Building a Jerk-Free Workplace: What Workplace Behaviors Drive Everyone Batty?
The goal of The Jerk-Free Workplace is to offer concrete suggestions on how anyone, regardless of their position, can be a leader. The more everyone steps up, even just a little, takes more personal responsibility and accountability for their attitude and actions, and embraces being more of a leader at work, the more successful you, your team, and your company will become. You’ll also create a more positive, happier work environment.
But before we get to that, let’s start with the low-hanging fruit by making sure we all agree to at least do no harm. In other words, make sure you’re not a jerk and doing things that may (often inadvertently) contribute to a less-than-ideal work environment or worse, a completely dysfunctional, fun-sucking workplace.
Now, clearly, everyone has their own definition of jerkiness. In fact, I found more than 50 synonyms for jerk, including: nincompoop, buffoon; blockhead, twit, dunderhead, goofus, and, yes, even meatball.
And undoubtedly there is an enormous range of jerkiness at work. Forgetting to refill the shared office stapler isn’t quite at the same level as bringing a wolverine to your next meeting because “you thought it’d be fun.” Talking about your foot fungus extremely loudly in an open-concept office doesn’t likely register the same on the jerk-o-meter as taking credit for a coworker’s brilliant idea.
So, you may want to create your own common understanding of what a “work jerk” looks like in your workplace.
For example, is disagreeing with your colleague a “jerk move?” I sure hope not. Creating an environment where there’s no debate is a sure-fire recipe for low morale and groupthink – where everyone goes along with each other to get along – jeopardizing the possibility of the best ideas rising to the surface. It’s how you disagree with a colleague, on the other hand, that might earn you some jerk misdemeanor points.
So, what behaviors might we be talking about? As a starting point, here is a compilation of the “greatest hits” when it comes to office pet peeves, amalgamated from more than ten different surveys (feel free to check off the ones that might apply to you):
- Leaving a mess in the communal kitchen
- Not arriving on time for meetings
- Coming to work late or leaving early
- Chatting incessantly in open-concept office areas
- Speaking too loudly in open office areas
- Constantly interrupting coworkers with personal chatter
- Speaking too loudly on phone calls
- Using speaker phones when unnecessary (and then accusing people of eavesdropping)
- Spreading gossip
- Chewing gum too loudly
- Forgetting to say “thank-you”
- Grumpiness/moodiness
- Never taking any initiative
- Never admitting to being wrong
- Blaming everyone else for your own mistakes
- Taking credit for others’ work
- Criticizing everyone behind their backs
- Being condescending or belittling someone in public
- Not listening
- Never chipping in for birthday presents
- Getting drunk at office parties
- Constantly interrupting or dominating during meetings
And then there’s this list – the more specific nitpicks that demonstrate my earlier point about there being a spectrum of jerkiness behavior:
- Sniffling colleagues who won’t get a tissue
- Typing so loudly that it sounds like an apocalyptic hail storm
- Humming show tunes all day long
- Repeated pen clicking
- Clipping toenails during a video conference call
- Excessively loud yawning
- Loudly slurping one’s coffee
- Peeling a banana from the wrong end – who does that!?
Okay, some of these are rather trivial, so keep in mind that if you want to create a more positive work environment, you need to understand when your nitpicky-ness has become part of the problem and has now made you the jerk because you complain about every little thing! Part of being a good teammate, after all, is learning to not just tolerate, but fully embrace their quirky quirks – such as peeling a banana from the wrong end.
Copyright 2023 Michael Kerr. Michael Kerr is an international Hall of Fame Speaker and the author of 8 books including, The Jerk-Free Workplace: How You Can Take the Lead to Create a Happier, More Inspiring Workplace. To order bulk copies of The Jerk-Free Workplace at a discounted rate, please connect with Michael at mike@mikekerr.com or for purchases of 5 or less copies hop on over to The Jerk-Free Workplace.
