Is Your Future Boss an A**hole?
Stanford Professor and author of The No Asshole Rule Bob Sutton and startup guy Guy Kawasaki along with the gang at LinkedIn have ginned up a checklist of 10 items to help assess if a prospective boss is likely to be an asshole. What Kawasaki and Sutton recommend is that before you take that job offer, do a reference check on your future boss (using LinkedIn as the tool to find the references, of course) and then ask the following questions:
1. Kisses-up and kicks-down: “How does the prospective boss respond to feedback from people higher in rank and lower in rank?” “Can you provide examples from experience?” One characteristic of certified assholes is that they tend to demean those who are less powerful while brown-nosing their superiors.
2. Can’t take it: “Does the prospective boss accept criticism or blame when the going gets tough?” Be wary of people who constantly dish out criticism but can’t take a healthy dose themselves.
3. Short fuse: “In what situations have you seen the prospective boss lose his temper?” Sometimes anger is justified or even effective when used sparingly, but someone who “shoots-the-messenger” too often can breed a climate of fear in the workplace. Are co-workers scared of getting in an elevator with this person?
4. Bad credit: “Which style best describes the prospective boss: gives out gratuitous credit, assigns credit where credit is due, or believes everyone should be their own champion?” This question opens the door to discuss whether or not someone tends to take a lot of credit while not recognizing the work of his or her team.
5. Canker sore: “What do past collaborators say about working with the prospective boss?” Assholes usually have a history of infecting teams with nasty and dysfunctional conflict. The world seems willing to tolerate talented assholes, but that doesn’t mean you have to.
6. Flamer: What kind of email sender is the prospective boss?
Most assholes cannot contain themselves when it comes to email: flaming
people, carbon-copying the world, blind carbon copying to cover his own
buttocks. Email etiquette is a window into one’s soul.
7. Downer: “What types of people find it difficult to work with
the prospective boss? What type of people seem to work very well with
the prospective boss?” Pay attention to responses that suggest
“strong-willed” or “self-motivated” people tend to work best with the
prospective boss because assholes tend to leave people around them
feeling de-energized and deflated.
8. Card shark: “Does the prospective boss share information for
everyone’s benefit?” A tendency to hold cards close to one’s
chest—i.e., a reluctance to share information—is a sign that this
person treats co-workers as competitors who must be defeated so he or
she can get ahead.
9. Army of one: “Would people would pick the prospective boss
for their team?” Sometimes there is upside to having an asshole on your
team, but that won’t matter if the coworkers refuse to work with that
person. Use this question to help determine if the benefit of having
the prospective boss on your team outweighs any asshole behaviors.
10. Open architecture: “How would the prospective boss respond if a copy of The No Asshole Rule appeared on her desk?” Be careful if the answer is, “Duck!”