A user’s manual is a clear and concise document that communicates to others one’s motivations, work style, management and delegation style, communication and feedback style, learning and decision-making style, values, personal style, and any other information that can help reduce misunderstandings, accelerate mutual understanding and facilitate better collaboration with your team. (See below for an example)

The benefit of a user’s manual is that it provides a basis for accelerating the “getting to know you” process. Writing a User’s Manual greatly diminishes the possibility that misunderstandings will cause your new staff to view you as a “toxic” boss. (It can also defuse tensions between longtime leaders and their staffers).

The content of a user’s manual should include what one values, what one is motivated by, and areas for potential miscommunications. In a sense, any interaction between a new leader and his or her team can be thought of as a cross-cultural communication. After all, the new leader comes from another organizational culture, and possibly also a different national culture as well.

For example, a client of mine wrote a user’s manual in which he let his team know that just because he asks many questions, it doesn’t mean that he is skeptical about their capabilities. It’s simply his modus operandi. Originally a New Yorker, and now a company president in Mexico, my client was mindful that his new team might misinterpret his candid style as confrontational. A British HR Director working in New York City told her staff that they shouldn’t interpret her reserved demeanor as being distant or unfriendly.

In order to create a User’s Manual, you can review past performance reviews and/or 360 degree feedback, consult trusted current or past colleagues, mentors or coaches for input, or take assessment tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or the Hogan Personality Inventory.

By writing a “user’s manual” in which one conveys valuable information about oneself, the risk that negative interactions will occur can be greatly reduced. For example, another client wrote in his user’s manual that he was a morning person, and he requested that his new team approach him with issues in the morning rather than in the afternoon. If he had not conveyed that preference, his staff might have approached him in the afternoon and concluded that he did not really want to interact. Or that he didn’t care about the issues that they were trying to bring to his attention. In other words, they might have perceived his afternoon disengagement as being due to toxic disinterest instead of circadian rhythms.

With many people in career transition these days due to the challenging economy, writing a user’s manual can be a good use of time, not just because when one finds one’s next job the user’s manual can be a useful tool, but also because even in the interviewing process, taking time to reflect on one’s style and preferences can make it easier to prepare for interviews in which prospective employers may assess self awareness and potential leadership skills. Whenever I interview job candidates on behalf of clients, I ask them what wisdom they would share with their prospective new staff.

Writing a user’s manual not only accelerates the getting-to-know one other process, it also sets a positive precedent for open dialogue and a framework for ongoing clear and candid communication with your new staff. A user’s manual should provide explanations and suggestions, not rationalizations or justifications, should be a supplement to candid and open conversations, not a substitute for them, and should prevent the kinds of misunderstandings that can lead a new leader to be viewed as toxic.

A user’s manual should be an evolving, living document; managers and executives should solicit ongoing feedback from staff and colleagues about how accurate and useful their user’s manual is, and should update it as they progress in their careers. Leaders should also endeavor to build on their strengths and remedy their development areas on an ongoing basis, so that both their user interface and their operating system improve over time. Used intelligently, a user’s manual can be an invaluable antidote against toxicity.

A SAMPLE USER'S MANUAL:

MY STYLE:

When I’m under pressure, I get serious. This doesn’t mean I’m angry or dissatisfied. Also, be ready to answer the question “why” five times for any given issue. If I ask a lot of questions, please don’t become worried or defensive

WHEN TO APPROACH ME:

Please don’t bring important issues to my attention if you see me at the break room. Instead, schedule a time and book a conference room so I can give the issue my full attention. Also, I’m a morning person, so if possible, please try to schedule time for critical issues before noon.

VALUES:

I value loyalty to our company’s values above all else. And it is very important to me that everyone in this organization treats everyone—from me to the janitor—with equal respect and dignity.

COMMUNICATING WITH ME:

Have conviction for your point of view. I respect people who have the courage to push back if they think I’m wrong. But don’t present until you are prepared. And make sure you have solutions.

WHAT I WILL NOT TOLERATE:

I am very unforgiving of people who don’t admit or who cover up mistakes. Admitting a mistake will not get you in trouble. Concealing a mistake will cause major problems.

FEEDBACK:

I don’t give much positive feedback. Assume I’m satisfied with your work unless I tell you otherwise.

HOW TO HELP ME:

I have a tendency to do things myself instead of delegating, so please suggest things you can take off of my plate.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned about workplace assholes, bully bosses, toxic teammates, and a host of other terms used to describe mean-spirited creeps in the workplace, is that first impressions can be deceiving. There are so many people who, once you get to know them, are kind and helpful. But they come across as assholes because they have a gruff exterior or perhaps lack social skills. As I wrote in The No Asshole Rule:

"A few years back, I was talking to Peter McDonald, one of IDEO’s veteran engineers. He was talking about several of the gruffer people at IDEO, people who are known in some corners as being jerks. Peter then went on to say that IDEO was actually quite effective at keeping jerks out of the company, but newcomers sometimes mistake people who are gruff, outspoken, and insist on applying high standards to their own work and everyone else’s for being demeaning, nasty people. Peter went on to say 'whenever I’ve worked with a person who was supposed to be an asshole, I always found out that it was a bad rap, each turned out to be OK once I got to know them better.'"

