Robert I. Sutton's Blog, page 7

The No Asshole Rule emphasizes that one of the best ways to avoid the negative effects of workplaces that will leave you feeling demeaned and de-energized is to carefully assess your boss and colleagues during the interview and recruitment process.   Guy Kawasaki and I had fun with this challenge a few years back when we developed a list of 10 signs that your future boss is likely to be a bosshole.  In this spirit, I got a remarkable note the other day from a fellow who used his job interview to determine that his future boss was likely to be an asshole. Note the often subtle signs he observed.  This are his exact words, I just removed a couple key sentences (with his permission) to protect his identity:

Dr. Sutton,

Just wanted to thank you.  I read your "no Asshole rule" book on the plane my way to an interview.  I suspected from our initial phone interview that he could be a jerk.  I decided to take a new approach to the interview...to see how he interacted with shop floor employees and people that worked directly for him, to see how he spoke to me, and his verbal and visual actions, to see if I wanted this position instead of trying to impress them so they want to hire me.  I watched people that worked for him stand away from him when talking to him.  I saw he never smiled, and no one smiled at him.  He passed people on the line without so much as a nod to them.  And to top it off, he cut me off TWICE when I was talking like I wasn't even speaking, and then once even rudely didn't even PRETEND to listen to me as I talked about my background. In fact, I believe he started looking around and saying "uh huh, uh huh, uh huh" rudely "rushing me along" about 15 seconds into my background discussion.  To top it off, I remember you saying "assholes hire assholes", so I asked him if he had recommended the hiring of the people on his current team, and he boldly bragged "I hire EVERYONE on my team, it is all MY decision"...so I turned down the offer.  I believe in my heart, I would have worked for an asshole. .  And life is too short to do that again.

I find this guy to be very astute.  What do you think of his analysis?

What are other signs that you look for that a future boss -- or colleague --is likely to be a certified asshole?

A pointer to this from Australian Chris Berry came in my email this morning.  Here is what Ken Vail and his co-authors found:

Contemplating death doesn't necessarily lead to morose despondency, fear, aggression or other negative behaviors, as previous research has suggested. Following a review of dozens of studies, University of Missouri researchers found that thoughts of mortality can lead to decreased militaristic attitudes, better health decisions, increased altruism and helpfulness, and reduced divorce rates.

Some of the specific effects were quite interesting -- everything from being more peaceful and cooperative to exercising more and quitting smoking. I especially liked this study described in the summary in ScienceDaily:

Even subconscious awareness of death can more influenced behavior. In one experiment, passers-by who had recently overheard conversations mentioning the value of helping were more likely to help strangers if they were walking within sight of cemeteries.

The researchers suggest one reason for such effects (based on something called terror management theory) is that  "people deal with their awareness of mortality by upholding cultural beliefs and seeking to become part of something larger and more enduring than themselves, such as nations or religions." 

So that is my happy thought for the day: Think about your death, it is good for you and those around you!

P.S. Here is the source: "When Death is Good for Life: Considering the Positive Trajectories of Terror Management," published online on April 5, 2012, in Personality and Social Psychology Review. 

I sent out a tweet the other day about a study showing that men who score high on a narcissism test appear to experience more stress than those who score low (but not narcissistic women).  Stress was measured by "cortisol levels,"   a hormone that  "signals the level of activation of the body’s key stress response system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis." 

You can see a report about study here.  I thought the most interesting part was the link to the 40 item Narcissistic Personality Quiz, which is based on the measure in this paper: Raskin, R. & Terry, H. (1988). A Principal-Components Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and Further Evidence of Its Construct Validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(5). Note that Journal of Personality and Social Psychology is one of the best and most rigorous psychology journals, so the source is excellent.

Try taking the quiz. I just did and scored an "8,' which suggests a low level of narcissism.  I confess, however, that I am wondering if my low score was a reflection of my lack of narcissism or of my knowledge of the narcissism literature in concert with a bit of self-delusion.  I also confess that I completed it a second time as if I were one especially narcissistic boss that I once worked with.  That boss (in my opinion) earns a 32 -- a very high score as above 20 indicates narcissism.  The quiz omits one thing this person did which indicates narcissism:  It was amazing how, no matter what the topic, how within 3 minutes, every conversation with that boss always became conversation about what a successful and impressive person he was and all the people who admired him and his work. 

