good place that can disrupt communication at work and allow jerks to thrive, including themselves. One is that they trust the people who work for them and they don't want to micromanage. So they hand off communication to people on their teams. There's a person who's rising very quickly, who offers to hand over communications between them and say people two or three levels down the ladder than them. They do this because they trust them and they also don't want to micromanage and they want to show that they can hand off put these important rules to someone else. They're not doing everything. But that can actually breathe these miscommunications and allow jerks that work to thrive. Because people who are lower status, if the only person that they have to communicate with is the jerk, then they're cutting off that communication. So I think this is coming from a good place, but bosses don't recognize the damage and it's often very difficult to detect. I think the other thing they do is if they have really conscientious teams that are very effective, they're a little too hands off, they don't check on them. Then free riders and bulldozers will thrive in these environments. So the companies I've worked with where there's a real free riding problem. It's not because there's a culture of not doing shit. It's the opposite. There's a culture of really striving. I worked with some people who built like the Mars rover and they're like, everyone here is super conscientious and driven and we love each other and therefore we have a free rider problem. These two things, there's a lack of accountability because they trust each other so much and because everyone is so effective that smart free riders know how to go in and take advantage of these teams without getting caught. If everybody was a free rider, then nothing would ever get done and everybody would sink down on the ship together but it's these ironic sort of top performing conscientious, cohesive teams that tend to be the most vulnerable and bosses don't realize that. So they're two hands off and they allow these kinds of things to happen. I think those are those the two biggest mistakes that bosses actually make when it comes to dealing with those. [TYLER] The first one I would say that the way to solve that is you can delegate pieces of it as of well, but stay connected. John Maxwell shares this, a walker, a leader walks slowly through the crowd. I think of Cat Cole when she talks about get closest to the transaction. To me, those are directives, is stay connected. Just because I'll give responsibility of oversight or project manager, whatever, great, but I'm going to stay connected to Tessa. I'm going to learn about Tessa. Tessa, what's going on in your life? How do we have this connection where there's this safety that hey, Tyler, he's being a jerk. He's like, I can't, like, help me understand this. Where there's that illicit trust it's still connected to where I can be a conduit for service and not like, while I'm all alone. Does that make sense? [TESSA] You're all alone. I'd say like, this is essential, especially in organizations that have a lot of status hierarchy. So if you're at the bottom and all you see is your boss really trusting this other person and having positive interactions with them in the hall and laughing it up and getting coffee, then this is not a safe environment for you to ever complain. So these people, they just suffer in silence. You end up with a revolving door of talent that you never really recognize and you as the boss don't even realize that people are noticing these things. I think one of the lessons I learned at work is when you hold power, everyone's watching you all the time and they're super tuned into your behaviors, not just with them but with other people. They notice who you're smiling with, who gets to sit next to you, how long you stay after the end of that conference call to chat with people. These little things signal where your alliances lie. If someone who's being victimized by a jerk sees these alliances, they're not going to actually open up to you. So you have to keep those short five-minute check-in meetings alive where they know that you're not on team kiss up to doubter without realizing it. [TYLER] As I think about those situations that a lot of that, it probably from a leadership perspective is unintended but yet it allows for some of those little intricacies of the micromanager, the bulldozer to perpetuate because it's like, well, why'd you go around me? Or am I not good enough for you? Where then all of a sudden there's this rub, the other extent it's someone in an inferior role, a lower position can be like, "Well, I'm not good enough to go to Tessa with my problems. I need to go to Mary even though Mary's the problem." I think extending that branch of connection is is so vital. The next one that you mentioned, and I've seen this happen firsthand as you were talking about it, saw the situation lay out, tremendous amount of like team cohesiveness, trust, interaction, a major lack of accountability when it comes to their accountability to themselves, accountable to the office, to the program, to the organization, but not within themselves. Like, oh, somebody's slacking and they're not holding the other person. They're not willing to confront the person. So when that's going on in a office setting, what do you do as a leader? How do you fix that? [TESSA] I think the easiest solution for this is for leaders just to start going into these teams. Don't ask them to sell each other out. That never actually works. Tell me who's free-riding? Who in this team sucks? People won't do it. it's like they're in prison and they're afraid they're going to get stabbed or something. But what they can do is ask people the beginning of the week, what work have you agreed to do and then at the end of the week, what work did you do that you agreed to do and what work did you do that you didn't agree to do? Those two simple questions will help you see where people are doing work