Peter’s comment implies many lessons about why it is important to be slow to label people as assholes, bullies, or whatever. First, the no asshole rule is not an argument for populating organizations with doormats or wimps, or for avoiding conflict.

The best organizations have bosses who give people honest and constructive feedback. And the best organizations encourage constructive conflict over ideas. There are times when the targets of such feedback or those involved in conflict get their feelings hurt (and there are people who are overly sensitive to criticism). But the best organizations teach people how to accept and to give constructive feedback and how to fight constructively (which includes learning to have “strong opinions, weakly held”).

Second, people with gruff exteriors sometimes turn out to be what I call “porcupines with hearts of gold.” I have had quite a few people who – like Peter McDonald - have written me about a boss or co-worker with rough or even downright rude exteriors who have turned out to be great people underneath.

In this vein, when I gave a talk about workplace assholes at Google about a year ago, an audience member described how some his favorite people at Google had “A bad user interface, but a great operating system,” and how once you got past the unpleasant exterior, there was a lovely human-being in there.

Third, and finally, it is important to avoid labeling people “jerks,” “assholes,” or bullies too quickly because these emotionally loaded words can spark aggression from otherwise civilized people. Along these lines, one of the most fascinating experiments I’ve ever read showed (especially among men raised in the southern United States) that when a trained confederate passing by in a narrow hall bumped into a study participant and called him an “asshole,” the person who was bumped often responded with loud and threatening verbal aggression. So calling a person an asshole can be an effective way to turn him or her into an asshole, at least temporarily.

I would be curious about the tactics that readers use to avoid labeling people as “toxic” too quickly and ideas that readers have about how to tell the difference between “a porcupine with a heart of gold” and an authentic certified asshole.

You’re putting on a good act, but underneath it, you hear the proverbial wake up call. Don’t be like this guy.

Listen! And be sure you know what our wake up call really means.

Chances are you need to change your approach to life and work pretty substantially—and a two week vacation just isn’t the answer. Finding balance is the answer—but not in the way we’ve become used to thinking about it. For most people today, having enough time to dedicate to family, work, learning, community, exercise, spirituality ... well, there just aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the year to get it right. Something’s always going to be getting short shrift.

So what can you do? Find balance inside. Mind, body, heart and spirit—each is a crucial part of your Self, defining your very humanity. Are you tending to your intellect, challenging what you know, seeking to learn? Are you taking care of your body, exercising, eating well, finding joy in health? Are you paying attention to the miracle of emotion, how your feelings ebb and flow, how they move you and others? Are you noticing how your feelings and moods are contagious, touching those around you for better or worse? And do you, once in a while, really think about your values, your beliefs, your noble purpose, and what you are here to do, during the years you walk this planet?

Now, I know, we’re not used to talking this way when it comes to work, jobs, leadership and effectiveness. But against the backdrop of our rapidly changing world, our stressful lives and the pressures we all feel, we need to think differently about ourselves and how to manage life and work. We need to cultivate inner balance and resonance through mindfulness.

Want to start to find a bit more balance? For one week, give five minutes a day—just five minutes—to quiet reflection. Choose a time and a place when you can be alone, uninterrupted, silent. If you are lucky, you will find a beautiful place in nature, or a peaceful corner in your home. But even if it’s just those few minutes before rising, lying quietly in bed, that’s good enough.

For five minutes, just breathe. Deeply and slowly. And as you breathe, let go of anxiety, irritation, and stress. To chase negative emotions away, begin to think about your ideal life—a life ripe with laughter, learning and love. Imagine yourself living this life. Who is there? What are you doing? Where do you live and what is your job or your work? What gives you joy? Who and what challenges you to be your very best? How are you giving to the people and the communities you belong to? How does it feel to be you, living your ideal life? Oh, and don’t let that little naysayer in your head mess up the picture. It’s your picture, and you have a right to it! Stay with the vision. Notice how you feel — for those few minutes, live in hope, optimism, and joy.

Now, will these five minutes fix everything at work, give you more time with your family or get rid of all your worries? Of course not. What it will do, however, is to give you a head start on a path to renewal. Realistically, our stressful lives aren’t going to change much. But we can change how we respond to the stress and the pressure. We can learn to find inner balance, through cultivating mindfulness. Learning to practice mindfulness helps us to attend to our whole selves, making it possible for us to maintain equilibrium and sanity in a crazy world.

