Are You An ARSE?

By brightfeather on July 17th, 2007

Robert Sutton is a Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford. He studies innovation, the links between knowledge and organizational action, and most recently, workplace assholes.

Robert works with organizations and managers of all kinds, from People magazine, to Procter & Gamble, to National Football League executives. He has published over 150 articles, in places ranging from peer-reviewed journals, to the Harvard Business Review, to Esquire magazine. His books include Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge into Action (with Jeffrey Pfeffer), and Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management (also with Jeffrey Pfeffer).

His new book is the national bestseller The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.

Are you are certified asshole?
Find Out With the Asshole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE)
A 24-Question Self-Exam by Bob Sutton

0 to 5 “True”: You don’t sound like a certified asshole, unless you are fooling yourself.
5 to 15 “True”: You sound like a borderline certified asshole, perhaps the time has come to start changing your behavior before it gets worse.
15 or more: You sound like a full-blown certified asshole to me, get help immediately. But, please, don’t come to me for help, as I would rather not meet you.

The book is a must read and my score on the self exam was 4.