240: How To Handle the 7 Types of Jerks at Work

You know, sometimes the most important person that we talk to isn't our boss, but it's that person who's been working with our boss for 15 years and knows how to scratch their itch, knows how to make them listen to us when we complain because they've, you know, been on a leadership board with them for a really long time. So these kinds of relationships that don't fall into these camps of manager or best friend and team member, those are the kinds of relationships that we actually have to really build.

Hello, everyone. This is Kathy Caprino, and welcome to my podcast. Welcome to the podcast Finding Brave. I've created this show for everyone who longs to create something bold and brave in their life, to rise up, speak up, and stand up for who they are and to reach their highest and biggest visions. Each week, I'll be speaking with inspiring guests from all walks of business, leadership, entertainment, the creative arts, and the entrepreneurial world. And they'll be sharing their intimate stories of Finding Brave and offer their best strategies for building your most rewarding, joyful, and meaningful life, business, and career. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Finding Brave. I'm so excited to be with you. It feels like it's been a while. Well, this is coming to you October, early October, and we're in smack of summer, I've got to say, but so nice to connect with you. And I'm so thrilled to have our guest today, Tessa west, who is a rock star right there at nyu, very near me. I'm in Stanford and I love nyu. And we are going to be talking about the topic of your recent book, jerks at Toxic, Co workers and bosses, I think, and how to handle them. And I don't think I've met a human being that hasn't had this problem at school. Some point, if you've worked for any length of time, I think you will resonate with this topic. So we're going to dive right in and understand what to do about them, how to handle them, how not to get fired by them, and when it might be just simply time to exit, which I know you cover in your book.

So let me tell you about Tessa.

Thank you again for taking the time.

Thank you so much for having me.

So thrilled. All right. Tessa west is a professor of psychology at New York University, where she's a leading expert on interpersonal interaction and communication. She's published over 60 articles in the field of psychology's most prestigious journals and has received multiple grants, including from the National Science foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Wow. She's the recipient of the this is a Mouthful, but I Love It Theoretical Innovation Prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and writes regularly about her research in the Wall Street Journal. Tess is also, as I said, the author of the book Jerks at Toxic Co Workers and what to Do About Them. Thank you again for being here.

Thank you.

So, you know, with everything you write about, the first question I want to ask you is how did you, how did you land on this topic? Why did it feel so compelling to write why jerks?

Why now? Right. I think, you know, as someone who's studies interpersonal behavior and I study conflict, you think I would be an expert in knowing how to handle these sticky situations myself. But, you know, even someone like me with training really struggles with these things. And I really decided to write this book when I felt like I couldn't handle my own jerks at work. I felt outgunned, outwitted by difficult people. I felt myself being a jerk sometimes. So, you know, people who used to really like me all of a sudden acted a little bit uncomfortable around me or nervous or were afraid to give me negative feedback, those little red flags that maybe you might be turning into that jerk. And it just occurred to me that we don't learn this stuff. We don't learn how to detect jerks early. We don't learn how to have conflict early. And a lot of these problems just kind of stew. And eventually we maybe get fed up. We turn to all sorts of coping mechanisms that don't work. Sometimes we just give up, throw our hands up, leave, because we learn the technical aspects of our job, but we don't learn conflict resolution. I mean, I was never trained in this. So someone like me who's an expert in studying conflict and managing it negotiations, all these sticky things, someone like me doesn't have a good way of handling these things. How are other people going to know how to handle these things? And I thought it would be great to just write a guide that's very specific about the behaviors that you can try to deal with these difficult issues.

Wow, I love it. And I couldn't agree more. And you know, we're doing a Forbes article as well coming out soon. And in reading your responses, one thing really, really hit me, which was this. And you're touching on it here. Can you talk before we get into the seven types of jerks that you can recognize? Can you talk about how we should frame the idea of conflict? Yeah, because you, you mentioned most of us think it's a horrific thing. Most of us run from it. Or if you're like me, if there is a conflict, I can obsess about it. Like, what was my role? Did I do it wrong? Talk about that for us, will you?

