YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Sutton

lines on the record: 59
first: 2017-09-13
most recent: 2017-09-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think to your point, the sensitivity or awareness of how bad this is has never been higher. The visibility level, transparency never been higher. The barrier to communicating about it never been lower. And so add all those things up, it's going to feel like a barrage of bad behavior. And I think it's, you know, look, and we're in a transitional time for pretty much everything with respect to how we treat each other or how the definition of bad behavior is changing. So I think it's a good time to be you with this book.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing since we're in Silicon Valley right now, one thing that I actually really admire and I think will be good for all of us is essentially the movement against sexism, sexual harassment and so on. The companies I tend to know that tend to have those problems tend to just have bad cultures where it's not the only problem.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Role models. We got some pretty bad role models in industry and in politics right now in the web, by the way, has a lot to do with both sides of it. When we have communication, even with people who aren't strangers who, when we don't have eye contact, we tend to be less empathetic and more nasty. But then there's this other side, which are these countervailing forces, which is, well, when you're bad, you're called out on.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you look at what will turn human beings into disrespectful, nasty people, it's having status differences. Powered status differences really inequality of all kinds does that to people on both sides, envy up, scorn down happens. When people are in a hurry, when people are crowded, so you think flying airplanes are sort of an analogy for this. You got first class, you got people are crowded. You got people who are in a hurry.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they do this experimentally, and they do this in the lab in the field, and it turns out that having power without having stature or respect. So you think of somebody at the DMV who right now I'm dealing with the social service agency or prison guard. Prison guard. They have a lot of power In the lab, you can turn somebody into a vindictive jerk.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's people in life, and this is a different sort of asshole. We're talking about more powerful ones, and this is the kind of asshole that actually I have kind of an obsession with. Petty tyrants. And there's really good research that in general with human beings, if you put them in a position where they have some power over people, but they don't have prestige, they're not esteemed.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm just telling you to calm people down, to clean up the mess to tell them that it really wasn't that bad and most effective toxic enablers have one or more people like that, people who clean up the mess because a smart asshole almost always, even a dumb asshole might have one. And so it's sort of unavoidable. But the idea that people in management positions, part of their job is to take the crap so that people can actually perform their work. That to me, that's an important management function. That's true.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was also this A lot of times many of us get in situations where we aren't the asshole, but it's kind of like after the parade comes to town, we clean up the crap. And I always say, by the way, if you were going to be an effective asshole, get yourself a toxic handler.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's amazing how actually doing that, of course, is a good practical route to another situation, but it changes how you approach the situation you're in. It changes your composure and your sensibility because it's doing something cognitive too. It's like giving you that almost that time travel distance. I felt like you were kind of describing an ecosystem of assholery. There was also this like these different roles that people play, like the idea of a toxic enabler.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the power stuff, essentially, if you are going against somebody who is more powerful versus less powerful, it has a huge effect. You've got to document more carefully. You've got to get more allies. You've got to find ways to protect yourself. Whereas if you're the CEO, so one of the guys, Paupercell, he was CEO for years, W.R. Baird, now called Baird Financial Services Firm. They have a no-asshole rule. He tells people during the interview, if I find out you're an asshole, I'm going to fire you. And he can do it because he's the boss. It's a lot different if you're not the boss.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. So, if you've got an asshole, there's three things power, you have more or less power about the same, and you got to be careful because people overestimate their power. The second one is, are you alone? Or can you kind of have a posse? And then the third thing is how well documented is it?”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's also one other thing, a subtext for me that one of the big themes about being slow to label people is assholes. Because in this case, because you're describing the specific behavior by somebody who was generally okay other than that, sort of forgiving and understanding one another's quirks. You shouldn't just damn a whole person just because they have”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I think a shock absorber for managers is when you know that it sounds like what you're saying might be a little unreasonable, just give a two sentence explanation for the context. The reason I care about the sodas being arranged in grids is because I want it to look like people care about the state of this kitchen. Stupid things have real reasons behind them. And sometimes you might decide you change your mind after you explain why the wacky thing sets you off. But I think it's better to be honest.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he said, Oh, well, it's because people waste too much time figuring out why did you staple it? Why are these staple differently? Are they different decks or like it takes somebody too long to reposition it? So I want them in the same place, the right size every time, so that people don't waste their time on that stuff. That was like a moment of clarity for me. It was like, oh, I want those binder clips set that way too because I don't want people wasting their time on the nonsense. I want to get into the good stuff. I want to get into the deck.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Size and placement. It was the source of being yelled at multiple times for me and my colleagues. And so finally one day I said to him kind of in a, when he was in a good mood, I said, you know, the binder clip thing, what's up with that?”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I had a boss when I worked at Disney who was fanatical about which binder clips we used on our desk. Absolutely. And genius guy, amazing talent, and had a real problem if you use the wrong size binder clip on a presentation or a pack of papers”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, this person, well, other than negative And so I set up a filter that any email that came to my box that either had was from this person CC'd this person or this person's name was mentioned in the body of the email.