Peter Klein over at Organizations and Markets wonders aloud:
It’s easy to come up with examples of organizations run by jerks that failed, but do we have systematic empirical evidence that nice-guy firms finish first? Do the marginal costs of costs of placing rude, self-centered people in management positions outweigh the marginal benefits?
It is likely that Peter is already familiar with Robert Sutton’s The No Asshole Rule. If he isn’t, either 1. he’s forgotten what it is like to be a hazed and harassed junior member of the faculty, or 2. he hasn’t read it. In my experience, “assholes” (a technical term from Sutton’s text, which generally means what you think it means) are capable of slowing down a department or organization (by blocking forward progress on all manner of issues) and are happy to use their position to abuse or otherwise demean anyone who they view as less than themselves.
There is no value in an institution to people like this. His example of a “self-described Law school asshole,” drawn from Mendelsohn’s own reflection (PDF link) does not match Sutton’s definition:
University of Pennsylvania 3L Steve Mendelsohn (writing in 1990) tells his fellow students: “You know who we are. We’re the ones who always have our hands up in class volunteering to answer the professor’s questions, or ready to ask one of our own at seemingly any and every opportunity. Everytime you hear one of our names called, you groan and turn to the person next to you and slowly shake your head from side to side.”
This is not an asshole. This is an engaged student. Being passionate and engaged in ones subject of study is exactly what I want my students to do. I don’t want passive consumers of information in my classroom—which, it sounds like, is what the culture of law schools encourages. I want critical questions, I want debate, I want a room full of critical thinkers who use the time we have together in the classroom for more than consuming information that I pass on to them. When I want to do that, I create a video and point my students at it. It’s far more effective than giving lectures over and over.
People who are driven, who know there is a better way, and who work hard to achieve that even when it means shaking up the status quo—those people are not assholes. They’re innovators. Catalysts. Activists. They’re the people who make things happen in this world. The problem is, for someone who is passive, and just wants to leave well enough alone, the innovator is an asshole.
In short, I respectfully disagree with Klein’s terminology. Only in an industrial-age classroom, where the fount of all knowledge lives at the front, dictating from yellowing notes written before the beard was greying… only there can an engaged and passionate student be labeled an “asshole.”
Update, slightly later: Peter’s question is about organizations, not classrooms. I got distracted by his example. I doubt that “productivity,” “creativity,” or any other way of measuring the value of an employee necessarily correlates with whether they treat their colleagues poorly. (Highly productive people want to see others be the same; only assholes want to make sure that they are recognized as the local expert/value proposition within an organization.) I would be interested in seeing any research that demonstrates that middle managers or those throughout an organization who abuse their power, and therefore their colleagues (passively or actively), add substantial value to the workplace.
All boats rise with the tide. If my colleague is excellent, it makes my workplace better and my institution more successful, and I have a better chance of demonstrating my own excellence as well. Only those insecure in their person need to put others down or hold them back in order to define who they are.
Hmm. I think Mendelsohn’s essay is staunchly tongue-in-cheek, and perhaps that you or Klein have missed part of his irony. Specifically, I don’t think Mendelsohn really thinks he’s an asshole *at all* (compare, e.g., with Tucker Max, who writes about himself as an asshole with what appears to be 100% sincerity). Instead, he seems to be saying, “I’m an engaged student — or, as my peers put it, “an asshole.”
I speak with some authority, having been an unquestioned Grad School Asshole. There’s a thin line between “engaged” and “obstreperous,” though — not in theory, but in practice. You cannot be fully engaged in a course in the way we’re talking about unless you’re relatively immune to embarrassment (that feeling you get when everybody else in the class is looking at you, for any reason whatsoever). This is a kind of power. Power corrupts. Analogously, people with large muscles and high pain thresholds often become physical bullies, because… why not? Students with strong verbal skills and no sense of shame often go beyond the “Hermione Granger” stage and become actual pains in the ass.
Now, a second point. At the risk of sounding like an asshole, I say that this dialogue — which is genuinely worthwhile and interesting — would be improved from revision by Klein and you. I’m not snarking here. I’m just observing that essays invariably improve from Draft Zero to Draft N, and I’ll bet these two posts would get much better.
Why? Because you’re both engaging in a complex form of communication, involving a certain amount of irony (every sophisticated use of “asshole” involves irony), and in both posts, I found that I changed my mind about what they meant every time I re-read. Which indicates (to me) room for improvement by de-confusing the communication. Of course, we’re talking about blogs here, so demanding final-draft clarity is like asking McDonald’s for a shot of Glenlivet.
They serve Glenlivet at McDonalds?
(Sorry. I only skimmed your response, figuring you were being an asshole.)
I think you’re right about the revisions. I suspect Klein is legitimately wondering whether some assholes in the bunch help raise the bottom line for an institution. (If his entire thesis is tongue-in-cheek, then yes, I missed it too.) And also, neither of us are part of the “law school culture,” so I can’t easily relate to what Mendelsohn is talking about in his essay. Your point about GSAs is taken, though.
I think the blog serves as a starting point for thoughts, and over time, revision. This theme is one that is on my mind of late, specifically because I’m teaching Technology and Activism this term, and the activist—the agent for change—is a difficult role to play in many different ways. No doubt, I’ll revisit this idea.
Whether I revisit this post, exactly, is another question entirely.
Now where’s my McSingleMalt…
I think Robin made the point I was going to make beautifully with the “power corrupts” example. I’ve been both both the student who was engaged and ahead, and the one who just liked the sound of his own voice. (There’s a Simpson’s episode where Lisa has a line to the effect “I’m good I’m good I’m oh so good! Graaaaade meeeee!”)
So let me start Draft Zero of the next post in this series – engaged students are potential assets, and like any asset, they’re also potential liabilities. So what are the skills needed to make sure an engaged student is helping others learn and engage, and not just hogging the spotlight?
I’m thinking in particular of a couple of professors in my past who were able to stop my own attention-grabbing tendencies without causing me to disengage with the class. One of these profs used a sardonic style which appealed to me, but I know caused other people in the class to back off. So I suspect it has something to do with picking carefully from a toolkit of skills, not a proscriptive approach.
And do these skills also apply to managing employees? Or raising kids? I suspect strongly they do, once you define your fundamental role in the universe as “helping others develop.”