Yeah. I think there's a strong kind of cultural norm to be afraid of conflict, to think that any instance of conflict is a huge red flag that there's something wrong at work or any kind of relationship, honestly. And to have these really uncomfortable visceral responses, physiologically anxiety, these feelings of our heart pounding and our palms sweating anytime we experience conflict. But if we turn to the science of how to have effective relationships, we know that conflict in and of itself is actually not a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. If you have a little bit of a conflict because it means you're clearly communicating with someone. If you're unhappy at work and you're having a little bit of a conflict with a boss because you're discussing that, at the very least, it means there's open communication. People aren't kind of pushing down whatever it is that's bothering them. So we have to get over this belief that conflict in and of itself is a problem. Conflict is not a problem. But how we have conflict can vary in terms of these very bad strategies to very effective strategies. And I'm a huge fan of learning how to spot and deal with conflict early and often so that you're not waiting six months and then you have a big blowout with someone, or you're not hiding from that boss who's micromanaging you. You want to kind of detect these things, deal with them in small bites. Deal with them around specific behaviors that someone is doing or that you're doing. Don't wait till they're so bad that you're making these grandiose personality statements about someone. You don't trust me. You don't respect me here. No, those are not behaviors. Those are the results of an accumulation of behaviors that have led to this impression of someone. And they're very difficult to deal with once you get to that point.

Wow. You know what this reminds me of? So my book, the latest book, was the most Powerful you. And what I'm Finding, it's a little similar. Women in particular shun the word power. They say to me, I don't want power.

Power.

I say, what do you want? And they say, I want influence, impact. And I said, I hate to break it to you, you can't have that. But it's similar to the word conflict. We've defined it as something really Angry, Negative? Inflammatory? No, let's go back to the definition. Well, define it for us, will you, Tessa? What is conflict, then?

I think conflict, when you do it well, is bringing up an issue with someone that is making you have a difficult time at work, either because of your productivity or because of your relationships with others. Conflict is really more of a state of mind than an actual behavioral pattern. It's this feeling that I'm going to say something to someone and they're going to find it threatening. Therefore, I'm walking into the situation, assuming we're going to have conflict with each other. When we measure conflict behaviorally in the lab, it's usually two people. It's a stage of an interaction. They're disagreeing with each other, they're disagreeing about, you know, what went down and why. But it's usually a couple minutes of that interaction where they're talking about something they disagree with, and eventually they kind of get past it, you know, to the kind of. Let's. Let's, you know, have a shared reality. Let's get on the same page. The conflict is like a one or two minutes of this entire piece, and that's the piece that we glom onto and freak out about. But I really think it's more of a state of mind. You imagine conflict, conflict more than you actually have it. And that kind of perception is what leads us to avoid these situations.

And I think, to your point, my mother, who's 97 and had Covid and overcame it, used to say, anyone who's always happy is an idiot. And I would laugh.

I would laugh.

But I think there's some. That's a mean term, but she didn't mean it meanly. But I think a way to frame it is conflict is where I see something differently from you, or I value something differently from what you value. Let us exchange about that. And that.

That's not threatening, talking about it. Right. Versus we could just put our head in the sand and not talk about it at all and not have conflict. The conflict is still there. It's just going to pop up in other ways. You know, in couples, you yell at someone for not doing the dishes. It's never about the dishes. And the same thing happens at work. And you can try to get rid of that conflict, but it's just going to pop up usually at a time that's really inconvenient for everybody, and it.

Comes in as a non sequitur. You know, it's. You're not taking out the garbage all of a sudden. You never loved me enough, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, wonderful. Now let's. I'd love you to talk about the seven types of jerks. And, you know, I know we're going to touch on. I do. I do want to frame it this way. We were talking earlier. You know, I've studied narcissistic personality disorder. There are certain types of people that I would out and out advise. Don't challenge them. In fact, maybe don't even bring up that you have a conflict if they're in on the extreme spectrum of narcissistic personality disorder. So what everyone I think you tell me should know is when you talk about these types, there's probably a spectrum of. Of that type. One to ten, would you say is that right before you tell us what the seven are?

