Unmasking Jerks at Work: A Conversation with Tessa West

Welcome to the Australian Institute of Insider Threat and thank you for joining me for this special interview. Today I'm joined by Tessa west, professor of psychology at New York University and also of best selling book, Jerks at Work. In this conversation, we'll explore some of the key themes from her book, including some of the seven distinct types of toxic behavior she identifies like kiss up and kick down and micromanager, and many more. If you've ever struggled with difficult colleagues questions, why toxic behavior goes unchecked, or wondered how workplace culture can truly change, this interview is for you. Whether you're a team leader or simply curious about what really drives dysfunctional at work, this conversation offers sharp insights and practical takeaways you won't want to miss. So to kick things off, Tessa, welcome again.

And thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.

Yes. And could you start by telling us a little bit about who you are? That would be great.

Sure. Yeah. So I'm a social psychology professor at New York University, and before I got into studying the workplace, I spent 20 years studying difficult conversations and all the ways in which we are indirect in our communications, especially. Especially in situations where we really should actually be opening up, telling people what we really feel, asking people what they're thinking and feeling when we have no idea. And we really just kind of beat around the bush and have very circumscribed kind of ways of communicating. So I spent 20 years doing that in the lab, also going out into the field, studying negotiations in the real world before I then transfer that knowledge over to understanding the workplace and understanding how relationships at work can often go wrong for lots of complicated reasons. And that's why I wrote Jerks at Work.

Oh, okay. So there was the. The premise of the start of the first question, Jerks at Work. It's quite bold and unfiltered. I mean, is that an American thing or, you know, let me ask. The question is why, why, why was this title. I mean, you mentioned just briefly, but I just wanted to go into a bit more details.

Yeah, I did not sugarcoat this one at all. My communication style is very direct. I use humor to talk about difficult things. And I think everybody knows what a jerk at work is. We all can recognize that it's something that you see it and you know it. And I didn't want to euphemize it and say things like don't. Difficult relationships at work or how to get around hardships. Jerks at work. We all know what that is. You know, there were lots of titles that were floated around, that were softer, nicer, and I'm like, no, I don't want that. I want the real version that people really feel, but sometimes feel like they can't actually say out loud, that's the one I want. That's the version of this book I want.

Yeah, look, I think, I think the sort of conversation you see a lot is toxic behavior or disengaged employees or something like that. I think the title of this book just gets to the heart of the matter. Let me ask you this question. What made you think, okay, I've got to write a book? Did you see something missing in the market to say, okay, there's nothing that talks about these sort of jerks at work and so forth? I'm curious.

I didn't think about the market at all, honestly. I had never actually thought about writing a trade book, so. So as a professor, I had spent most of my career just trying to solve, you know, basically jerk at work issues, but within a lab setting. And then I took on, after I got tenure, my first real leadership role. And I realized that I was super ill equipped. No one had trained me for this. I was making mistakes. People were mad at me. People cried because I made decisions.

They hated me. Okay, yeah.

I mean, we were going through an office move. So if anyone's ever gone through an office move in academia, you stay in one place for 30 years and if someone moves your office, that's enough to get you to retire. And so people feel very emotional about their space and we are doing a physical move. And I kind of mishandled some of those emotions. And honestly, the impetus for this was sitting on a subway in New York City thinking, I'm going to write a book about this. All the types of people that I have been, that I have encountered through my career in academia, but also I worked in sales. I sold men's shoes for a long time. I've seen this in my life. I have worn many hats and I thought it would be fun to do, especially after you, you get tenure, you can do more fun things? And I didn't know the market at all. And I actually talked to an agent and I. I'm kind of glad I didn't, because going in a little bit fresher and without that knowledge, I think actually kind of helped me come up with the premise for this book.

Right, fantastic. So what led you to specifically identify these seven toxic workplace behaviors? And let's mention them. You've got Kiss Up, Kick down the Credit stealer, the Bulldozer, the Free rider, the micromanager, and the guest light as the most, let's say, critical to address in this book rather than maybe the broader issues like bullying and harassment that you see quite a bit.

Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think why write this as a typology of types of people instead of issues that people encounter by trade? I'm a relationships researcher and so when I think about difficulties people face, I tend to think about them almost instantly in terms of a relationship they're having with someone. So if you tell me that you're being harassed or bullied, I'll say, tell me about the person that's doing that. Have they done that to other people? And so I kind of instantly go from the one on one relationship to thinking about how that is operating in networks, to thinking about how things like power and status are influencing it. And I think what this book does is it talks about types of people, but it talks about them in a very relational way, where you're thinking about your relationship with them, but also their relationship with other people. And that's how we operate at work. We don't go to work and think about bullying is a construct. I bullied people, like, you know, is a fuzzy thing. We think about John down the hall, he's going to do that thing again and then Tom's going to defend him and then she's going to return. I'm like, she didn't hear it. You know, those are relational issues. That's how those things actually work. And so that's how we need to actually address them, I think, when we're talking about him.

So, so, so that takes me to the question, were there other sort of toxic behaviors that you were considering adding to the book but you sort of left them? Because the question is why just seven? I mean, when you look at human behavior, it's so dyn, so large. Why just seven toxic behaviors?

Yeah. How do you get to this kind of parsimonious version? I think what I did, I had to kind of come up with archetypes that didn't. Had some overlap, but not too much in terms of kind of the underlying causes and what the structures of the organizations look like. They create those things. At the time I wrote this, there was a lot of talk around microaggressions. Why not write about that? That to me is a subjective behavior, not so much a category of relational things that organizations can do. And not everybody even agrees on what a microaggression is. I also steered clear of every ism there's no sexism, there's no racism. The isms are not in this book. And I think that's because you might be experiencing one of those. And they get manifested as these types that I talk about. It's not as if racism and sexism doesn't ex, but it often kind of shows up in the form of these types of things. And, but yes, I think I tried to, to stick with things that are really common no matter what industry you're in, what level of your career you feel. And that didn't have too much overlap in terms of, you know, the structural dynamics that produce them, that they're a little bit unique in that way.

Interesting. Are toxic, you know, workplace behaviors like those outline in your book a sort of a symptom or sort of a byproduct of, let's say, poor leadership in the organization culture.

Yeah, I think it's just a cycle of doom with both. I think you can, you can enter this any direction you want. Right. So you can think about where does this start at the interview stage. Right. You can ask interview questions to detect these things. You can, you can go through sourcing of candidates who are kiss up, kick downers and you can kind of see that on their, their resume. And so there's selection bias at that stage, there's selection bias at the promotion stage. So there's, there's that kind of element of when you build an organization, who are you selecting to put in positions? And then there's the, there's a kind of higher level structure of an organization. What does it take to get to the top? And is it a zero sum game to get to the top? And if it's zero sum and a lot of organizations are like that, every law firm is like that. Not everyone's going to make partner. You will have this competitive behavior. It's very much so the organization, you know. And I think kind of one thing that's really important is we all talk about like teamwork and collaboration, but at the end of the day, your resume has your individual contributions, your return on investment, and it's hard to get around that. And so I think they are the cause, they are the symptom. And I think we have to be really honest with ourselves. If we're in an organization that is like that, but we pretend we're not. We were like, we value all of this, you know, lovely getting together stuff, but really only one of you is going to make it to the top. And a lot of organizations do that.

Yeah. So I, I want to dive into two specific jokes at work. The first one is kiss up, kick down. I specifically chose that because I see that quite a lot in many organizations. Tessa, I'll get you to briefly outline what it is and then I'll ask you a question about that.

Yes. So the kiss up, kick down is my favorite jerk at work. I think they're the most interesting. These people really can read a room, and so they can tell who they need to kiss up to, who they need to be nice to, and who they can kind of get away with being a little bit dismissive to even take advantage of in the organization. And that's really based on people's power and status. Yeah, often what these individuals will do is perform quite well and. And the boss tends to like them. And so if you're on the receiving end of this behavior, they're very clever about how they do it. They don't do it in front of certain people. When they talk about you behind your back, they do it in a way that looks mature. You know, they don't trash talk you in a way that makes them look like they're just competitive without kind of cause. And so when you, when you deal with these people, you're not just dealing with someone who's rude and mean. You're dealing with someone who's a good performer, who tends to be well liked by the people in power. And it makes them very good at climbing up and, you know, gaining status, but also knowing who among the people who have status, what their relationships are with each other, which bosses like each other, which bosses hate each other. They know all those kind of sticky dynamics within, you know, that hierarchy at work, within that social network at work.