 If you really are the mood for self-assessment, you can take both this quiz and the (less scientific) Asshole Rating Self-Exam or ARSE.   That way you can find out if you are a narcissist, a certified asshole, or both!

Enjoy.

As I was reading research this morning for our scaling project, I came across a series of studies that has implications for both politicians and -- perhaps organizational leaders --- who wish to persuade others to like and support them.  The question tackled by these studies in paper by Hakkyun Kim and his colleagues in the Journal of Consumer Research was when "influencers" are better of using vague, abstract high level messages -- ones that are more about "why" -- versus concrete, specific, implementation oriented messages -- ones that are "how" to get things done.

Their general hypothesis was that, given the way that people "represent" events in their minds, vague and abstract messages fit with their attention and expectations when the event is far in the future, but as the event draws closer, they become more concerned about concrete details as the practicalities begin to loom. Here is part of their argument:

For instance, a traveler preparing to leave for a vacation to Cancun the following morning is more likely to process information about speedy check-in for international flights – a low-level, concrete piece of information that is related to the feasibility of the vacation, as opposed to information about the quality of sunsets on the East Coast of Mexico – a high-level, abstract piece of information that is related to the desirability of the vacation. When processing information that does not match their mental representation, people are less likely to experience fluency, and thus may provide a less positive evaluation of the event.

They used this kind of logic to design a series of laboratory experiments where subjects were exposed to vague versus concrete messages from hypothetical U.S. Senate candidates and asked them to evaluate how positively or negatively they viewed the candidate.  The key  manipulation was whether the election was far off (six months away) or looming soon (one week).  As predicted, abstract messages were more persuasive (and promoted more liking) when the election was six months away and concrete message were more persuasive when it was one week away.

This study has some fun implications for the upcoming elections.  Let's watch Obama and Romney to see if they keep things vague and abstract until the final weeks of the campaign, but then turn specific in the final weeks.  But I think it also has some interesting implications for how leaders can persuade people in their organizations to join organizational change efforts.  The implication is that when the change is far off, it is not a good idea to talk about he nuts and bolts very much -- a focus on abstract "why" questions is in order.  But as the change looms, specific details that help people predict and control what happens to them are crucial to keeping attitudes toward the change and leaders positive.  

This is just a hypothesis based on this research. Laboratory subjects and the strangeness of political campaigns may not generalize to organizational settings, but it seems like a plausible hypothesis. Now I am going to start looking at some cases of organizational change to see if it actually seems to work. 

Any reactions to the hypothesis or suggestions of cases to check out?

P.S. Here is the reference: Kim, Hakkyun, Akshay R. Rao, and Angela Y. Lee (2009), "It's Time to Vote: The Effect of Matching Message Orientation and Temporal Frame on Political Persuasion," lead article, Journal of Consumer Research, 35 (April), 877-889.

The depths of societies ingrained sexism -- and the degree to which successful women understand it is a fact of life that requires constant vigalance and adjustment -- never ceases to amaze and trouble me.  A new study in the Administrative Science Quarterly (Volume 56, pages 622-641) by Yale faculty member Victoria L. Brescoll presents a trio of studies that examine gender, power, and volubility (talking time).  The headline above contains the upshot.  Here are some details:

1. In a study of United States senators (using data from 2005 and 2007), more powerful male senators talked quite a bit more on the senate floor than less powerful male senators. But there were no significant differences between how much powerful female senators talked compared to less powerful female senators.

2. This finding was replicated in a controlled experiment -- again, more powerful men talked more, more powerful women didn't. Additional analyses suggested that powerful women hesitated to talk more because they were concerned about "potential backlash," that they would be seen as less likable, "out of line," domineering, too controlling, would lose power, and be less effective.