I definitely think that's the case. And I think for some of the types, narcissism is much more relevant than for some of the other types. But I really like this point of sometimes if they're really narcissistic, you don't want to confront that person. And a key theme of my book is, you know, confrontation with the person who's being difficult is not always the best option. Sometimes you need to confront another person around this issue. And another theme is if they're not motivated to change, which narcissists often aren't, then having a conversation about their behaviors and how to move forward is often just not an effective strategy because that narcissism is like a blanket that lays on top of everything else going on, and you're going to have a really hard time kind of pushing through that.

I'm so glad you said it. You know, sometimes people will not on this show because, you know, they're brilliant and they understand things, but not every strategy works.

Yeah.

You know, there are some people that we can't reason with, and they're so. I'm so happy to hear you say sometimes you're not going to be able to address the conflict with the person. That doesn't mean you don't address it, but I love it. Thank you for saying that. All right, let's hear the seven types and one key hallmark. And everyone, while you're listening, maybe you can have a. A pad and pencil and just, you know, think about your own life and what really resonates with these types. I'd love to hear.

Yeah, so the first one, speaking of narcissism is the kiss up kick downer. So this person, they. Let's start with their strengths. They're really good at their job. They're effective. The boss likes them. They do well in very competitive work environments, especially if the team members are kind of pitted each other pitted against each other. So think law firms where one person is going to be partner or I sold men's shoes at Nordstrom's and that's where I really first encountered my first one of these folks tried to upsell every client and steal clients and things like that. So they're good at these jobs that are in competitive environments. But what they do is they try to demean or diminish people who work at the same level as them or people beneath them. And, and they do this by insulting your expertise in front of others, the boss, or in front of clients or customers or other team members. They sometimes will resort to sabotaging you. You know, my, my shoe, my shoe person would hide shoes in the shoe room that were very popular on the floor. You know, little things like this. But they usually cover their tracks. And they have such a good relationship with the people in power. The complaining about them, you know, going to your boss and saying, this person is so mean to me. They, they're, they're terrible. They torture me. Doesn't usually get you very far. It gets you some eye rolls. You're just jealous of this person. And so they've done their homework to kind of figure out how to frame themselves in a way to make themselves look like team players.

And that is one key problem, isn't it, that, that we see over and over. If a person is a high achiever, the system around that person doesn't want to reject that person and doesn't want to rock the boat or rock that system. So they sometimes are like, they don't want to hear it. Would you agree with that?

I agree with that. And I'd say often it's the case that for these coworkers, bosses benefit from their bad behavior. We don't like to admit to ourselves and we're managers or leaders, that we actually benefit from difficult people at work who are not so kind to those who are lower than them on the status ladder. But you know, in sales, for example, the more your team makes, the more you get a bonus, you know, the larger your bonus. Your, as you climb up that ladder, your income is directly tied to what that team does. And if you have a star player, you know, we're talking a loss of $50,000 if you were to get rid of that kiss up, kick downer. And so there's an incentive to not just look the other way but to actually continue to promote people like this. Wow.

Now, of course, everyone's listening, going, well, what do I do about this? Now you have seven jerks, and we can't types of jerks. And we're probably not going to be able to cover all of them. That's why you have to read Tess's book. But after you discuss the seven, the hallmarks, we'll pick three really common types, and then we can ask you for a few specific. What do I do? Okay.

Yeah.

All right, so kiss up, kick down. Oh, what's the next one?

Next one is the bulldozer. So this person really has two kind of key traits. One is they in the moment, they take over meetings, they talk over people. So if anyone's ever been on one of those zoom calls where one person kind of takes up the whole screen because whoever is talking dominates your visual.

You got the speaker view, and there they are.