Yeah, they. They do. What's interesting, I think you mentioned the book is they also understand who they can kiss up and who they can kick down. So not, not just in terms of management, but it could be a competitor. So they're going to also be very careful of knowing what relationship this person has with their manager. My question is, can it often being construed as a performance or. So the kiss up, kick down can be construed as high performance rather than a sort of a typical jerk or a toxic behavior.

I mean, I would say that often is high performance. I would say that in a lot of organizations, this is what it takes to become a high performer. And, you know, it's a necessary condition and they select on it. And they don't call it this, but, you know, it's a Machiavellian way of thinking. And I think there's a lot of organizations, there's a lot of industries that say, look, you got to figure out, you know, who you can step on to get ahead here. That's just the way it is.

Yeah.

And you get you, that's how you climb up. I think it is a way to, to perform well. And I think that is a question everyone needs to ask themselves when they enter into a new industry. Is this what it takes to get ahead?

Yeah. Interesting, because in the book you also mention that such a well known term, the winner takes all in some ways. And the proportion of what maybe the CEO wage remuneration compared to someone who's just starting is quite a big difference. It's exponentially. It's not a relatively. The question is, is, is it our organization rewarding such behavior without really understanding of what's going on?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, a lot of our compensation structures are really top heavy. I, at least in the US this is a real problem. And I think when you have people at the top who are making 600 more than the next level down, that behavior in the middle is going to get ultra, ultra competitive. Right. Like as that percentage difference becomes more exacerbated, what it takes to get up, it's just like watching one of those, you know, reality competition shows where when there's five people left and there's only one, that's when things get real nasty. I mean, those shows show you exactly what happens in organizations. So I don't even know if they're inadvertently doing it. I almost think in those places they know exactly what they're doing. They don't have a problem with that. I think that, you know, the kicking down only backfires when the wrong people get kicked down and it becomes expensive to replace the revolving door of talent or they're accidentally kicking down the wrong types of people and we're kind of accidentally getting rid of top talent who also has traits like being quiet, being an individual contributor, being victims of these types of individuals. And those are the wrong victims to kick down. And organizations lose money because those are the victims. So that's when they tend to actually pay attention. Like, oh man, this bully is kicking down all these people who are really easy to take advantage of. Those are our best engineers. You know, they're quiet and they're easy to bully and they don't stand up for themselves. But they're also our best engineers. That's when they tend to freak out.

Yeah, yeah. So, so it's interesting you say that. So who suffers the most here? Is it their colleagues that they actually undermine or the leaders who are deceived by the charm or the organization as a whole?

I think it depends on what outcome you're talking about. So the organization, a whole, if you want to ask me, know how much, what their stock is worth at the end of the year, you know, that's kind of the level at which this would show up. A manager, if you want to look at whether they got promoted. So if their team sucks because this is fun, they're not going to get promoted. And then they kicked the person being kicked down because they're just hopping from job to job, they can't stick in a job, they, they can't build their career out. So everyone loses, but on a different dimension.

Correct? A slight change of question. So in the US and I know this has been talked in somewhat lengths in Australia about merit based recruitment. What's happening in the U.S. how is that changing the kiss up, kick down scenario by and large.

So are you defining merit based in terms of like hard outcomes that they've contributed to the company or, or are you talking about this in terms of like education, like boxes that they've checked off?

Look at that. That's a good conversation. Well, I think from my perspective would be someone that is being promoted based on the. Well, could it be both? Could it be based on their education and output?

Yeah. So maybe they got selected because of their education and then their output may or may not actually reflect their individual contributions or not. I think I would say smart organizations are treating those things as good indicators but not sufficient indicators of what someone is like at work. I think we can't completely get rid of merit. You need to have certain skills, you need to be able to contribute in a certain way.

Sure.

I'm not a big fan of this idea of like getting rid of all those things that actually, you know, are important for the financial bottom line. Once among those people, that's when you need to start doing some digging to figure out what they're like to work with, what kind of collaborators they are, you know, do they have talent. It's a necessary but not sufficient condition. I think that's how we should probably start thinking about those and not just say they checked off all the box. Great. Move them on to onboarding, do some digging first hr, look into those things a little bit more.