Let’s say you’ve done everything you can, you’ve followed Annie and Bob’s sage advice, and you come to the reluctant conclusion that your toxic boss is unmanageable, and that the only solution to the horrors of working with him or her is to leave the organization. Having a large, well cultivated social and professional network is the best insurance policy against being stuck in an unacceptable work situation. It’s not Scotty who is going to beam you outta there, it’s your network.

Most people think of networking as temporary and episodic, for example, as a way to get a job or close a deal, instead of as an ongoing process. This is a mistake for many reasons. Networking only when you "have to" means that you will likely be anxious and stressed, and be more focused on what you need from your network than on what you can offer it. A better practice is to network when you don't need anything in particular, and to focus more on what you can do for others than on what they can do for you.

People often make the mistake of thinking that the best way to keep in touch with people is to update them about your activities and accomplishments. While this can be helpful at times, a better strategy is to keep track of their activities and accomplishments, for example by using tools like Google News Alerts, which enable you to enter in the names of people, organizations, or topics that you'd like to be automatically notified about. When setting up a news alert, it's helpful to use quotes around search terms so that you only get alerted when exact terms are matched.

Finally, it is important to use "emotional intelligence" in your networking efforts. In order to network successfully, you need to know yourself- for example, knowing when you are in a state of mind that can enable you to network without conveying undue levels stress or anxiety. It's also helpful to know what exactly others can do to help you. It's easier for others to help you if you have a clear idea of the ways in which they can help you.

Social intelligence is also a critical part of successful networking. Knowing what the people in your network care about and value makes it easier for you to be helpful to them, which in turn makes it more likely that they will practice the norm of reciprocity and be helpful to you. It's also important to demonstrate sensitivity and to allow the people in your network to choose if, when and how they provide assistance rather than making demands on them.

For some additional suggestions about how to build and maintain a professional network, see this presentation.

Don’t let a toxic boss demoralize you to the point where you neglect your network- instead, let the toxic boss inspire you to see what else is out there for you!

Recently Marcus’ boss called us to come in and work with Marcus again…and this time it was a very different story. The CEO explained that something had gone very wrong and Marcus was close to being let go, at the very height of his career. What I heard surprised me tremendously—Marcus had become demanding, demeaning, and was micromanaging his team. He was alienating people up, down and around. One of his key team members had left and two more were on the verge. Rumor had it that there was trouble at home, and it was a fact that Marcus was spending a lot of evenings out with young associates, partying in some pretty sketchy places.

Well. What on earth had happened? We set out to find out. One of our Teleos coaches was asked to work with Marcus (she agreed on condition that Marcus be open to the idea). She’d had a good relationship with him in the past, and gave him a call. They worked out a plan to meet, and the detective work began.

Marcus was, in the coach’s words “totally stressed and deeply unhappy”. Over the next few months, she and Marcus unraveled what had happened over the past couple of years. The story that emerged was all-too-familiar. We hear it and see the unfortunate results all the time these days: Good leaders slowly slip into dissonance as a result of the unending pressures of their jobs, the responsibilities of leading people and organizations in challenging times, and the seemingly hopeless fight to find balance in life.

Over time and unchecked, the relentless pressure gets to even the best of us. Like Marcus, we slowly lose touch with ourselves and the people around us. We stop taking care of ourselves, have less empathy for others, get tunnel vision and find ourselves on the proverbial hamster wheel: trapped in an endless loop.

We call this the Sacrifice Syndrome: Good managers and leaders take their responsibilities seriously. We really care. We are tuned in and turned on—never more than a device away from a request, a problem or a crisis. We start working too much and sleeping too little. Whatever balance we might have had between work and home begins to disappear, and that causes even more stress. We feel like we are giving, giving, and giving, and there seems to be no end in sight.

When we are trapped in the Sacrifice Syndrome it is entirely likely that we will begin to lose our edge: we make bad decisions, don’t think things through, lose our creativity, become sharp with people, micromanage. Our emotional intelligence seems to dwindle, as do our cognitive abilities.

Why does this happen? It’s a matter of neuropsychology: when we live with chronic stress—we call the kind of stress leaders experience Power Stress—day in and day out, month after month after year, we literally shut down. We become clinically distressed, with all that goes with it: burnout, diminished effectiveness, even illness.

What can we do? First of all, we need to recognize that even the most resilient among us need to pay attention to what is happening to us. In other words, we need to attend to ourselves holistically: mind, body, heart and spirit. We need to pay attention to the interaction of thoughts, feelings and behavior. Are we on an even keel? Are we tuned in to the information in the environment and the quiet voice inside that tells us which way to turn? Are we attending to our bodies—listening to the messages that signal loud and clear whether we are healthy or heading toward a breakdown of some sort? Are we in touch with our values and beliefs? Are we living them?