You can literally see the size of the screens competing. So they do this kind of in the moment. They tend to have what we call voice at work. So these are people status. They have voice. They have voice. And it's not literal voice, although it can sometimes be literal voice. But voice means that when you speak up, people listen. So people in power respect your opinion. They go to you for advice. It's actually kind of one of the best things you can do dealing with these people behind the scenes is to get voice yourself. But bulldozers have this in spades. And they've been power players before. They tend to be members of the good old boys network. These kinds of people who get away with kind of dominating conversations. The kind of more insidious thing that they do is they completely disrupt group processes when they don't like outcomes. So you can imagine the case that you're with a group of people, you're trying to figure out who to hire. Your bulldozer doesn't like that person. So they'll complain about the team to your boss, to your boss's boss. And what they will say are, things like this. It didn't feel democratic. People didn't have a chance to speak up. When we did the vote at the end, it wasn't clear what we're voting on. They're never going to say, I just didn't like what they went with. Can you change the whole group's decision? But they will raise red flags to leaders to make them think, I think we're going to have to intercept here. We're going to need to give this group more time. That's how they're able to disrupt things, to get away with convincing people to. To side with them.

Are they lying when they say these things?

Yes, I think they often are. I mean, I've been, I've dealt with this before in academia. You know, hiring is a big deal here because we do it like every 30 years. And so we've had to do things like, you know, record our zoom calls, create qualtrics surveys where it's clear exactly what the votes were on, you know, these little fact checking things that we normally don't do on teams where we trust each other because we're not feeling like someone's going to lie about what happened, you know, in an effort to deal with this. So I have seen like a little bit of dishonesty involved, or at least they will take something ambiguous and interpreted the most negative way.

I have one quick question that you can't answer for all of these, but I'm really interested. You know, having been a marriage and family therapist, when I meet these kinds of people, I immediately say, what do I think happened in their childhood?

Yeah, yeah.

Do you, for all of these, do you feel there's. Yep. Typically the bulldozer had this in childhood. Do you see that?

You know, I think it's a really interesting question. And I actually, my background's in close relationships, so that's really what I was studying before I got into this kind of workplace dynamic stuff. I definitely think there's probably some attachment issues. You know, we know that adult attachment styles don't just sort of affect your personal relationships, but they affect your workplace ones as well. And those are pretty tried and true. And get stuck in childhood. I think, you know, bulldozers probably have some insecure attachment going on. I definitely could see that. But I think a lot of these kind of predispositions interact with the context to really bring them out. Right. And that's true for relationships of all kinds. You need a certain context to turn on whatever trauma or whatever childhood experiences you had kind of translate to your adult behavior.

So interesting. Thank you for that. All right, who's next? Number three.

So we're going to now do the credit stealer. So this person is like really soul crushing at work. You have a great idea, your boss or your colleague, your best friend, they steal credit for your work. They often do it behind the scenes in an effort to help get themselves back promoted. So credit stealing is something that's actually really difficult to deal with because credit is something that's hard to allocate. Ideas are in the air and teamwork, we don't really know sort of who's responsible for what. But credit stealers, kind of in the truest form, intentionally take credit for other people's work in an effort to get themselves promoted. So we'll see middle managers taking credit for their direct reports, work or ideas in an effort to kind of go up one step. That's often actually where we see it, and it's behind the scenes. So you don't really know what's going on until you see yourself just not getting promoted year after year, realizing it's because all your hard work is being, you know, really attributed to another person.

I've even seen it where senior, a senior person produced, you know, in a pharmaceutical company, produced, you know, research that was supporting an innovation and her boss put her name on it.

Yeah.

Literally, she was invisible. So it's not always kind of invisible, you know, here she was sitting in the meeting and the woman's name was on it.

Yeah. And I mean, with, with status and power roles, I could see that definitely happening. This funny thing also happens in kind of, you know, domains like pharmaceuticals or in anything that involves an invention or IP where you can just get away with it. If you have a lot of power and status, you know, all you have to do is say it was mine and no one will question you. And if you're lower status and accuse your boss or someone of taking it, they're just going to, you know, either put you somewhere else or put you in the basement, so to speak, for complaining.

But there are ways around that. I just want to share where all along, as you're doing that research, someone knows, someone has seen it, the memo's got your name on it. You know, that's right. I work in the world of gender, and women tend to be notoriously bad at wanting to claim credit because we're raised not to do that, but we.

Get punished for doing it publicly. Right. I mean, it's just. Is it worth it? It's what a lot of women ask themselves.