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had a terrible colleague, not somebody that worked for me, but somebody a couple branches away in the org chart at eBay. And this person was awful. And I finally realized after taking years of nonsense from this person that this person actually had nothing to do with my life. Like this person couldn't say yes or no to anything I wanted.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Well, and it just points to also the importance of like respect and like going together, you know, because even if you don't like somebody, if you start gradually respecting them, then eventually I think the dislike starts to get worn away. But that's very different from what I thought you were talking about when you first talked about this cognitive dissonance, which was I thought you were talking about something I heard on Invisivilia a while ago about there was a non-complementary behavior. There was somebody on talking about this dinner party where a burglar came in the middle of it and like held them up and they diffused the situation completely by offering him a glass of wine. And he ended up sort of like he sat quietly down and they talked a little bit and at the end of the night he left and he left the glass of wine in the bottle like by the curb.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, I One of my favorite folks, Adam Grant, who's at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton, he's got this great book called Give and Take. And essentially what he shows is people are most successful and like are givers. And the givers, especially over long periods of time, the givers are who succeed are the ones who don't get burned out and don't get exploited. Mutual trade. And the other thing is when you work together cooperatively with someone, it's really hard to dislike them unless, as Adam would say, unless they're total takers and that every turn they've got in their mind, I'm just going to scream.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Transaction Well, it's funny that you say that because I feel like we sort of tend to think of transactional as being a negative thing almost. Like I take a give, but actually there is something else that's being built.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's funny, I hear in that story the importance of trade. You think about like when we've had breakthroughs as a country or as like a company, it's by doing business with other people. And if you can figure out a way to either tune out, ignore, or just isolate yourself from the nonsense and focus on the trade, the exchange, the transaction. I'm going to do this. I would like you to do that. That transaction, that bank account starts to build. And I think over time, it becomes harder and harder. People say this about, you know, doing business back in the Cold War days, going to China, going to Russia, changed your perspective. And I'm sure it did for people who came from there to hear, changed your perspective on, oh, these are people that I'm doing business with. It's not us against them. It's not black and white. It's much more balanced. Well, it's funny that.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It doesn't like well. So that's one strategy. I call it the Benjamin Franklin effect because he did something like this as a young man with one of his haters where he got the guy to do him a favor. This person who had been the hater became a lifelong friend of his. Oh my.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so it depends on the nature of the asshole. If somebody is, there's research on Machiavellian personality, classic Machiavellian personality, when you're nasty to me and I look afraid or I get angry, in some way respond, literally your brain lights up. It makes you feel good. You've accomplished your goal. But there's many other types of people who are nasty, who aren't like that. But there's very good evidence that if somebody does a favor for you, it's really hard for them to dislike you because of the two dissonant elements, which is, I don't like this person, but I'm doing a favor for him or her. So the implication is your brain.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe that the most effective human relationships are frank and actually can get conflict that to outsiders can look pretty ugly, but the difference is that when it's done in the context of I'm doing this in our collective or your best interest, even though it doesn't always look that way. That's a completely different thing than I'm out to get you.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But if you create the rituals that are just they're always on the agenda, the check-in, the last rapid. That's a very good tip. That hygiene is really good for these relationships. And not just in naturally very fraught, but every time.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a bunch of formal interactions that people have at work. One example is board meetings, leave a space at the end, particularly after a controversial or a heavy, heavy discussion, to say, look, I've given you my thoughts. I've tried to do it honestly, but I want you to know I'm with you. Like we're in this together. And putting that framing back around it to say like, this is not adversarial, even if the conversation led to different opinions.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why it's kind of my mantra into the book, it's on you and we're not alone. The evidence that other people are so much better than ourselves at assessing a whole bunch of skills is just phenomenal in terms of self-awareness. The researchers who studied this essentially say don't look in the mirror. Find somebody you know and trust and ask them, what do you think was I an asshole? Is that person an asshole?”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because they'll spot a problem way before it actually gets to the level of intolerability. The thing, though, that I love about marrying Beck's techniques, which are really empathy based, right? It's like, what is the worldview, the future expectations and self-image of somebody who behaves this way? Sensitive people are actually really good at that. And so they might actually be more capable than your average bear at coping and dealing with those situations via empathy and via basically saying, look,”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's an interesting overlap, though, between the people who you mentioned in the early parts of the book about people who might just be too sensitive. They might actually have a boss or a colleague that's.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no. The evidence about self-awareness is we just suck. And the worst person to ask if they're an asshole. So when people ask me, so Bob, how big of an asshole are you? And I said 10% of the time, but not too many trusted.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, no, no. The way that I would put it in part is that if you look at research on self-awareness, you can measure EQ. And people who have EQ probably somewhat more self-aware of how their emotions are received and the sensitivity of others. But essentially, we're all”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That would make me pause if I did start going after them, they would kind of point at the t-shirt that I might be wearing, that accomplish the tension release, the communication, and the bonding of the senior management teams. You're pretty healthy, actually.