Working with Jake-the-jerk and more lessons from Marshall Goldsmith

I’ve finally gotten around to reading “What got you here won’t get you there” by Marshall Goldsmith that I picked up at the AHRI Convention. Can I say that I loved every moment of it and after seeing him speak, I was reading it and in my head I could totally hear him saying every word.

The best thing about this book is that it can apply to everyone, and that you can take things out of it for your work life and your personal life. The book talks about challenges in interpersonal behaviour and focuses on twenty bad habits that we need to stop doing rather than typical leadership traits that we need to start doing.

The twenty bad habits are:

1. Winning too much
2. Adding too much value
3. Passing judgement
4. Making destructive comments
5. Starting with “no”, “but” or “however”
6. Telling the world how smart we are
7. Speaking when angry
8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”
9. Withholding information
10. Failing to give proper recognition
11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve
12. Making excuses
13. Clinging to the past
14. Playing favourites
15. Refusing to express regret
16. Not listening
17. Failing to express gratitude
18. Punishing the messenger
19. Passing the buck
20. An excessive need to be “me”

Now when I first heard Marshall speak at the convention I saw a lot of these bad habits in myself, particularly in my personal life. After doing the LSI a couple of years ago in my second job out of uni I think I have really valued feedback and knowing how I come across to other people in the workplace. However, not so much in my personal life. When I heard Marshall speak a few months back, I vowed to make some changes and I have made some ground. Reading the book again was a refresher that there’s still a way to go.

In any case, in reading this book I was reminded of a person that I used to work for and report into. Let’s call him Jake. Now Jake was a bit of a jerk, and I’d like to talk about some of the things that he used to do and hear about times when you’ve had to work with Jake the jerk yourself.

Here are a few examples from Marshall’s list.

No. 8- Negativity or “Let me explain why that won’t work”

Marshall defines these people as those that are “constitutionally incapable of saying positive or complimentary to any of your suggestions. Negativity is their default response. You could walk into their office with a cure for cancer and the first words out of their mouth would be ‘Let me explain why that won’t work’”. People in senior positions often do this to insert themselves as the senior critic.

Well this guy was a Negative Nancy, Debbie Downer, a perfectionistic and a control freak all wrapped into one. I tried to remain positive and respectfully challenge his way of thinking on a number of occasions. Crunch time came when he wanted me to implement a plan that he had written and distributed without me even seeing. I’d done my homework and had my plan written for the year ahead and put it to him for his input (being the bigger person I thought). He essentially dismissed it, saying that it wouldn’t work and it couldn’t be put to the senior staff. He then said to me “now here is a perfect example of what I was talking about the other day. You just don’t listen. You need to do what you’re told and implement this plan”. It was an a-ha moment for me.

I had thought ‘this guy probably hasn’t managed people before’, I’ll be patient with him and he’ll warm to my positive responses and he’ll at least meet me halfway soon. After that comment to me all I could think of was that he was a massive egotistical jerk that was not going to listen to anything I had to say.

No. 15 Refusing to express regret

Marshall says that people often think apologising means we’ve lost, its a humiliating process and means we are giving up power or control, however that refusing to apologise causes about as much ill-will in the workplace as any other interpersonal flaw. He says that “People who can’t apologise at work may as well be wearing a t-shirt that says ‘I don’t care about you’”.

After this conversation with Jake, it made me think about all our interactions together. I knew that apologising was important and I thought back to times when I’d forgotten to tell him about something that was happening that he probably should have been across. It was unintentional, but nevertheless it was something that I apologised for. He had never apologised for anything he had ever done, even when he’d majorly stuffed things up.

Once he came in and barked at me that I needed to organise an interview with person X immediately. I did as he asked. Later right before the interview, we received some feedback on this person and the senior staff did not want to proceed with the interview on that basis. He then sent me an email CC’ing in senior staff saying that this is something that I really should have looked into before I organised the interview. There were major things like that, and minor things like constantly booking me into meetings without my knowledge (or even checking my calendar) and leaving me double booked. I was surprised when I reflected that he had never apologised for anything. This led me to my next point.

No. 17 Failing to express gratitude.

He had never said anything positive or even encouraging to me.

Marshall says that “Gratitude is a skill that we can never display too often. And yet for some reason, we are cheap and chary with gratitude- as if it were rare Bordeaux wine that we can only serve on special occasions. Gratitude is not a limited resource, nor is it costly. It is abundant as air. We breathe it in, but forget to exhale”.

I’m really big on this, particularly for staff in typical support or administrative roles in a business. They are often seen as dispensable resources , when in reality they are the engine room that keeps things going. They are often the staff that are not engaged, yet other parts of the business demand discretionary effort from.

It’s not hard to say thank you when someone has done a good job and should be a skill that every leader posses. At this point in time I was thinking ‘why am I putting in so many hours and so much effort when this guy just acts like a jerk and doesn’t appreciate anything I do?’

Which brings me to the question- what would you do in the same position and how have you conquered working with your very own ‘Jake the jerk?”