But we can do it all along the way in subtle, non screaming ways, you know. Oh, credit stealer. All right, number four.

The number four is the free rider. So this is the person who we hate to admit, but they're fun and they're charismatic and they get all those good dinner reservations and we like having them around, but they just take all of their work and kind of split it up equally among team members. So, you know, they're very talented in that no one person will feel the pain of A free rider. They target teams that are conscientious, that like each other, that are just willing to kind of step in and pick up their slack and listen to their excuses. And I think, you know, sort of one thing that's really tough for a lot of us to admit is if we have a free rider on our team, we're probably 50% of the problem. We're allowing that free writing to occur because the team does get along really well. So you don't tend to find free riders and teams that don't trust each other or hate each other or being micromanaged. That's not where free writing occurs. It occurs on super conscientious and cohesive teams that otherwise should be functioning well. And, you know, these positive traits make them very vulnerable. And they have bosses and managers who try not to micromanage, who try not to oversee them too much because they're doing just fine on their own. That's when those free riders slip in with all their charisma and their good looks, and they just make up excuse after excuse for why they're not carrying their. Their load in a project.

And do you see the manager is sometimes the free rider. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I see that.

Yeah. You go do this, they split it up perfectly.

They might swoop in. Well, you have another one that talks about that. Yeah, yeah. The manager can be that, what is he doing? Or what is she doing? What? You know, what are you doing here? Oh, my Lord. All right, what's next?

Number five. So now we're going to do the micromanager. You know, nice segue there. So the micromanager is the most common type of manager at work. Not jerk at work, but actual manager. I think something like 80% of people have dealt with a micromanager. And I tend to think of them as having two key traits. Everything is equally important and everything is equally urgent. So they don't actually have a good sense of timeline when you should do certain projects. Everything is, it should have been done yesterday. And they don't have a sense of being able to order things in terms of importance. It could be a really small thing, like changing the font on a document, or it could be a really huge thing, like your sales pitches off by $100,000. You need to trim, you know, and so you have a really hard time kind of knowing what those priorities should be, because they are constantly in the state of panic. The kind of irony is, if you work for one of them, you work the hardest and you get the least done, and they're sort of shockingly disorganized when you. Because they're micromanaging all the time, they're not good at allocating, so they're always really frazzled. You get a lot of panic emails at 2 o' clock in the morning from these people.

Would you agree? If you don't agree, please say, no, I don't agree. I have always found that what's underneath a micromanager is fear that they're going to blow it.

Absolutely.

I think, you know, we are going to make an enormous mistake.

That's right. I think the number one kind of contextual predictor is fear. So sometimes that comes from within because they receive zero training on how to manage. They're promoted because they're good at their old job, not because they know how to actually oversee people. So there is a legitimate fear there that they don't really know what they're doing. And then if you work in a company where there's a strong culture of fear, forget it. Every manager is going to be a micromanager. You know, it's just again, perfect storm.

That's so right. This is so true. Aren't we just recognizing all of these types every day? Number six.

Number six is the neglectful boss. So they are also ironically, micromanagers. I think sometimes when we hear the word neglectful boss, we think of a boss that we never see. Those bosses don't last very long because they're not actually meeting their goals. Their boss is saying, where are you? What are you doing? What they tend to do is go through this kind of pattern. I'd be super curious what you think about this from your perspective. They ignore you for long periods of time either because they're being micromanaged by their boss or they're micromanaging someone else. Then they kind of panic. So they have this state of heightened uncertainty and anxiety to deal with their own emotional response. They show up, they micromanage you, they often don't know what's going on. So they ask for things that don't make any sense on a timeline that doesn't make any sense. They do this. It actually relieves some of those negative feelings and then they kind of disappear again. And you never know if they're going to actually check on that work that they asked you to do or not. Because it's really all about the kind of their own self regulation strategy for their own anxiety. And as soon as they've regulated it by micromanaging you, then they can kind of go back to this pattern again. So I do think that there's kind of this really interesting clinical implication for this pattern of neglect, anxiety, emotion regulation, and then disappearing again.