that wasn't on their plate. So you're not asking them to tell on each other to sell out the free rider, but what you're looking for is this discrepancy between agreed to do work and work done that you didn't agree to do. You'll see patterns very easily starting to merge that everyone's doing five different things and all those five things add up to Tyler's work for the week. The best people at this, the best free riders I've ever seen in action, are really good at sort of talking about work and having the veneer of being cohesive about a project in public settings in front of the boss and then the minute they get back to their email, delegating their things evenly among people who are real go-getters. So they don't like delegate to other lazy people or people without skills. They delegate to people who seem to not really mind taking on a few extra responsibilities. And I think those two questions are really how leaders can snip these people out instead of asking people who sucks that. [TYLER] Well, I mean, and again that becomes a problem in and of itself. The funny thing about that though, is that person actually, is probably best suited for levels of leadership because they recognize those things. Hey, Tessa is great. I'm going to have her do it for me. It's like, that is the irony. It's like actually, you find that person and say, "Hey, you're really good at this. This is a great skill set. How do we help you help all of us more, be that project manager to make sure everyone's on top of it? That's your job." I want to go and find those people and whether it's identify them as free riders and whatever else. It's like nope, that's an inherent skill set that a lot of leaders don't have because they end up there thinking, I need to do everything that I've done before because no one else can do it as good as I can. It's like, no, you can do it better than I can. Here you go. Do it [TESSA] You know what's interesting? We never talk about free riders in terms of what are they good at. It's always like what they're not doing. But I love this idea of let's focus on what they actually can do. They can get people excited. They often create a wonderful atmosphere and they're great at delegating and they're good at seeing how all the small parts come together to form a whole. Not all through our, some of them are the good ones. It's just a fit issue. You have to just put them in this different role. Or a lot of them are really good at public-facing, so they're great with customers, they're great at presentations. You need someone to warm up the crowd at the beginning of that giant conference or whatever you're having. Like, here's your person. And I think just knowing to just not be super bitter about the fact that they're not doing those other tasks and put them in these different roles can also sort of help this cohesion stay. Then people don't have to be mad at their friend, their free rider because these people tend to be very well liked and no one wants to really kick them out. [TYLER] No. And again, I look at that as to say, as you described, as I recognize now, that is an amazing skill set that if you see it as a leader, it's like I have a place for you. It's seeing it as a benefit as opposed to oh, they're just, they show up and don't do anything. I think of office space. So let me ask you this, in the process of studying this and doing your research, did you find environments that the jerks at work really permeated it more or it really seemed more evident, that's where it was an environment where it just, in certain cultures where it's like, well, there's way more jerks here than there are a different workplace or culture. [TESSA] I'd say anything where only a handful of people can make it to the top is a huge thing and where the people at the top have way more than the people who are even one step below them. So like, I'll start with the opposite, so let's think of like a Canadian academic department where everyone makes within like $5,000 of each other. It does not behoove you to treat people like shit at work because the most you're ever going to get is $10,000 more than the person five steps below you. If you sort of flatten that reward structure a little bit, then you don't see a lot of these jerks. Where I actually see a lot of them are in sales, so an organization, saying consulting where there's like project leads and the people that are coming up with the new IP, you don't see a lot of work jerks there because they have to actually rely on each other and the whole team fails as a whole if they don't. But in sales where they're often called teams, but they're not really teams or collections of people who report to a boss but they're actually in competition with one another, you really see cutthroat behavior. I feel like there's this misconception, or it's a little bit of like a concept slip or a language slip that when you go in these organizations and they're like, "We love our team, we really focus on our team," I'm like, you're using the word team as a collection of individuals who report to one person but actually are trying to claw each other's eyes out. It's a really weird way of talking about it, but it euphemized the problem and most organizations where I've seen jerks, it's in these sales teams, where these individuals are actually in competition with one another for raises, the numbers, that the output is very easily to compare. So I either sold 10 million or 5 million, and so the output's very easy to compare. Other jobs, it's a little apples to oranges. It's less clear what performance looks like and how to sort of objectively quantify performance. You don't see as much of it there because people can't even really compare themselves and try to one up each other when there's this, it's not really even clear who's doing the best and who's doing the worst. [TYLER] So for someone that's listening in and they're in one of those places, they're in a sales type environment, what do they do to help minimize the way that jerks can take over? If