3. These fears of backlash were confirmed in a third study. The basic set-up was that research subjects were asked to assess hypothetical male and female CEO candidates --one who tends to express opinions in meetings and the other who tends to keep opinions to him/herself.  The effects -- the ratings by both male and female subjects -- were troubling.  The talkative male CEO candidate was rated as more suitable for leadership than the less talkative one on measures including whether or not the person should be hired, is entitled to power, and competence.  BUT for the female CEO, the exact opposite pattern was seen. The female CEO candidate who withheld their opinions were rated more highly than the female candidate who tended to express their opinions.

Pretty disturbing, huh?  But it does show that the paths to power for women and men are quite different.  The blabber mouth approach works for guys, but backfires on women.

The question is -- what can be done about this problem? Certainly a bit of self-awareness is in order, but I do wonder if there are ways to dampen or reverse these effects by developing organizational cultures -- through employee selection, socialization, rewards, and punishments -- in the right way. There are some organizations I work with where more talkative and opinionated women do seem to get ahead, and others where the women who get ahead learn to talk less.

In any event, powerful women are often quite adept at finding ways to press their opinions without increasing their talking time. One trick I have seen is that they feed their opinions and evidence to talkative male colleagues "backstage" and convince these guys to present such opinions and evidence as their own in meetings. 

Thoughts?

P.S. The entire paper is available here.

P.P.S A big thanks to Carol for sending me the cartoon, just perfect!

 

 

 

Even though it has been five years since The No Asshole Rule was published in hardback, I still get 15 or 20 emails a week about issues pertinent to the book -- descriptions of workplace tyrants and creeps, on how to avoid breeding them, and on what to do about them when you work with one -- or a lot of them.  

This blog would contain nothing but "asshole stories" and I would be posting a couple times a day if I reported them all. Clearly, that would be both boring and depressing.  And I am interested in other things. But every now and and then, I get one that is so well-crafted that I feel compelled to post it. I got a great one yesterday. 

I don't want to put the whole email here both because it is so detailed and because I don't want to reveal any names. But the fellow who wrote this had quite an experience and did a great job of describing how he fought back. Here are some key excerpts (with some deletions to obscure identities):

His note starts:

I just finished reading The No A$$hole rule for a second time (I use $ instead of "s" just in case your email filters emails with the word "A$$hole," though I'd bet it does not. I'm just airing on the side of caution). Here is my reaction. Feel free to use my full name and any contents of this email in any of your published works. Back in 2005, I began my second job out of college working as a project manager at a marketing company. It was, and still is, a family business consisting of about 100 total employees.   Here is a snippet what I endured, for nearly 7 years, from the A$$hole Family.

This is a partial list of behaviors in the cesspool where he worked:

If I was eating something, a bag of potato chips for example, the President would walk into my cubicle, stick his hands in the bag, then look at me and say, "Can I have some?"
Someone would walk into my cubicle and have a conversation with the person in the cube across from me...while I was on the phone!
A coworker of mine made a mistake on a project, so the VP of Sales sent the client an email, copying my boss, which said something to the effect of, "I just fired ____. This mistake was completely unacceptable, and please accept my apology. We don't tolerate people like that here..." Ironically enough, it was a lie; ____ was never fired, but just moved off the account.
The family members would routinely yell across the entire office to one another
I was having a meeting with a vendor in a conference room. The door was shut. The Sales Consultant walked in, sans knocking, and proceeded to say, "I need this room" and set her things on the conference table. And no, she had not reserved the conference room; reserving a conference room in this company was far-too-advanced of an idea.
 [A married couple] who also worked at the A$$hole company were going through a divorce. They routinely had shouting and yelling matches, followed by slamming drawers, desks, and just about anything else that could make a loud noise and disrupt everyone in the office.
[One family member] often spoke to me like I was a 5-year old child (she did the same to most underlings, especially the men), and always loudly enough so everyone in the surrounding area could hear that I was being thrown under the bus. She liked to make an example of her victims. Oddly enough, she apparently has a Psychology degree (No offense to you at all, Dr. Sutton).
[Another executive] was famous for bullying vendors, yelling at them on the phone, slamming desks and drawers, etc.. He would also do this by using his blue-tooth ear-piece and his cell phone as he walked around the office, yelling on the phone.
They hired another A$$hole (You wrote that A$$holes tend to hire other A$$holes). He was most lethal behind a computer, where he would send scathing emails to co-workers. However, he would not limit his exchanges to emails, as my colleague would often complain that he said things—NOT in private—like, "If you think you need a raise, then maybe you should quit and get another job."
 I literally witnessed my manager turn into an A$$hole overtime due to over-exposure to the A$$hole Family. In the beginning, he was an optimistic, friendly, driven, trustworthy manager. 6+ years later, he scowled and glared at co-workers; he became two-faced; I lost trust in him.