Attending this way to ourselves –and also to other people and our environment—is one aspect of mindfulness: a state of mind (literally) that scholars and researchers such as Ellen Langer have shown improves cognitive functioning, learning, and relationship skills. Living mindfully is also a first and critical step in avoiding (or recovering from) the Sacrifice Syndrome.

There are other experiences we can cultivate as a way to counter the inevitable pressures of our busy lives and jobs. Two that we have studied are hope and compassion. Hope is what we experience when we look forward to a future that is better than the present—a future that is feasible, attractive, and somehow tied to our dreams for ourselves and the people and institutions we care about. Hope is a powerful driver of our emotions and our behavior: when we feel hope, the parasympathetic nervous system is engaged. This physiological reaction actually helps us to counter the negative physical and psychological responses associated with power stress and the Sacrifice Syndrome. When we feel hope, we can more easily direct our energy and our actions toward the right things, and in the right way.

For leaders, engaging and cultivating a sense of hope makes sense. It is good for us—and it is contagious. It’s good for the people around us. But compassion? What does that have to do with work and leadership? Everything, it turns out. Like hope, the experience of compassion engages the parasympathetic nervous system, helping us to fight the effects of stress and destructive emotions. And like hope, compassion is contagious—people blossom when they feel a leader’s empathy, care and concern. When we coach, encourage, and guide people toward their dreams and our goals, the emotional reality of a group or an organization becomes resonant: ripe with energy, creativity and commitment—exactly what is needed for people to be at their best.

Mindfulness, hope and compassion: the keys to managing the Cycle of Sacrifice and Renewal. And, as Marcus found out, cultivating these habits does not happen by accident. We have to work at it. Marcus did work at developing strategies to renew himself: with his coach, he took a good, hard look at what was going on with himself, at work and in life. And he didn’t like it, and his current life and lifestyle were far from the ideal he imagined. He decided to take control, to find his way back to himself so he could once again reach for his dreams. And he succeeded. He’s doing fine at work, his team is engaged and performing. His partner at home is much, much happier, as are the kids. It was a close call, but he’s made it through. And as he puts it “I’ll never let that happen again. I’m paying attention now.”

You can start on the road to renewal today by listening to life’s wake up calls. Take a few minutes and reflect on your work, your job, your life. Do you sense that things aren’t quite right? Are there any subtle wake-up calls that you should pay attention to? Maybe your partner at home is becoming distant, your boss has suggested that things aren’t up to par, or maybe you have been getting too many colds, flu, etc. Maybe you have stopped attending your kids’ events, or you aren’t playing with them as much. Maybe you just aren’t laughing as often as you used to. Listen carefully! These wake up calls matter!

If you hear the call, you can begin to change. You can begin to build daily practices into your life to help you stay whole, healthy and engaged. These practices don’t have to be fancy, either. But they do have to be regular—meaning daily. And they need to be solitary. Five or ten minutes of quiet reflection every day can do a world of good. Or maybe you can manage a thirty minute walk outside, or a bit of time in the garden. Maybe you can just find a quiet place somewhere during the day to take a few deep breaths and think about the people you care about, your hopes and dreams for them. Or take ten minutes to seek out a colleague and praise their work, check how things are going for them. Building mindfulness, hope and compassion into daily life doesn’t have to be hard, and you don’t have to be a saint to do it. A little bit goes a long way.

In my last post, I provided tips for people who are stuck working with an asshole boss or worse yet, in an asshole infested workplace. I ended the last post with a request for additional survival tactics. I got a brilliant email from a salesperson who uses some of the most nuanced and concrete asshole management techniques I have ever heard – which help this guy do his job better and suffer less in the process. Here is an excerpt from his email:

"I have a dream job at my company (with the exception of my boss), but it got to be so bad with him that I almost walked away. My executives don't really have an idea of how bad he is; if they did, he would have been fired a long time ago. A few tactics I've developed:

1. Asshole boxing: No- it's not fighting him. I box out a portion of the day to deal with my boss. I give him 8:30-10:00 every day, to cater to his needs.

2. Short emails: Quick emails throughout the day, especially during the asshole box. He feels no need to call me if he gets a barrage of status reports.

3. Hang up the phone: My phone has a problem. When people have a temper tantrum, it loses its connection. Usually my boss calls back a few minutes later. If I decide to pick up, he says "I guess we got cut off" and proceeds, usually in a better tone. I decide when I'll take his calls.

4. Asshole anti-boxing: sometimes I don't answer his calls for a couple of hours because I don't want to.

5. Asshole assault scheduling and pre-emption. My boss has a temper tantrum on Monday two weeks before the end of a quarter, where he tells me that I'm not running my territory correctly (which used to set me off). I now schedule this time in my calendar to prep for it. I even now tell him that he will have this tantrum before he does, and sometimes I tell him that I agree with him. It knocks him off balance."