That is a brilliant assessment of that pattern and I completely see it and agree. And I do have a question for you. Those that I've had who were neglectful in this way or clients who have had that kind of bus, they don't thrive in the organization, do they? I mean, you can't. And the other thing that occurs to me is, didn't Brene Brown say blame is off in the way we discharge anxiety? Yeah, we're flipping out, so who can we yell at? And then they feel better and then they're gone again. But that is pretty noticeable from a higher level. Would you agree? They don't ride that out under the radar so well, do they?

I would say most of the time they don't ride it out well. But if they have a micromanager and all their micromanager cares about is the work they're doing for them and they don't actually care about the person two levels down from them. So most managers actually only care one level down. These neglectful bosses, they're often being micromanaged. They're often kind of spread between trying to please leaders and trying to please anyone beneath them. It's kind of like this curse of the middle manager. Those upper level managers, if they're bad and they're engaging in the same stuff, that middle manager is going to also do it. It's a real contagion of these effects. So I'd say most of the time they can't really ride this out unless they have a boss who's kind of doing the same thing. And all that boss cares about is whether that person meets the benchmarks they set for them. They don't really care how they get there and they're never checking on anyone, you know, two levels beneath them.

These are incredible. Tessa, they're so helpful. I mean, I'm seeing these exact. I was going to say stereotypes. They're not. They're giving people we all know. All right, what's the final. I bet it's a doozy.

It's a real doozy. It's the gaslighter narcissistic term. So damaging. Yes. Aren't they the worst? I mean, gaslighters really cause the most long term damage. I think out of all these types, the psychological warfare they engage in is just next level. I tend to think of these people as really having kind of two key behavioral patterns. So the first is that they're dishonest. A lot of people actually lie at work. That's actually fairly common. But their lives are systematic and they start out small and they are serving a goal of creating alternative reality. And I've actually seen that most gaslighters, so these are usually bosses, they're doing it for one of two reasons. One, they're actually kind of isolated at work. No one cares about them. They've maybe lost their mojo. They're not creative anymore and they have a hard time keeping a team. And so they gaslight to make people kind of be stuck with them. They tell the employees, the only reason why you still work here is because I say good things about you. If it wasn't for me, you'd be fired. So no one can really leave them. It's really kind of hard to end these relationships because you're really worried that if you speak out, something bad will happen to you. The other reason why they lie is because they're trying to cover something up or they're engaging in some kind of unethical workplace behavior. Stealing and cheating and lying or whatever it is. Embezzlement, I've seen that happen. Academic fraud, I've seen that happen. So these kinds of things, the way they do it is by cutting you off socially. So there's the dishonesty, there's the lying systematically piece. Then there's the social isolation. There's that you shouldn't talk to the same people you used to or go to those happy hours. You shouldn't speak up in a meeting because nobody likes your accent. They can't understand you. These are all things I've actually heard gaslighters say. So you couple these two things together and you can imagine what kind of psychological damage it does to someone on the receiving end. It's usually people who aren't well connected at work who don't have the trappings of a leader. They are minorities in some way. They're first generation. They're the only woman. They're the only racial ethnic minority. So they don't have this kind of built in social network. And they're not part of this kind of invisible curriculum of how to get ahead. They don't have those connections and so they make really great targets for guests.

Oh, those are targets for gaslighters.

Those are the targets.

Good, good. I was. I was confused and I do want to explain something. I think the term, you correct me, Gaslighting, comes from a movie called Gaslight or something.

Yeah, Gaslight. It's actually a play from the 1930s. That they made into a movie about a man who's, like, convincing his wife that the house is haunted. And so she sees these gaslights going off all of the time, Right.

And he's turning off the lights on and off, and she's saying, something's happening, and he's driving, trying to make her seem. Was he trying to get rid of her? You know, making her think she was insane?

Yeah.

And trying to put her away. So that term means lying. Here's. Here's an example in a personal life of a person I know the husband was having an affair, and the wife knew it, and he's like, how paranoid and sick are you to think. And then she followed him, and he was having an affair. Yeah. What crazy. Oh, damaging. So damaging.