Yeah, no, no, it's just, it's just been so much on the news in maybe, maybe we're getting news in Australia which is slightly skewed or it's coming from the US and then. And a lot of it has been over the last four years, very much skewed towards being more gender or based or, you know. Anyway, I didn't want to go into any politics at all, but it looks like that is changing quite, quite a bit. I want to dive into micromanage because you deem it as, as another jerk of work, but it has your relationship. It's. It's got a good and the bad. So I want you to, to give us a sort of your, your view, obviously, from, from your book. I'd love to have understand and the viewers would love to understand. What do you mean by micromanagers?

Yeah, I like to think about this one from the perspective of the micromanager and the victim. I think it's kind of an interesting juxtaposition. So the victim feels like no matter how hard they work, they're never going to get anything done and there are no boundaries. I think we all kind of know what a micromanaging boss feels like. We rush to the finish line and then they move that finish line. That kind of. That feeling that there's moving goalposts all the time, I think that's probably the best psychological way of experiencing it, that there's a lot of uncertainty because those goalposts are moving from the perspective of the micromanager. They're often very anxious and uncertain, and that's coming down from the top. A lot of them were put into these positions of management because they were good at the job you now hold. And so that's why they're micromanaging it. Not because they have any leadership experience and they don't actually know how to hire and oversee a team. What they know how to do is the thing that you are now doing and they're anxious about it. And the way that they're mitigating their anxiety is by telling you how to do it better, not learning new skills and learning how to kind of scale a team and so forth. And so I kind of feel bad for these people because a lot of them are just panicking and they want their boss to be happy and they don't know how to get there. But the people on the receiving end are just also being tortured by all of this over and over and over again. And so, you know, you feel bad for both, but often for kind of different reasons.

Yeah. So you mentioned in the book that this type of jerk behavior, toxic behavior, is most prevalent. And from the. The seven Jerks, or if. Why is that? I mean you did step into it. Is it because the manager is afraid about the results that I put? What's causing them to say, okay, I'm going to just send you 10 emails in the next hour, and I'm just going to buzz around you like a bee and real bee annoying and never get you and never allow you to finish your work. What's the driving behavior behind that micromanager?

That's a good question. I think, you know, there's that insecurity, but there's also a lot of norms in the workplace that feed that. And so if you walk into a management position and everybody else at your level is also doing that stuff, they're emailing people 10 times a day, they're working on the weekend, they're buzzing, they're like, you know, in that Google Doc, hovering all the time, then you should do that too. And I think that's a huge piece of this. Some, some of these behaviors are actually not coming from people wanting to do this. They're coming from norms in the organization. And everyone around you is doing. People hear, oh, you know that manager across the hall, he bugs his team on the weekends. Oh, man, I don't bug my team on the weekends. Is that that bad? Do I look lazy if I don't? You know, all that stuff starts to come up. And so the micromanagement comes more from wanting to act a certain way and create a certain impression than actual desire. So I think that, that, that is one piece of it. And I also think that managers often don't know what will happen to them if their team screws up. They are never told by their manager, if your team makes a mistake, this is what will happen to you. It's not going to be the end of the world, or it will be the end of the world. It's just like a big uncertainty bubble. And so they're so afraid my team makes a big mistake, I'm going to be on the chopping block. Or maybe nobody will notice. They have no idea, because that conversation rarely comes up when you're promoted. You're promoted and your boss doesn't go, okay, if your team totally messes this up and it's like a disaster, here's what's going to happen. What if it's this kind of disaster or that kind of disaster or a minor disaster? You know, we don't really usually talk that way. We talk in terms of team success. We know the big things that can be bad, but the little things, the gray area things we don't usually Talk about those things.

Yeah, actually, you raised a very important point. And so let me ask you this question. Most people are promoted because of a. Maybe the good job they have done, but they may be very specific to their type of skill. They don't have skill in terms of management. So what's your view when people get promoted based on their, let's say how good they are, but not based on the skills of how good they were, you know, manage people.