This salesman is not only smart enough to manage his asshole boss brilliantly, he is also smart enough to follow the most important bit of advice I can give anyone who is working in a bad situation – as my earlier post here argued. He is planning his escape and will be going to graduate school next year.

One tool that I have found effective in working with new managers and executives is a "Managerial User's Manual,” a document in which a new leader describes his or her preferences and style to his or her new staff. The benefit of a user's manual is that it provides a basis for accelerating the "getting to know you" process. Writing a User’s Manual greatly diminishes the possibility that misunderstandings will cause your new staff to view you as a “toxic” boss.

The content of a user's manual should include what one values, what one is motivated by, and areas for potential misunderstanding. For example, a client of mine wrote a user's manual in which he let his team know that just because he asks many questions, doesn't mean that he is skeptical about their capabilities, it is simply his style.

In a sense, any interaction between a new leader and his or her team can be thought of as a cross-cultural communication. After all, the new leader comes from another organizational culture, and possibly also a different national culture as well.

By writing a "user's manual" in which one conveys valuable information about oneself, the risk that misunderstandings will occur can be greatly reduced. For example, another client wrote in his user's manual that he was a morning person, and he requested that his new team approach him with issues in the morning rather than in the afternoon. If he had not conveyed that preference, his staff might have approached him in the afternoon and concluded that he did not really want to interact with them or focus on the issues that they were trying to bring to his attention. With many people in career transition these days due to the challenging economy, writing a user's manual can be a good use of time, not just because when one finds one's next job the user's manual can be a useful tool, but also because even in the interviewing process, taking time to reflect on one's style and preferences can make it easier to prepare for interviews in which prospective employers may assess self awareness and potential leadership skills.

This kind of coping strategy—which by the way is common and rewarded—takes a tremendous amount of energy. Doing this for too long can literally make us sick. And ultimately, it doesn’t work anyway. Why? Because somehow, somewhere, and with someone we need to release the pressure, blow off steam, to get back on an even keel. The emotion has to go somewhere. It’s like the natural law of conservation of energy—you can’t get rid of emotion, it radiates inside of us and is transferred to the people around us.

Most of us don’t let off steam at work. But a lot of us find ways to release and let go—at home and with our friends. We can and do share the destructive emotions that we’ve caught from our bosses and our work with the people closest to us. Why? Because it’s safe—they love us, take our side, and won’t fire us or kick us out if we stomp around for a while. So, we go home, breathe a sigh of relief, and let loose. And it isn’t pretty.

Without intending to we get caught in the ‘kick the dog’ syndrome. Ok, maybe you don’t kick the dog (hope not) but who hasn’t come home after a long, stressful day and blown up about the littlest thing? Maybe the kids have left toys in the doorway, the dishes are in the sink or somebody messed up the TV. Maybe your partner has made plans for a nice evening out together—and you just can’t take it. You’re furious. You can’t believe how inconsiderate he or she is…don’t they know how tired you are? And so it goes.

We bring the poison home. And our loved ones catch it. Whatever balance we might have been able to achieve in personal life begins to fall apart.

Hopefully this isn’t happening to you. But if it is, you are not alone. So what can you do? We’ve been looking at how cultivating certain daily practices to build mindfulness—this can help us to manage the negativity and stress inherent in some of our work lives these days.

You can start by really looking carefully at how you are coping with the pressure. Are you bottling it up—internalizing it? Are you blaming others? Maybe you are taking too many risks or the opposite—shutting people out? We have a great exercise in Becoming a Resonant Leader called My Defensive Routines—it can help you figure out how you are coping. By the way, the book is a start-to-finish guide to intentional change and personal effectiveness—we wrote it to help people build and sustain resonance in life and through their leadership.

Finding out what’s going on with you and how you are responding to the pressures at work is a good start—a good first step toward mindfulness. No one wants to go through life at the mercy of bad bosses and toxic workplaces. And we surely don’t want to wreck our relationships at home by unconsciously passing the toxicity on.

How do you maintain health, wholeness and balance? Do you have tips to share? Practices than help you to stay mindful—awake, aware, and attuned? Let us know!

The natural law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created, nor destroyed, merely transferred and radiated into the surrounding environment. This seems to be true of emotion, too: We radiate our feelings, sending waves of emotional information into our environment and to the people around us. And emotions are contagious: without saying a word we literally catch one another’s feelings and moods.

And feelings, of course, impact our behavior and even our cognitive effectiveness. When we are gripped by fear, anxiety or anger, we react. Our brains are shouting “Danger! Danger!” and we run away, fight back or shut down. Either way, our creativity dwindles, we become rigid, we focus on the wrong things. We make decisions too fast, or too slowly, and for the wrong reasons.