they're listening in, they're like, "Man, I don't want this to be a part of our culture," what do you suggest you suggest? [TESSA] You have to change the reward structure because that's what people are going to be sensitive to. So I think, what I've seen not work, our companies say we want a positive culture where everybody collaborates here, and so therefore we're going to fly everybody down to Florida for the week. We're going to have these great dinners, we're going to all have some team building exercises, and then we're going to go back to work and therefore we've done the work to sort of create a good culture. But the end of the day, if the reward structure still requires competition, that's what they're going to do. You have to change the reward structure. You need to be able to quantify collaboration in some way. And I think you actually see this a little bit more with people who are in like VP positions in sales because the numbers of their team affects their raises and you can't just have one top performer give you those numbers. It's actually like everyone has to reach a certain threshold for you to get that raise. So you have to incentivize, you have to create performance structures that are incentivized that way. I actually think a little social comparison is a good thing. I think we tend to think all social comparison is bad. It can motivate you, but you don't want that to be the number one motivator. So I think that's really the only way of doing it. I'm cynical about human behavior. I think telling them to care about each other isn't going to work if their financial bottom line, if whether they're going to make their kids’ college tuition depends upon competition. That's going to win at the end of the day. So you have to change that reward structure. [TYLER] So after writing this book, talking about it now, odd nauseum, I would imagine to a circumstance, but out of complete I would say passion, what's next? Like what are you saying, all right, this spurred this next thought, or what's next on your research docket that has maybe nothing to do with this, but yet, you're like, "Oh, this is where I need to go deeper." [TESSA] I'm thinking about my next book, on career transitions, like how to leave one job and start another and I have a lot of research on newcomers. There's this interesting phenomenon when we think about being a newcomer in a team, and I have some new research coming out that basically shows that you can take two people and they can interact with each other for about five minutes and you bring in a new person and that newcomer suffers all kinds of interesting sort of behavioral costs even just five minutes of getting to know each other. The newcomers listen to less, the ways people talk, the ways they mimic each other's speech patterns changes, newcomers are sort of cut out of that. They're less influence in group decision-making. So I think we don't quite understand what happens when we sort of leave jobs, start new ones, transition on a new team. We're going through this a lot and there's all these like very subtle things that can happen to put us at a disadvantage when we start these jobs that it's not just we don't know anybody or we're not well incorporated into the team yet. We don't have that institutional memory. There's very subtle behavioral things that can shape our lives at work that I think most of us actually aren't paying attention to. Then I'd add to that, one thing I'm fascinated with now, I'm interviewing a lot of people that do interviews and talent acquisition and HR, the interview process is like a complete disaster and no one knows what they're doing. I think it's fascinating how people just don't, they're not systematic about it and they do things like give you intentional failure feedback just to see how you'll cope and see how you respond. I don't think people are really realizing that these different kinds of techniques are actually happening. They get failure feedback and they're just not going to show back up for that second interview, but they're like, "No, we give it to everybody. We just want to see how flexible you are." So I think there's a lot, there's a black box of sort of how to transition from jobs from one to another that I think a lot of us aren't attuned to and as we're all doing it, I want to dive into that. I want to get into the nitty gritty of how to do that better. What people are really looking for, how to really socially network, all this trick stuff that I feel like most of us don't know about. [TYLER] The newcomer thing, the thing that I think about there, and I was asked this question earlier today, it's like, how do you engage with that group as a leader? The thing that I wonder, and I'm throwing this out because I want to hear your feedback to it, as a leader, my responsibility is to edify and engage. If I facilitate and I think about that is if I'm in, say we're in a new sales meeting, Tessa, you're new to the team. There's two other people new, but they started three days earlier and we've already had maybe one meeting, they were the new people, but now they're tenured, you're the new person, what do I do to engage through that process? As I'm thinking about it, and I want to level the playing field a little bit, but then as well really identify the strengths and encourage people to deeply identify those strengths, but allow to develop safety and comfort in some way. That's what I think about but tell me what you're seeing or what you think. [TESSA] I think what happens with these newcomers is the two people who were there for three days, they had a chance to develop interpersonal relationships with each other one-on-one before the newcomer joined. Then when we think about the newcomer, we think, how can we get them to be part of this group? What we don't think about is how can we give them that same experience of one-on-one time with each of those new members to develop the rapport that those other members got. We think of them as like this glob that already exists, how