Is there a particular organizational culture that encourages the growth of assholes?
Sutton: If an organization’s culture conveys support for the notion that the people who are nasty, overbearing, or sexist are effective and get ahead, then that organization will look for aggressive, edgy, nasty people. Otherwise, they would screen them out. When you think about what breeds assholes, for me the big question is, what happens in your organization when somebody crosses the line? Do you look the other way as long as the person is performing well, or do something about it? Will you fire people for bad behavior? One of the interesting people I interviewed for the book was the head of HR for Southwest and Jet Blue. She talked quite openly about the fact that they would hire and fire people for attitude in both companies. At Southwest, she said they always waited too long to get rid of problem people. Once they did, it felt so much better that they were always sorry they didn’t do it sooner. This is basic HR stuff but the question is, are you giving tacit approval to bad behav