I love this summary, it is sad but funny at the same time:

There is such an infestation of A$$holes at this company that someone should tent the building and spray it with A$$hole insecticide. I could go on for pages about these stories. I wish I had documented more of them, because some of them were really funny.

 Then, he tells us how he too started catching the sickness -- as I have written here many times, bad behavior is contagious. Thank goodness, he and his colleagues hatched exit plans:

After working there for a year, I realized that I was turning into an A$$hole: I was losing my temper with vendors on the phone; my stress-level was getting too high to manage; and I started to send more scathing emails. It also started to affect my personal life, as I would come home from work and lose my temper with my partner for no reason. I then realized that I needed to get out. Nothing I could do would help me manage this job long-term. So, 3 of my colleagues and I all made a pact to get new jobs as quickly as possible.

Finally, I was especially taken with his description of the things he did to cope with the infestation of assholes around him, many are consistent with my survival tips, others are new twists and turns. Here is most of his list:

 I confronted [a boss] about him throwing me under the bus. I explained to him that after throwing me under the bus, I become anxious, nervous, embarrassed, and I cannot concentrate, which greater increases my chances for making mistakes. My solution was to instead speak to me in private about a way that we can work together to reduce any mistakes and increase productivity for our whole department. He never threw me under the bus again (to my face, anyway), but he never took me up on the offer to speak with me about how to help improve my job performance, as well as my co-workers. 
Wrote in my daily journal (this was a tremendous small win; I could vent my frustrations and focus on my strategy to get out of the A$$hole Factory. I still write in my journal)
Using any downtime at work to apply for other jobs
Using the "I have a doctor's appointment" excuse to go on job interviews
The President/CEO ran for a political post. I voted for the other guy.
Working as hard as possible at my job, so that when I left, it would be difficult to replace me
Wear headphones to drown out the A$$holes yelling across the office at one another
Piled things like my briefcase and books near the entrance to my cubicle so A$$holes could not enter un-invited
Deleted scathing emails and never responding to them instead of responding and escalating into email World War III
Gave 2 weeks notice: No more, no less

Again, I don't usually provide so much detail, but this fellow did such a brilliant job of showing what an asshole infested workplace looks and feels like, the negative effects it has on everyone in its grips, and of listing the little and big things he did to cope with it.  And, thank goodness, he realized he needed to escape and eventually got out -- while protecting himself along the way. 

I won't name him (even though he said it was OK, I think a bit of discretion is in order). But I do want to thank this anonymous reader for taking the time to write me such a long note and for doing it so well.

For better and worse, one of the most well-established studies in the behavioral sciences is that we human-beings tend to have inflated and often wildly inaccurate evaluations of our skills and actions -- this is sometimes called self-enhancement bias.  I have written about this here before, in discussing David Dunning's book Self-Insight, which shows that this tendency for self-delusion is especially pronounced in areas where we are most incompetent!   As I wrote then (and dug into in Good Boss, Bad Boss to explain why self-awareness is so difficult for leaders -- especially bad leaders):

In a survey of thousands of high school seniors ,70% of respondents rated their leadership ability as above average while only 2% rated their leadership ability as below average, and -- turning to my own profession -- 94% of college professors say they do above average work.

The pile of evidence for self-enhancement bias grew a bit lately, with a new study on tailgating.  As USA Today tells us:

Michelin is putting out a little research that shows that 74% of drivers say someone tailgated them in the past six months. But only 11% admit to having tailgated someone else.

The lesson from all this is if you think that problems are always caused by other people around you and are rarely if ever to blame, well, that might be good for protecting your tender ego, but it is a lousy mindset for identifying and repairing your flaws!

P.S. The picture of of a billboard in Colorado.  Good fun.