That’s one of the reasons why toxic bosses are so dangerous—their poisonous emotions cause us to sink to the lowest common denominator. Worse, when destructive emotions emanate from the most powerful amongst us, we catch the disease, then spread the pain. It’s not long before we live and work in an environment that is caustic, dissonant, and just plain miserable.

So what can you do in the face of pervasive negativity?

Don’t take it personally! Do not let these people touch your self esteem. Don’t, whatever you do, compromise your values in the face of their toxic emotions. It’s surprisingly easy to slip and do things we would otherwise never do, by the way, so monitor your reactions to these people carefully. Be mindful of the (natural) urges you have to fight back vindictively, to sabotage, to undermine. If you do this, you become part of the problem.

Remember, the poison is his or hers, not yours! You have a choice about whether you mirror destructive emotions, moods or styles. This is harder than it sounds, because of the contagious nature of emotions, and because of the power dynamics between leaders and followers. You’ll need to be really clear about what part of a particular situation or problem is yours, what is theirs. Then, consciously manage your boundaries so the toxins can’t get in.

Fight the temptation to feel victimized by the tyrants around you! Victims feed the poison. Recognize and act on your personal power and resilience. Maybe you feel can’t really “do” anything to stop these people, and maybe that’s true. But you can control your own reaction, and you can proactively work to find ways to improve your situation.

Stop the madness! You have a choice about whether you share toxicity or not. You have a lot more control over your own environment than you may think. Act on it. Chances are, people look to you for guidance and leadership—take this responsibility seriously. Try, as best you can, to create resonance in your relationships and with the teams you work with.

Last time, I focused on the most important lesson for people who work for an asshole boss, or worse yet, who work for a pack of nasty creeps. My advice was to get out as fast as possible can. As I acknowledged, however, not everyone has that option. So here are my top tips for coping with workplace assholes that you can’t escape (at least for now):

1. Start with polite confrontation. Some people really don’t mean to be assholes. They might be surprised if you gently let them know that they are leaving you feeling belittled and demeaned. Other assholes are demeaning on purpose, but may stop if you stand up to them in a civil, but, firm manner. An office worker wrote me that her boss was “a major asshole” (he was a former army major, who was infamous for his nastiness). She found that “the major” left her alone after she gave him “a hard stare” and told him his behavior was “absolutely unacceptable and I simply won’t tolerate it.” This is also pretty much what Ron Reagan (the late president’s son) told me on his radio show about how he dealt with assholes, as did a fashion model who described a constructive way to confront an asshole .

2. If a bully keeps spewing venom at you, limit your contact with the creep as much as possible. Try to avoid any meetings you can with the jerk. Do telephone meetings if possible. Keep conversations as short as possible. Be polite but don’t provide a lot of personal information during meetings of any kind, including email exchanges. If the creep says or writes something nasty, try to avoid snapping back; it can fuel a vicious circle of asshole poisoning. Don’t sit down during meetings if you can avoid it. Recent research suggests that stand-up meetings are just as effective sit-down meetings, but are shorter; so try to meet places without chairs and avoid sitting down during meetings with assholes whenever possible – it limits your exposure to their abuse.

3. Find ways to enjoy “small wins” over assholes. If you can’t reform or expel the bully, find small ways to gain control and to fight back -– it will make you feel powerful and just might convince the bully to leave you and others alone. Exhibit one here is the radio producer who told me that she felt oppressed because her boss was constantly stealing her food –- right off her desk. So she made some candy out of EX-Lax, the chocolate flavored laxative, and left it on her desk. As usual, he ate them without permission. When she told this thief what was in the candy, “he was not happy.” Or check-out how this airline employee dealt with a demeaning passenger – do you want your luggage going to Nairobi when you are going to New York?

4. Practice indifference and emotional detachment– learn how not to let an asshole touch your soul. Management gurus and executives are constantly ranting about the importance of commitment, passion, and giving all you have to a job. That is good advice when your bosses and peers treat you with dignity. But if you work with people who treat you like dirt, they have not earned your passion and commitment. Practice going through the motions without really caring. Don’t let their vicious words and deeds touch your soul: Learn to be comfortably numb until the day comes when you find a workplace that deserves your passion and full commitment.

5. Refuse to take the asshole’s action seriously. Treat it all as a joke. I got this idea from an email a reader sent me awhile back, where he and colleagues dealt with the local creep by laughing openly at his mean-spirited comments and dirty looks. The idea here is that if you treat the asshole's nasty actions as something that doesn't deserve serious treatment and laugh it off, it does less harm to you and provides a basis for bringing the group of victims together to battle back (which is exactly what happened in this case – they eventually got the creep fired). Laughing in the face of the abuser also can frustrate the asshole – and thus can help you rack up a series of small wins. And, like indifference, it is another way to avoid letting an asshole’s nastiness touch your soul. (I also feel compelled to warn readers to use this tactic with care, as laughing at your boss my cause him or her to get angry and thus even nastier. And he or she may also fight your laughter by firing you.)

