Open Thread: How do you Deal with Jerks in the (Web) Workplace?
My community of friends on Twitter has been expressing some angst lately about rudeness they’re dealing with online. Anyone who works online — no, anyone who works anywhere — has to deal with jerks sometimes. No wonder The No Asshole Rule is selling so well.
The article Building the civilized workplace published online in the McKinsey Quarterly today [registration required] suggests that jerkiness is not only harmful in the workplace but may be contagious:
The most important single principle for building a workplace free of jerks, or to avoid acting like one yourself, is to view being a jerk as a kind of contagious disease. Once disdain, anger, and contempt are ignited, they spread like wildfire. Researcher Elaine Hatfield calls this tendency “emotional contagion”: if you display contempt, others (even spectators) will respond in much the same way, creating a vicious circle that can turn everyone in the vicinity into a mean-spirited monster just like you.
Experiments by Leigh Thompson and Cameron Anderson, as they told the New York Times, show that when even compassionate people join a group with a leader who is “high energy, aggressive, mean, the classic bully type,” they are “temporarily transformed into carbon copies of the alpha dogs.” Being around people who look angry makes you feel angry too. Hatfield and her colleagues sum up this emotional-contagion research with an Arabic proverb: “A wise man associating with the vicious becomes an idiot.”
We all know that certain website cultures encourage rudeness and others promote a sense of community and civility. I’ve found in my blogging that the vast majority of comments are friendly and useful. It’s the outright attacks that stick with me though. On my personal blog I’ve added a note to the comment entry form that “rude comments will be edited or deleted.” There are too many well-meaning people online to spend time giving the jerks attention.
Have you been bothered by jerks online? What do you do to protect yourself and to promote a culture of respect?
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react emotionally first, but only to yourself (if its a negative reaction you would show). then analyze it. stuff the information into 2 categories: – emotional – rational
act on the rational, dont act on the emotional.
Heh, I just might be one of those community of friends people, lol. Part of my job is to serve as our community (of artists) manager and we just had what was one of three annual kerfuffles that one can expect like Old Faithful. Two center around our peer-juried artist group that accepts new members biannually, and the other is the mid-winter SAD snap from somebody who looses it and wracks havoc for a couple of weeks before or after the holidays. Part of how I personally deal with is is recognizing that this *is* cyclical and that our community has weathered these storms before and will again. Another is to stay involved as the community leader as a pacifying force and / or someone who can bring in facts, deeper explanations, etc. Nothing worse than to let your community implode because you weren’t paying attention. And above all, one should do one’s best to stay above the fray. Don’t let it get personal. We generally don’t moderate threads on our forums, but we don’t tolerate personal attacks or anything that descends from healthy debate into serious mudslinging against other members (although we let people have their open say about us as a company).
It’s been interesting over the past seven years, trying to find that balance between freedom of expression and civility. Most days it isn’t an issue. In general, our community is almost sickeningly warm and fuzzy, with folks being very supportive of each other. But those few times a year, we kerfuffle with the best of them. But I think we’re also at a point in this community where even tempers win the day and the kerfufflers either kiss and make up (which happened yesterday for us, actually), or a dramatic exit is made (we ARE artists, after all) after which we all shrug and get back to our daily routine without much further thought about it. Our members have commented time and again how different our community is than other communities out there; some might even say we’re boring. And full-disclosure, most of our forums are of the “walled-garden” variety. But in general, thanks to us being involved in the community we serve coupled with some awesome community leaders who set great examples, our forums generally *are* drama free.
You should check out Blogging Etiquette.
It’s a new website trying to promote kidness amongst bloggers and reward/recognize those who do.
The virtual workplace is where most of the jerkiness happens. I still get spam faxes about once or twice a week. And think about what we overlook each day just to function: spam e-mail, spam IMs & spam blog posts, blinking ads, pop-ups, spyware, even automated calls that land in our v-mail boxes. I’m just glad I don’t get crank calls on Skype – yet. How do you deal with it? I think if it’s a human and you can tell them to knock it off, you do, but mostly it’s just automated junk.
I’ve always moderated comments to my site, and the few inflammatory ones that have shown up I’ve simply deleted without engaging in any way with the troll in question. On one article that was likely troll-bait I specifically added a note to the effect that “rude comments will be deleted, don’t even bother”.
Well..can’t really do much about jerks..the funny thing is jerks attract jerks and that increases the jerk number in a big way…
Here is an article I came across regd. http://www.pluggd.in/2007/06/breaking-workplace-myths.html” rel=”nofollow”>Breaking workplace myths ‘
I just ignore these people. If you try to argue its going to create more problem.