The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton will certainly test the strength of your book club to accept creative subject matter, generate lively discussion and deal with an issue that may or may not resonate with your book club members.
Robert Sutton has candidly put forward his observance of the tolerance behaviors that many companies demonstrate regarding the assholes who roam their halls and supervise others.
When we discussed this book during our monthly book club meeting, each one of us had one or more real life examples of assholes we have had to deal with in our work lives. In fact, one member had a front-burner situation regarding assholes who are currently making her work environment pretty miserable. We all rallied with a variety of solutions and responses to the jerks in her world. And, yes, one of our suggestions had something to do with the tires of the jerks’ cars.
The rest of us talked about how we faced off to the troublemakers in our careers and found that often we had handled the assholes well and at other times, we missed an opportunity to be a hero and save some souls. Assholes as supervisors cause an inordinate amount of damage to employee morale and overall profitability.
The author of this book was artful at providing a variety of diplomatic actions to take to deal with assholes in a work culture. In the long run, businesses that hope to be successful must learn to flush the assholes from their culture and keep the doors barred against new ones who try to get in. We all cheered when reading about the companies who are serious about instigating and enforcing a no asshole rule in their culture. Wouldn’t that be ideal?
This book club selection was a great test of the mettle of our members and it appears we all passed, possibly because we set up a no asshole rule when starting our book club.
To see our other book club selections, check out the Hot Picks page of this site.