6. Keep an asshole diary -- carefully document what the jerk does and when it happens. As the last example suggests, if you work with a demeaning creep, it is wise to carefully document what he or she does and when it happens. A government employee wrote me a detailed email about how she used a diary to get rid of a nasty, racist co-worker ‘I documented the many harmful things she did with dates and times.....basically I kept an "Asshole Journal." I encouraged her other victims to do so too and these written and signed statements were presented to our supervisor. Our supervisors knew this worker was an asshole but didn't really seem to be doing anything to stop her harmful behaviors until they received these statements. The asshole went on a mysterious leave that no supervisor was permitted to discuss and she never returned.’ Similarly, a salesman wrote me that he had been the top performer in his group until he got leukemia, but his performance slowed during chemotherapy. His supervisor called him every day to yell at him about how incompetent he was, and then doubled this sick salesperson’s quota. The salesman eventually quit and found a better workplace, but apparently because he documented the abuse, his boss was demoted.

7. Recruit Fellow Victims and Witnesses. As the government employee shows us, an especially effective tactic is to recruit colleagues who are fellow victims of an abusive boss, coworker, or workplace to help support your case. It is far more difficult for management – or a judge – to dismiss a complaint from a group of victims than a single victim. In addition, finding witnesses who are willing to back your version of the events is important for bolstering your spirits as well, because it affirms that others are feeling the pain as well and that you are not facing the abuse alone. The power of this tactic is confirmed by in-depth case studies by Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik, an Assistant Professor at The University of New Mexico. Her analysis of how victims of bullying fought back, and what methods are most likely to succeed, suggests that people who work in concert with others to battle back experience less distress, are more likely to keep their own jobs and are more likely to force bullies out.

8. Take legal action if you must, but do so as a last resort. There is a growing legal movement against bullying in the workplace, and employment lawyers keep telling me that it will get easier to collect damages against “equal opportunity assholes,” not just against racist and sexist jerks. Documentation is essential if you are considering making a legal claim. And certainly there are plenty of asshole bosses and employers that deserve to be slapped with massive fines. BUT if you are suffering workplace abuse, the best thing for YOU might be to get out before you suffer much, if any, damage. I had a long conversation with two smart lawyers about this recently, and they pointed out an unfortunate fact of life that every person with an asshole boss needs to understand: The more you lose – - the deeper your depression, your anxiety, and your financial losses, and the more physical ailments you suffer –- the better your legal case against the asshole boss or company. So the more you suffer, the more money you can get. The implication for me is, if you possibly can, why not get out before you suffer horrible damages in the first place?

There are no instant cures and easy answers for people who are trapped in nasty workplaces. But I hope my little list of tips can help those of who are struggling to fight back against an asshole boss or an asshole-infested workplace. And please write me here or on my blog to let me know what you think of these tips, and especially, if you have more tips for battling back – and winning -- against workplace assholes.

Here is where I keep the list of Tips for Surviving Asshole Infested Workplaces. After I hear your suggestions and stories, I will update the list.

THE BIGGEST AND BEST LESSON: ESCAPE IF YOU POSSIBLY CAN. The best thing to do if you are stuck under the thumb of an asshole (or a bunch of them) is to get out as fast as you can. You are at great risk of suffering personal damage and of turning into an asshole yourself. After all, acting like a jerk isn’t just something that a few twisted people are born with; it is a contagious disease.

This is one of the main themes in research on workplace bullying and emotional contagion. And the most heartwarming stories I’ve heard since writing The No Asshole Rule are from people who have escaped from asshole infested places -- like this professor who got a higher-paying job and now works with civilized colleagues.

I realize that everyone who is dealing with workplace assholes can’t push the delete button and get a new co-worker, boss, or job. As one woman wrote me, “I have to feed my family and pay my mortgage, and there aren’t a lot of jobs that pay well enough to do that around here.” Other people have written me that they just need to survive long enough to get a new job or to retire. So, next time, I will write about tips for coping with a job that you can’t escape (at least for now).

Right now, however, I would love to hear from people who have made the escape, or are in the process of planning one!

Boundaries are often difficult to navigate in the workplace, and some bosses make this even harder than usual. A boss who is overly curious about one's personal life presents unique challenges. One on hand, the boss may be genuinely curious and interested in your wellbeing. On the other hand, the boss may be inappropriately prying and abusing his or her power in order to get you to reveal personal details that you don't want to.

Here's an example of advice I provided to someone who was trying to deal with a prying boss in a radio interview on NPR's Morning Edition:

One special kind of hellish boss is the one who does the opposite of what Jim Collins describes and recommends in “Good to Great”. Collins found and suggests that great leaders “looked out the window” when things were going well, to credit others for their contributions to the organization’s success, and “in the mirror” when things went badly, to take personal responsibility.