Yeah, I think it's a disaster. I mean, I've had a lot of managers, bosses. It's a disaster if those skills don't overlap or if you've never sampled those skills. And I'll get concrete. So in academia, if you're a really good researcher, so you're creative, you're good at statistics, and you can run studies and write grants, you do really well. If you're really conscientious, you often get promoted to run a department because of those things. The most important thing about running a department is being able to say no to people and being a direct communicator and being okay when people not liking you and pissing people off, that's almost the opposite skill of the first thing. And so what you get are people into those managerial positions and they're used to being people pleasers and they're used to being respected and liked. And now all of a sudden they have to say no to a big powerful person or directly communicate to someone who's, you know, a little bit intimidating. And those skills have never been sampled for that person before. And, you know, they, they freak out about it. And so I think you have to sample those things. You need to know explicitly what those skills are and why they're different from the others and warn people this might not feel good. And this is what it's going to look like. And I'm not going to pretend you're going to love it. People hate this for these reasons and they love it for these reasons. And I think just being explicitly honest and kind of listing those out and having those conversations and then saying, what do we need to do to prepare you for this? Are you prepared? We need to have those conversations more.

Yeah, and it's very true. You know, part of my interest with this book is also very much based on understanding human behavior and what things could go wrong. What we have talked a little bit about is the amount of stress or maybe, you know, reducing morale within the organization. Always. Well, what I like what you said is the 10ft surrounding that, that person. I, I found it Very interesting, very quaint that, that sentence that, you know, people tend to care about what's happening 10ft, but not above or below. So when you have micromanaging that's taking place, it also festers, a sort of a stressful environment. What we haven't talked about is the, if you want to call it the deficit that we then see not just in terms of maybe loss of productivity, which is the typical measurement of employee engagement, but also the lack of trust or the. That the trust that now becomes disengaged and becomes toxic. And so I just want a side word from you. Having spent looking at organization cultures, what happens when you have micromanagers and so forth and it sort of festers beyond just that one person?

Yeah, I think. Or just lore of what it's like to work with that person. I think, you know, in psychology we talk a lot about learned helplessness, this idea that no matter what you do, you're going to get punished for it or maybe not. I, I really think that it's akin to a learned helplessness experience, you know, and when you feel learned helplessness, you give up in a lot of different ways. And I think that kind of experience is contagious. And it leads to, you know, at least your lack of effort, but it also just kind of leads to like an ennui at work. It leads to this like, you know, who cares if we land this or that client and doesn't really matter. I think it just, it spreads a cynicism within the workplace because you're exhausted. You tend to not get rewarded for all these stupid little things that your boss is constantly asking you to do. And then the people around you see you're doing that and see you're not getting rewarded, and they also can kind of experience that stuff by proxy. And so I, everyone starts to feel learned helplessness, and that's a really bad place to be in. And these. I, I study all kinds of forms of contagion. Emotion contagion, yes. Everything is contagious. Like all forms of emotion and behavior and stuff like that can spread. And this is just another one of them. Even if you're not being micromanaged, if you see your friend being micromanaged, you're also. It also can affect your emotional state, your stress levels and things like that.

You mentioned that managers often think that one of the key reasons that people leave is because they didn't get maybe the right wage. They were hoping, but a lot of people leave because they're not happy internally, not because of remuneration. But because the way they're being treated, supported and so forth. I just wanted to get your sort of comment on that.

Yeah, I think we lie when we leave. Those HR exit interviews often ask you about things that you just don't. I mean I wrote an op ed on this like we're dishonest all the time. And for, for some, sometimes it's just uncomfortable to say what you thought about your boss. Sometimes there's big social costs, you have to go on the market. You don't want to get a reputation for trash talking this person. And we, we. It's like breaking up with, you know, your romantic partner and saying it's not me, it's not you, it's me. We do that at work all the time. It's more comfortable to say I just want a better comp package than yeah, you'll be crazy with your thousand emails. And so it perpetuates a problem for the next person, you know. And over and over again.

I was going to ask you, you mentioned in the book that, you know, micromanagers tend to maybe, maybe not the right word. They tend to revolve, they can't, you know, if they spend considerable time trying to micromanaging that person, then they also become somewhat negligent doing the rest of activities. I want you to sort of explore a little bit more about it because the negligent is one of the other joke. You mentioned it, but you're very much the, the negligent boss. So I'd love to hear your perspective because most, most people probably don't see that. They probably expect that their boss will probably micromanage everyone, but that's probably unrealistic.

Yeah, I think the first time I sort of realized this that my micromanager actually did not have things together as much as I thought he did and he was actually quite neglectful. I had this aha moment that of course he doesn't have time to micromanage everybody. He must be dropping the balls elsewhere. And I think when you're a neglectful boss, it's usually because they're two sides of the same thing.