can we bring this new person in? You actually have to sort of pull the glob apart, pull the pairs apart and allow one-on-one encounters to facilitate that sort of rapport building, relationship building. When you don't have that, newcomers are listened to less. They share ideas, people don't echo those ideas. These things happen, but I think it's because they're missing that critical one-on-one rapport building time. Instead of trying to incorporate them into a team, what we need to do is break up the team and incorporate them to individuals independently and even just 10, 15 minutes chatting can allow them to close that gap. So I think that's probably where we're going to go in our research in terms of interventions is break up the group, do one-on-one time, get in the time machine and give them the experience that those other two had with each other. Because three is always a crowd when these other two people report, so they're going to have that chance to get to know these other members. But it's a tricky situation as these groups get big and they're moving around all the time and people are moving in and out of them, this thing. [TYLER] I love it. I really enjoyed the book. I appreciate you writing it. I appreciate you writing from your experiences. I love the stories going back through your work history. So those people that are listening in, I really hope they go pick up jerks at work. I think for me, the biggest part was how do I make sure that I don't perpetuate it and or help other people recognize, hey, even if you don't think you are, you're a jerk in some way. It does not mean being bad, but you are and there's those insecurities that show up, there's those frustrations. I come back to the parenting, I can be a jerk dad and I need to recognize that and take ownership and take ownership appropriately. So again, I appreciate it. [TESSA] Thank you so much fun. It's okay to be a jerk. We all are. There's no shame in that. It's all about learning. Don't feel bad about yourself. Just try hard --- [TYLER] There's something that I think it probably layers in here, we're all insecure. Every single one of us have insecurities and my belief is this, that everyone knows it too. They know where you're insecure. They may not know the insecurity, but they know it and I feel like it's the same thing, this idea of being a jerk at work where there's times where each and one of us can be a jerk and people know it and the sooner that we can understand it and admit it because it's a blind spot, usually, the healthier that relationship gets. Because then we can say, "Oh, I was being a jerk again. I'm sorry. Okay, great. I need to address this differently." [TESSA] Yes, you got to be vulnerable, like, you're not fooling anyone. People know, they know something's up. Just own it and be vulnerable and then showcase that if you're a leader, so that other people see it and then they follow suit. That's just the best way to change behavior work is through norms and they start from the top. [TYLER] Well, Tessa, thank you again so much. Everyone's going to be able to check out where to find you all of your research, all your stuff in the show notes. So I appreciate that and thanks for being a guest. [TESSA] Thank you so much. [TYLER] As a funny aside, just to let you know, as myself, as a podcast, podcast host as well, you know this, that some of the best pieces of conversation come before you hit record. So with this episode, with this conversation, I hit record right at the beginning. We got into it. Excited to have that conversation. So you jumped into the conversation that Tess and I had and here's the thing that I walk away from this episode and I think about, and as Tessa and I talked a little bit deeper about some our upcoming work and things that she's finding related to values. I can't wait for that work to come out so I can discuss it again in the future. What I find is this layer of psychological safety that as leaders, our job today in our society was so much unknown politically and from a food point of view to all the social, it doesn't matter what country you're in. We're all in the same boat together. Our job as leaders is what can we do to promote safety? One of the biggest things that Tessa said that I took note of is do daily in small ways, do daily in small ways, ways to encourage people, ways to build safety, recognize those opportunities of maybe when someone's a little off, that's our great opportunity as she described as geriatric millennials are infantile Gen-Xers is as we take on more of a leadership role, as we find our leadership roles getting bigger and bigger, as we evolve into this next changing of a lot of guards, what are we doing to promote psychological safety in our workplaces? Man, I think that's the greatest opportunity of leadership going forward. It's what do you do to impact and affect that? What do you do to make sure that you're recognizing and creating those synergies to where it's not pulling people apart because you're incentivizing for sales and then talking about teamwork. I think that's the great opportunity. As we get better and better as leaders, we're going to find more of that absolutely layering together as a fabric. Again, as always, I thank you for being here, listening into this episode. I encourage you to be a part of the Impact Driven Leader community where we read books like Jerks at Work, where we read about being better leaders, have that conversation as a round table. I invite you to be a part of the impact driven leader round table and I know you'll get tremendous value out of it because the people that are part of the round table are really, really bright and special, not because of me, because everything they bring from their experiences. Send me an email, tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com. Send me a message on social media, whatever. I will gladly get you introduced to that community and glad to have you a part of it. Thanks again for listening in, and until next time, have a good one.