 

That is the final exam question that I've been using for about a decade in my graduate class "Organizational Behavior:An Evidence-Based Approach" in our Department of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford.  Students get 3000 words to answer the question.  I put in on the course outline so they can see it the first day of class.  I do so because I want propsective students to decide if they can deal with a class with so much ambiguity and pressure to write well and because I want students to start thinking about their paper from the first day of class.  I encourage and reward them for being as creative as possible, while at the same time, weaving together concepts related to major themes in the class such as leadership, employee selection and socialization, motivation and rewards, interpersonal influence, group dynamics, organizational change, innovation, and organizational culture. 

As I tell the students, this is a really hard question.  In fact, so hard, it is difficult for me to answer even after studying the topic for over 30 years. I guess I did answer it in at least one of my books, The No Asshole Rule, although that was a lot longer than 3000 words.  After a decade or so, I have read about 1000 answers to this question.  Every year, I go through the same process with it.  About a week before the papers are due, I start having second thoughts about it as I talk to the students about their struggles with answering such an open-ended question. After all, this is the Stanford Engineering School, and while some our students write beautifully, for many others, this is the first time they have faced such an open-ended writing assignment.  Then, the same thing happens every year.  The pile of papers come in, I start reading them, and I am delighted with the overall quality and dazzled by the best papers -- and pleased by the creativity and even joy the students so many students convey. 

The range and quality of the papers was especially striking this year.  I believe it was largely because my two course assistants, Belinda Chiang and Isaac Waisberg , did such a great job of giving students feedback during the five writing assignments that led up to the final.  I won't list all the titles and themes of the 84 papers we received.  Quite a few were variations of web-based start-ups, as there is a lot of that at Stanford, especially in the School of Engineering.  

But here are some of the most intriguing ones:

A nationwide professional wrestling company that "empowers its wrestlers to create quality shows and programming."

"The Ministry of Love," a government agency on the imaginary planet of "Natan" that has a population of 3 million people and a declining fertility rate.  The mission of the ministry to increase the birth rate via love.  The key roles are "Venuses" who develop ideas and "Cupids" who implement those ideas.

An ideal organization for a high school "Queen Bee" who "rules the hallways with a fist full of Prada and enough hairspray to glue flies to the walls."

A non-profit hospice, that nurtures employees "while they deal with the emotions of death on a daily basis."

Heaven.  Yes, that heaven -- where management has two goals 1. provide people with an afterlife fair to their conduct before death and 2. Encourage people to do good on earth.

"The Ideal NBA Franchise: Transforming the Golden State Warriors into Champions."  This is a tough job as our local basketball team is a perennial loser.

Revamping the The National Kidney Foundation of Singapore

"Mystical Weddings," a wedding planning agency located in India.

The ideal organization for a family.  This was written by a student who had been a dad for just two weeks.  He was suffering sleep deprivation and other stresses and decided to imagine a better solution.  It was touching and made lovely use of course concepts -- incentives, influence, and group norms, for example.

Finally, the most outrageous and one of the best papers in terms of writing and application of course concepts (written by a female student) was: "Living the dream -- would you like to to be the third wife of Tom Brady?  A blueprint for the polygynous family."  I never heard of the word "polygynous."  It means polygamous -- one husband, multiple wives, the Big Love thing.

As I said, although I was tempted to abandon this assignment yet again this year, when I read the papers, I was -- as usual -- struck by how well the best students apply the theory, evidence, and cases from the course in brilliant ways that I could never possibly imagine.  Also, the assignment reveals students who can define but not really apply concepts, as well as those rare students who haven't learned much course content. 

I am wondering however, if I should open it up next year so that students can produce something other than a paper that uses course concepts to design the ideal organization.  Perhaps they could do a film, a presentation, or design a game that answers the question in some compelling way.  For the most ambitious students, given the entrepreneurial frenzy at Stanford, perhaps taking steps to start your own ideal organization (and telling me what you've learned) might satisfy the requirement as well. I am not sure if this is a good idea as it is hard to beat good old fashioned writing. But I am toying with it.