Yes.

So you have nailed it. You have nailed it. And so. You know what. What I'd love to know, and I think you mentioned it. The most common. The two most common. But when we're. I think what I'd love to hear is when we're really struggling. I mean, I feel some of these, like, who was the fun one who is charismatic, the free rider. Right. Okay. Everyone knows that person. Like, what the hell is he doing? He's not doing anything.

We all know that person.

But as you say, the team is full of trust and they're watching each other's back. It seems to me that's the least pernicious. That isn't going to leave scars for life. Whereas narcissism does. Gaslighting does, you know, the sabotaging. The one who kicks you.

Yep.

I've had that. Yeah. Some woman said to me, you know that thing you said that was the nail in your coffin? I'm like, I didn't know I was in a coffin. And I think you built the coffin. You know, I knew she was backstabbing me. I'm not sure that's the kiss up, kick down. But, you know, when it happens to you when you're young, particularly, you don't know what hit you.

Yeah.

You're not even sure that you're reading it right. Any of these. So for the ones that are most pernicious, Tessa, what do we do? How do we handle it?

I think this is a really good point, that when you're first starting out, when you're young, a lot of times you question whether you've done something to deserve this or whether you actually are the things these people are saying about you. And, you know, I talk a lot about, like, the kiss I picked Downer. And working in retail I was 18 when I had that job. I benefited from time and referred to reflection and figuring out sort of how to deal with these people. But at the time, I had no clue what was going on. And I think having someone tell you that this isn't okay and here's what you can do about it is a huge step. And just being able to label, I think label what you're experiencing, label what these individuals are doing behaviorally, can really help. I think, too, that kind of one step that a lot of us need to do but we're afraid to do is think about our relationships at work in a little bit of a different way. So most of us have a couple really close friends at work, and friendships are really important to have at work. Our confidants, the people that we go to. But especially since the pandemic, we really have our bosses, and then we have our close friends and our team members. We don't have those broad social networks that we used to, and we feel a little bit cringy developing relationships with people who don't kind of serve a functional role or an interpersonal kind of social role for us. We have to get over that. I think a lot of the people that can help you at work, your allies at work, aren't your best friends, and they're also not your bosses or people on your teams. There are people who work at arm's length from you. There's social connections that you don't know very well, but they are actually really well connected to people who can connect you to other potential victims. So for the Kiss that kick Downer, for example, a lot of people had worked with this person in the department store I was at, and they had transferred to other departments because he was a major pain. So I was able to find them, talk to them, get their experiences. You know, sometimes the most important person that we talk to isn't our boss, but it's that person who's been working with our boss for 15 years and knows how to scratch their itch, knows how to make them listen to us. And we complain because they've, you know, been on a leadership board with them for a really long time. So these kinds of relationships that don't fall into these camps of manager or best friend and team member, those are the kinds of relationships that we actually have to really build. Because I think those connections can help us build a better case, find other victims, see how widespread the problem is. Is it just me, or has a lot of people dealt with this person and no one's talking about it because none of them are here anymore. And I think kind of that's one of the main themes of this book is you got to build those relationships and here's kind of how you do it without feeling too networky or, you know, transactional. I love it.

I love it. You know, in my world I will call that mentors and sponsors. What you're, what I feel you're talking about is, yes, sure, it's someone who's happy to be in the fabric of your life and give you guidance, but even better if they're powerful and have clout and they've been there and. Right. Tell me what you think. But I would advise people to be very careful who they talk to about this stuff. Not everybody who appears helpful is going to be helpful.

Yes.

Any tips on that? Any?

