The No Asshole Rule

Three of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of The No Asshole Rule pulls out 8 insights. Here are the first three.

1. Sutton's two-question test for a workplace jerk: does the person leave a target feeling belittled or de-energized, and does the offender aim that treatment mainly at people with less power than themselves.
2. He separates temporary assholes, people having one bad day or month under strain, from certified assholes, whose meanness is a stable pattern across targets and time; the two call for different responses.
3. Because bad interactions register more strongly than good ones, a single demeaning encounter can outweigh many pleasant ones, and the resulting bad mood spreads to bystanders who never spoke to the offender directly.

The other 5 — and the full 10-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 9 chapters

The whole summary runs about 10 minutes, read or listened to.

1. What Counts as an Asshole
2. Why Civility Isn't Soft
3. Pricing the Damage
4. How Power Turns People Mean
5. Hiring the Rule In, Firing It Through
6. The Genius Exception
7. Checking Your Own Reflection
8. Surviving What You Can't Fix
9. Keeping a Workplace Civilized