Quotes from Robert I. Sutton

sometimes the best engineers come in bodies that can't talk

What you "learn" from Steve Jobs tells more about yourself than about him!

there is little reason to believe that managers or other authorities will make more accurate predictions than anyone else about which new ideas will succeed and fail.

We were taught that the more irate the debtor—the more he or she screamed, swore, and insulted us—the more long pauses we should take before answering questions and the more slowly and calmly we should talk.

A supervisor instructed me, "If you talk softer and softer and softer, they're going to have to stop to listen or they're not going to hear anything you're saying. The louder you get, the louder they get. And if you start to tone it down, they start to tone it down.

Yet invisibility is a double-edged sword. It provides protection because sometimes attracting a jerk's attention is even worse than being

During the early stages of a project, don't study how the task has been approached in the company, industry, field, or region where you are working.

As I wrote on the Harvard Business Review website in 2010, that's what wisdom means to organizational psychologist (and my intellectual hero) Karl Weick. Wise people "have the courage to act on their beliefs and convictions at the same time that they have the humility to realize that they might be wrong, and must be prepared to change their beliefs and actions when better information comes along.

Dana Yagil of the University of Haifa shows that "when the customer is wrong" and treats service employees like dirt, they react by taking sick days and then resigning because they fear more abuse in the future.

As Anteby and Chan point out, people who fear retribution from the powerful have long used invisibility as a protective cloak.

If you think you can, or if you think you can't, you are right.

And sometimes—if you are observant and patient—being invisible gives you access to information that can help you turn the tables on powerful assholes.

He learned and heard many things about the San Francisco Fire Department from powerful people who forgot he was present—including a lot of dirt—that helped him become an effective leader in a long battle against discrimination in the department.

This philosophy means that when you've entered a den of assholes, you do everything possible to get out as fast as you can—or, better yet, to figure out how to avoid that lair in the first place. I call this the "da Vinci rule." As Leonardo da Vinci put it, "It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

It's sound social psychology because, as I wrote in The No Asshole Rule, "The more time and effort that people put into anything—no matter how useless, dysfunctional, or downright stupid it might be—the harder it is for them to walk away, be it a bad investment, a destructive relationship, an exploitive job, or a workplace filled with browbeaters, bullies, and bastards.

we justify all the time, effort, suffering, and years and years that we devote to something by telling ourselves and others that there must be something worthwhile and important about it or we never would have so much of our lives sunk into it.

As Paul Friedman from the University of Kansas put it, flak catchers are "lightning rods" and "hassle handlers" who take and absorb "jolts sent by the dissatisfied." Taking such heat is part of the job for receptionists; executive assistants; security guards; spokespersons for companies, universities, and political campaigns; people who work in complaint departments; and bouncers.

When a guest is rude, angry, swearing loudly, or visibly upset, cast members not only try to calm him or her; they are adept at reducing the exposure of other guests to such un-Disney malice and misery.

Ochsner 10/5 Way." Employees are expected to smile at and make eye contact with any patient or employee who is within ten feet of them and to say hello to anyone who is within five feet.

Every additional week, month, and year created greater pressure on them to justify why they had voluntarily continued to stay in such a bad situation, which led them to stay on and on—and to conjure up more and more reasons why they ought to keep suffering rather than to cut their losses and quit their lousy jobs.

As they put it, "once the door to the stall is closed, it is transformed into the occupying individual's private, albeit temporary, retreat from the demands of public life.

We also found staff who do NOT tend to be assholes and identified them with a small sticker on their ID badge. New staff and med students are told to use these people as resources. They are staff who have agreed to be willing to help and answer questions, and are easily identified.

Most companies automatically search for fast learners, gregarious people with social graces, who are willing and able to bend to the wishes of others.

The survival lesson from studies and stories on backstage regions is that, to reduce your exposure and to recharge your defenses, it helps to find—and if necessary, invent—asshole-free zones where you and others can take temporary refuge.