Last year, I wrote a post about how Justin Snider, who teaches education at Columbia, asserted that "the best principals are PRESENT, constantly interacting with teachers, students, and parents."  I was especially interested in his comment about an intriguing if rough measure of how well a principal is doing the presence thing:

"[A] great back-of-the-envelope measure of whether a principal is generally doing a good job is how many students' names he or she knows.  In my experience, there's a strong correlation between principals who know almost all students by name and those who are respected (and seen as effective) by students, parents and teachers."

I thought of Jason's assertions about the power of presence after getting this depressing email from a middle school teacher about her horrible principal.  This boss defines lack of presence.  I have reprinted most of the story below in this teacher's words, as I found it most compelling.  But note the key point: "She never comes out of her office, and never spends time in the building, seeing how it functions.  I can literally go weeks without catching sight of her."  Scary, huh?

Please read the rest. If you are a boss, you might use this description as a bit of a self-test.  Do you do this kind of stuff? Is this how the people you lead see you? 

Also, this teacher is asking for advice about how to deal with this situation. What would you suggest?

Here is her story. Note she has taught at this school for over a decade:

I teach at a middle school. We have had a superintendent for five years.  He's no good, but largely did not touch the staff at my school because we had an excellent principal who did as you suggest – she insulated us from nonsense from above her.  When she left for greener pastures, our super installed our current principal.  (No interview process, no panel discussion.  Hooray!)  She's probably a nice lady: shy, socially awkward, and apparently a "yes-man" for upper management.  She reads books about "ideal" middle schools and then plans how to make ours match her vision.  Alas, her vision after the first nine months was to transfer numerous successful people out of our building.  She then changed the schedule, the teams, the grades we are teaching – essentially, she disassembled the school and rebuilt it from the ground up.

She never comes out of her office, and never spends time in the building, seeing how it functions.  I can literally go weeks without catching sight of her – this in a smallish middle school of 540 kids and maybe 45 staff.  She's never taught above grade five, and we work with hormonal 7th and 8th graders. She is very uncomfortable talking to more than one person at a time, so doesn't get "into it" at staff meetings with us.  She has essentially disbanded team leaders, which was the democratic body in our school that used to hash out ideas and plan new strategies, with staff input.  She has no one with feet on the ground feeding her information - consequently, her "ideal" visions and new structures are theoretical only – they are never held up to the light for discussion or dissection, to see if they're workable or not. 

One example:  we no longer retain students who flunk more than two major classes in grades 7 or 8.  Her rule. No staff input.  Something about self-esteem?  We're not really sure – she's never officially discussed or even informed us of this policy change.  We have heard it through the grapevine.  Meanwhile... A student of mine who flunked third quarter was informed by her that he can't stay back no matter how little work he does for the rest of the year.  Now, Bob,  you're not officially an educator – but imagine being a lazy 14-year-old boy and being told there will be no consequences for lack of effort in school.  How much time are you going to spend studying or working on homework from April through June?

We, her staff, have seen the ebb and flow of parent concerns, scheduling glitches, social promotion, and poorly-constructed teams. We are long-term and short-term experts in our fields, with decades of experience among us.  She doesn't ask for our input in how to implement plans – and many of hers hit the ground like lead weights.  People have tried to approach her in a variety of ways, but it's clear from her reaction to us that any disagreement is seen as a dire threat to her.  She has no confidence, and completely shuts down if she proposes an idea and the staff offers logistical questions or pushback.  We literally do not know how to talk to her about what is not working, because she is so hypersensitive and easily flummoxed that we fear she can't process it – and we fear more greatly that she will try to "get us" for expressing concerns.

We live in such a well of fear and distrust now, it's hard for us to function. New superintendent is coming in July.  We are crossing our fingers.  In the meantime, I guess I'm hoping you'll have some advice.  What can underlings do  to salvage things when the boss is fully incompetent to do the job – and is bringing the walls down around her as she pursues her incompetence?

What do you think? Any advice for this teacher other than to lay low and hope that her crummy boss gets canned by the new superintendent?

Tomorrow morning, Fortune's Adam Lashinsky and I are going to spend an hour at The Churchill Club talking about Apple and what other organizations and leaders can (and cannot) learn from the world's most (economically) valuable company.  If you want to attend, I think you can tickets here still available and I understand they are filming our discussion (I will let you know how to see the video when I find out).