Yeah, I think so. The first tip is, let's say you find someone you think has been targeted by your jerk. You do not want to lead with complaining about your jerk. I think you have to be very careful how you gossip about people at work. You know, you have to ask questions in such a way it's just to get them to give their experiences without biasing them to answer in a certain way. I think about this a little bit like say you're working in a startup and you're going through client discovery. You're trying to figure out who your customers are going to be for a new product. You don't want to sell your product and then say what would you think about that? Are you on board? Instead you want to ask some systematic questions to see if it's even relevant to them, if they'd ever be interested in buying something like this. If, if the problem you think they have is relevant. You know, questions that are very basic about experiences with someone, do they know other people who've dealt with this person before? You know, who have they found useful in conversations? You know, these kinds of very generic questions that if your so called ally goes and sells you out to your jerk, it's not going to actually harm you because you've been very clever about how you've asked them. And I think you also made a really important point that just because you disclose something to someone or they feel in the moment like they're giving those positive non verbals or smiling at you, that doesn't mean they're going to actually follow up. In fact, I have a couple surveys in my book and on my website about what kind of ally are you? And most people, they don't want to be part of the problem, but they don't want to be part of the solution either. Very hands off. So don't expect a bunch of people to rally the troops and come in and help you. In fact, if there's any social cost to it for them, they're going to be very uncomfortable. And so you're going to have to navigate around that. I'm not going to say it's easy. It's actually quite hard.

This is fantastic. Listen to these resources. Any last words I know I could talk to you for two more hours. Any last words of encouragement, advice that there is help there? Anything, Anything.

Yeah, I think, you know, this stuff is hard. And if anyone comes to you and says there's a question, quick fix. If you just did X, Y and Z, these problems would go away. Don't believe them. In fact, people who read my books, some of them come to me and say, this stuff is so overly obvious. I could have done this in my sleep. And others say, this is impossible. You have to be like a ninja to do this. And I'm like, everyone has different social comforts and different social skills. I try to give advice that doesn't require you to be a good mind reader. It doesn't require you to be empathic or powerful or express experience or any of those things. They're behavioral tactics, but they aren't going to happen overnight. You're going to have some missteps. It's all about those small behavioral changes. Little things accumulate. Don't try to hit it with a hammer. Just go slow and steady. That wins the race here. And at the end of the day, if it doesn't work, I am with you. Sometimes you just need to get out. And that's okay, too.

I love everything you're saying. And you know what we didn't touch on, but I know your book does. You know, I've written a piece that happened to go viral on six toxic behaviors that push people away. How do you recognize them in yourself?

That's right.

So you're also not just talking about how everybody outside of you over here is a problem. We do have to look at ourselves as well. And sometimes if you find that you're attracting a negative boss or, you know, wherever I go, I have a toxic boss, or it is time to look at what am I putting out, what am I comfortable with, what am I sustaining, what am I tolerating and what am I doing?

That's right. Right. Yep. Absolutely. Look at yourself just as much as you do other people and to kind of go back to that theme before. You know, blame isn't an effective strategy for dealing with this stuff, especially if you're uncomfortable. So that self reflection is important.

I love it. And where do we learn all about you, Tessa? Where do we go? You can take your surveys. Everything.

You could go to Tessa Westauthor. Com. You can take my surveys. You'll get immediate feedback on the website. Plus all the other good stuff is on there, where to get the book and things like that.

Thank you so much. My goodness, people, I hope you're inspired by this. That number one, you're not alone. Number two, yeah, none of these things are what we want. But it's human life. We are a multifaceted species. So you're going to have these things. We don't wish it on you, but you're going to have it. But knowing how to deal with it is really so much more than half the battle. I don't want to call it a battle, but there is help out there and Tess is the one to go to. And if you want to read my.

Six toxic behaviors, check that out too.

All right, everyone, wherever you see this, we'd love your question. Okay, I have a credit stealer. What do I do? Not that. We want you to put that on LinkedIn with your name and your company tag.

The credit stealer.

Yeah, Very anonymous. We'd love to hear from you. And we'll answer any questions you have. Thank you for listening and comment. Come again, Tessa, your next book. I bet you've got one brewing. Do you?

I have something in my head. It is not out there yet.

All right, we won't talk about it yet. Oh, I'm so happy you've written this book. It's going to be so. It is so helpful to. So many thanks again.

Thank you so much.

All right, everyone, have a wonderful few weeks and we will see you next time. Bye. Thanks so much for joining us today. And please don't forget to check out for finding brave.org for more programs, resources and tips. And tune in next time for your weekly dose of Finding Brave.