However, we’ve all known “successful” bosses who are highly skilled at taking credit when things go well and denying blame when things head south.

In my experience, among the worst, demoralizing things a boss can do is to be an unfair blamer. Among the best, most loyalty-enhancing things a boss can do is to be fair and balanced when he or she assigns credit or blame. What I’ve often advised clients to do, however, is to be strategic in their pursuit of credit, and in their attempts to avoid blame, no matter how unfair. Sometimes it makes more sense to “take one for the team”, or at least for your boss, if 1) you trust that your boss will make it up to you somehow, or 2) if the costs of getting your due credit exceed the benefits of claiming the credit.

Credit and blame can be thought of us a kind of currency, a currency that should be spent or saved carefully.

For some additional thoughts about credit and blame in the workplace, why it’s so important, and why it’s usually so broken and unfair, see this presentation.

I look forward to hearing from all of you. In particular, do you agree with the following proposition?

"All toxic bosses, in some form or other, are unfair in how they take credit and assign blame."

One of the most popular and fun things we’ve done since publishing The No Asshole Rule is to put the self-test from Chapter 4 online. I worked with Guy Kawasaki and the folks at Electric Pulp on this little project. Guy, who has a way with words, suggested that we call it the ARSE (Asshole Rating Self-Exam) and the Electric Pulp people made it work online. I confess that it isn’t a validated test, but the behaviors are based on those described and studied in research on bullying. Over 150,000 people have completed it. If you want to find if you are certified asshole, give the ARSE a try here.

One of the funny effects of the ARSE is that I will meet total strangers, and rather than saying “Hi, my name is Cindy.” They say things like “Hi. My name is Cindy, and I am a 2.” (The highest possible ARSE score is a 24, which means you admit to 24 “asshole behaviors,” a 2 is very low.) I’ve also had quite a few people admit that, at least according to the test, they were borderline assholes. As my earlier posts here and here indicate, if you are worried that you are acting like an asshole, my first two questions would be:

1 . Are you surrounded by a bunch of jerks?
And...
2. Are you in a position of power?

In addition, you might check out David Maister’s list, where he describes the times that he has been an asshole (after all, each of us is capable of being an asshole under the wrong conditions). I found his honesty and self-awareness to be stunning.

Finally, although the ARSE is advertised as a self-test, a lot of people take it with others in mind -- especially toxic bosses. Here is an email I got awhile back that shows how the test helped one fellow realize it was time to escape from a demeaning Vice-President:

"'A colleague at work recently passed along a link to Kawasaki who was blogging about your new book The No Asshole Rule. Then we found the ARSE exam and after my friend took it for one of our VPs he promptly quit (the VP scored 23, no kidding). Last Friday was my friend's last day.

As Milan Kundera wrote in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, no one is listening, they just wait for the person talking to stop for a breath so they can blurt out, "that's just like me, I...." So, that's just like me, I have an asshole working at my company. The guy constantly runs good people off.’"

I’d love to hear more stories about your reactions to the ARSE and different ways that you’ve used it. And also let me know if you have any suggestions for items that we should add or take it out.

Despite many articles and books extolling the value of humility and
emotional intelligence among business leaders, narcissism still abounds in the contemporary workplace. There has recently been more interest in narcissism as a key personality variable in business leadership, and narcissism has been the topic of several new books, as well as articles in the Harvard Business Review, the New Yorker, and many other publications.

As unpleasant as it may be to work for a narcissistic boss, it's important to understand the nature of narcissism in order to develop a strategy for dealing with this kind of boss.

First of all, it is important to know what the actual criteria for narcissism are. Here is the definition from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association: A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance,
beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement
6. is interpersonally exploitative
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Secondly, it helps to realize that in some organizations, and in some circumstances, narcissism can actually confer benefits. Narcissists may be highly motivated and dedicated to success, and even if their primary agenda is their own glorification, they might still make valuable contributions to the organization. The "dark side" of narcissism is that this kind of boss is likely to be exploitative and is unlikely to care about his or her people, to develop their professional capabilities, or to serve as a mentor or a
coach.

However, it may still make sense to work for a narcissistic boss, like Meryl Streep's character in 'Devil Wears Prada' in order to launch or accelerate your career. Even though you shouldn't expect any empathy or support from a narcissistic boss (as Michael Douglas' character, Gordon Gekko, said in 'Wall Street': "If you want a friend, get a dog"), the benefits of what you learn from working for him or her may outweigh the emotional costs that you incur as his or her subordinate.

For more information about some of the potential benefits and risks of
narcissistic leaders, and how they can play out in the workplace, see this presentation about narcissism at work.

I would be interested in hearing from readers of this blog about the
narcissists you've worked for, and how you learned to "manage" them.