Adam is the author of Inside Apple (see my detailed review and discussion here).   I don't know nearly as much about Apple as Adam does, but like virtually every other management writer, I've produced various pieces on Apple and Steve Jobs because they are irresistible subjects (such as this piece on 5 Warning Signs to Watch for at Apple). 

Part of me believes that Apple and Jobs have much to teach other companies and leaders.  But, as I wrote in the new chapter in the Good Boss, Bad Boss paperback, part of me is starting to wonder if what each of us "learns" from Steve Jobs amazing life reveals more about our inner selves -- our personalities, preferences, and personal experiences -- than anything else.  Below is the excerpt from Good Boss, Bad Boss where I toy with this argument (I edited it slightly because one sentence doesn't make sense unless you read the whole chapter).

I am writing this epilogue in December 2011, two months after the death of Steve Jobs, the most talked-about boss and innovator of our time. Like many others, I found Jobs's great strengths, startling weaknesses, and bizarre quirks to be fascinating.  For example, I wrote about him in The No Asshole Rule (in the chapter on "The Virtues of Assholes"). Even though Jobs's nastiness was well documented before Walter Isaacson's authorized biography was published, I was a bit shocked by tidbits in the book. As his death loomed, Jobs ran through sixty-seven nurses before finding three he liked. Still, there is no denying Jobs's genius. Even though I would not have wanted to work for him, his design sensibilities, his ability to build great teams, and (in his later years) the way he structured a large organization that moved at the speed of a small one are admirable.

Recently, however, I had two experiences that led me to believe it is difficult for bosses who want to improve
their craft to learn from Steve Jobs. The first came after I had taught a two-hour session on innovation to forty CEOs of midsized Chinese companies. None spoke English and I don't speak Mandarin, so there was a translator to enable communication. I put up a few Steve Job quotes and had fun figuring out that thirty-eight of the forty CEOs had iPhones. During the question-and-answer period, they seemed obsessed with Jobs.

The most interesting thing happened, however, after I ended the session. As I left, one CEO grabbed the microphone and started hollering into it, and as I walked outside for another meeting, they were yelling at each other. The translator told me they were arguing over whether Jobs was an asshole and whether they should emulate such behavior to be better bosses. When I came back thirty minutes later, the translators ran up to me— laughing—because those CEOs were still arguing over the same thing.

As I was driving home, I started thinking that Steve Jobs (or at least the idea of Steve Jobs) was so vivid, so
complicated, and so idolized that for those CEOs, he was like an inkblot test: they projected their inner beliefs, values, desires, and justifications for their behavior onto him. The conversation was sparked by Jobs, but the content had little or nothing to do with what Jobs was like in life or in the lessons he could teach those CEOs.

Then, a couple weeks later, I went to a party and talked with two people who worked closely with Jobs for years.
They started pretty much the same argument that those Chinese executives had. Although one asserted the good
deeds Jobs had done weren't emphasized enough in media reports or the Isaacson biography, they nonetheless started arguing (and people who hadn't worked for Jobs jumped in) about whether Jobs's success meant it was wise or acceptable to be a jerk and when it was worth tolerating an asshole boss. As I listened, I believed once again that the idea of Steve Jobs was prompting people to make sense of and justify their behavior, personal values, and pet theories.

So I raised my hypothesis: that people couldn't learn much from Jobs. That he was so hyped, so complex, and
apparently inconsistent that the "lessons" they derived from him where really more about who they were and hoped to be than about Jobs himself. The two people who worked closely with him agreed. And one added another reason why Jobs was and is a bad role model for bosses: Steve had such a weird and rare brain that it simply isn't possible for another human being to copy him anyway!

I am curious, what do you think?  As I re-read this, part of me still believes the argument above and part of me still believes that, well, every boss and innovator can learn something from him (despite the biases we all bring to the table).  I also find it easier to think about Apple and its organization and management in a detached way than about Jobs -- perhaps because an organization, even Apple, could never have a personality and presence as vivid and intriguing as Mr. Jobs had.