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, there's an example in the book, and the guy who's the CEO of a major local company did an IPO in the 80s around here, okay? And it was pretty tough ex-military guy, and he liked vegetable humor. So he was always insulting his team. You're even dumber than a head of lettuce. The average zucchini could figure that out. And so one day he goes into the boardroom and he's got the whole, the whole management team in her, including him, is lined up, heads of lettuce, glasses and sunglasses in their same place. Amazing. And they got t-shirts and everything. And he said, this is delivering the message. He said, you know, I was a pretty tough boss, but you just said pause. He said, before I'd start screaming at him.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think of it as not just in terms of slinging insults, but I also think it's a really effective mirror when you, you know, to like throw up in front of somebody, even if you're not being. Mean in your humor, even if you're being funny or self deprecating, but it does cause a pause, you know, it sort of reflects someone's behavior back to the”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a lot of them just take it. And so to me, even if you are fighting back, I think doing effective mind tricks or the cognitive behavioral therapy tricks are still good for you to do, to sort of minimize the amount you suffer from just the objective stimuli and abuse you're taking. So we already mentioned time travel, temporal distancing, a lot of evidence that that helps, good experimental evidence. laughing at it actually with your friends.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lays out that I think is incredibly valuable if you're going to stay, you need shock absorbers and shields. And if you're going to fight back, there's a set of things you can do. And fighting back doesn't mean sinking to the lowest common denominator behavior. It means like arming yourself with the tools and tricks to get through the day.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fleying is the number one. Well, I think fleeing. In the sense that, like, you just have to say what you'll tolerate and what you won't, and work situations where you can't, you just don't want to be part of it. You got to go and find. So it's more like opting out.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Find some way to change them or defeat them because it can even be converting them and making them your friend. There's three basic kinds of strategies. There's you get out. The other one is you reduce the damage you suffer, which is either by kind of getting away from the toxins or not having them bother you so much. And then the last one is changing your situation in some way, fighting back, converting the asshole.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or asynchronous communication, let's talk about some of those coping strategies because I feel like there are two buckets, right? One of them is sort of defensive and protective and the other is more proactive and more challenging and more, what would you call it?”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, to me, this eye of the beholder part is really part of it. And that's part of the assessment, if you will, that you've got to make. But on the other hand, if you're working with a porcupine with a heart of gold and you've only got two weeks with him, and this is where time horizon, I really talk about time horizon is really important. You just might not have time to get there.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A curmudgeon being prickly. I really emphasize this perspective that the definition of an asshole is somebody who makes you feel like dirt. But then once you start untangling it, it might be because of something they're doing. It might be because of your reaction, or it might be doing something you're doing. This joke, I first heard of Google years ago. They were talking about engineers who had a bad user interface and a good operating system or porcupines with a heart of gold would be another way another way to put it. And I think that there are certain people who just, they just have a bad UI. And once you get to know them are actually great. And then, by the way, there's the bullshitters who are the opposite, which is they have all friends who are less than a month old.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let me start out at least my perspective. But there are some things that are objective assholes. So if I stood up, swore at you, and said you were the most disgusting person I ever met and you didn't earn it. I think that we know I'd be pretty clearly that I was say what an asshole and me would all agree with you.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I was flying my plane It's a fantasy. It's not actually the future. It's a fantasy. It's escapism. Yeah. That's interesting. Well, I want to talk a little bit still about assessment, if we can. Are there traits that seem like assholiness but that actually aren't? You know, that can have, that are not necessarily that toxic, but that kind of like in the way you actually run your business and the way you interact, but like that feeling.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Classic temporal distancing, and he'd say, I would just look at them while they were screaming at me and just imagine it was two years later and I was flying my plane and it was all worth it. That's a pretty good coach.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one of my favorite examples is funny: a guy who wrote me from the U.S. Air Force Academy. And he used a standard trick, a standard coping trick is you imagine it's the future and it wasn't that bad and it was worth getting through it. You have this time.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You are not the first person to walk out of a clerkship halfway through. Escape. There are thousands of other options. If I had to add any chapters to your book, it would be this one. It would be about cultivating those options while you go so that you are never stuck. You never want to be stuck realizing, okay, I work for the wrong person. She or he treats me like garbage. I don't have other options. I have to start cold start cultivating new ones. Cultivating options all along the way every day and everything you do is like, that's our job. And I take that advice from Reed Hoffman's book where he talks about these career.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That they would choose Well, it is not to sound to BS-Y and Kumbaya about capitalism, but it is actually a beautiful feature of our system where if you start with the premise that you have other options, and that's where I'd go back to that law clerk and I would say, you've been lied to. Right.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remember who that was. I think it's really true that if done the right way, parting ways with somebody and one of our general partners, Lars, has said this, like, can actually be an enormous gift to them to get their life onto a different track that's better for them that they would choose that can be good.”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, you bring up that idea of what you do versus how you do it for anybody who feels like their work is putting them in a position to be an asshole involuntarily, right? And a lot of times managers are put in that space where they have to make a really hard choice. They have to disappoint somebody. It could be easily interpreted as being an asshole. That's a management choice. That's a design choice that every manager gets to make. How do I wrap and contain this decision knowing that it is really painful for that person to hear it?”
2017-09-13 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Asshole Survival Guide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source