Dr. Kenneth Lloyd has spent years looking into what works and what doesn't in the workplace. He is now letting the rest of us in on his findings.

Lloyd has written several books, including Jerks at Work: How to Deal with People Problems and Problem People.

In addition to his books, Lloyd's weekly syndicated column On the Job appears in over two dozen newspapers throughout North America.

In a recent interview, Lloyd gave a little insight into how you can deal with jerks at work and how you can avoid being one yourself.

Q: What prompted you to write Jerks at Work: How to Deal with People Problems and Problem People? Was it the success of your column?

A: It's interesting. I got so many letters and certainly a ton of e-mail saying, "Are [the columns] available in a book? We like them. We enjoy reading them. Is there any way to get more of them?"

With a column, the words are written. They're out there, they're read and then they're gone. If somebody doesn't read the paper that day or whatever, they can miss something that, as a writer, you feel could be kind of interesting and important.

So, when I started getting this feedback from the readers and really looked at what was here, I realized that this could be something that people may in fact enjoy having and may be useful to them in a number of different ways. So that's when I really decided to pull out what I thought were the key columns in a number of areas.

I wanted it to be a fun read as well, so I took out the columns that I thought were particularly interesting and some that focused on some rather bizarre behaviors at work and put it all into the mix.

Q: Obviously, your background in organizational behavior was a great help to you when researching this book. Did you find that the "problem people" or the "people problems" that you dealt with tended to fall into a few definite categories?

A: Ultimately, they do fall into different classifications and categories. But at the same time, the behaviors at the workplace are just as broad as you find in society at large.

You'll see some falling into issues of communication or various kinds of baggage that people were bringing into work. You'll see a whole range of problems coming in from family businesses and that type of thing.

Q: Are the personal traits that so-called problem people bring to a job likely to cause problems no matter what?

A: People do obviously bring their personalities in to work and they will wear a lot of that on the job. But there is no question that what goes on in that environment -- whether it's by a manager or by co-workers or by various policies -- will have an impact.

So it's whatever the individual is bringing in, and then how that interacts with the particular environment. So it depends on a lot of factors.

Q: Do you find different types of problems at different income levels?

A: Job levels can allow different kinds of behaviors. For example, we might have someone who's late frequently for work. Now if that's a manager or a boss, then you've got employees trying to cover and the employees feel upset.

There are ways to deal with it and we try to give some recommendations. But at the same time, you can see other employees at the lowest level of the organizational structure who are late all the time. They get treated very differently. Things get documented and either they get with the program or they've got real problems.

But it could be a company issue, too. Maybe the company should be more flexible and put in some flex time and so forth.

Q: I would assume that in addition to teaching people to recognize potential problems with their co-workers, your book will also offer advice to individuals about how they can avoid becoming "problem workers" themselves.

A: Sometimes I'll get a letter in, and the person will complain about a co-worker or boss when in fact, it's that person who is being the problem. And I have to say that.

Sometimes I will write back and say, "You've mentioned that this individual keeps accusing you of doing these things, but at the same time in the letter you mention that you took action X, Y and Z. Couldn't that actually have caused the behavior in the first place?"

So I do, at the end of the book, have a number of suggestions to avoid being a jerk, because frankly we all can and we probably all at one point or another have acted like a jerk at work.

But I try to give a listing of the kinds of behaviors and things to think about to avoid being a jerk. Be honest, communicate openly, keep your cool and be a team a player, be fair and ethical.

Frankly, the bottom line on not being a jerk really goes back to the golden rule. If you apply that at work, your probability of being a jerk is going to drop way down.

Q: How can career counselors best prepare students for the difficulties of the workplace?

A: There are studies out there -- long-term studies -- that show that a lot of the behaviors that you see present among young people in high school (being industrious, persistent, cheerful) tend to be long-term characteristics.

There are long-term studies that show that people who were cheerful as teenagers are still cheerful in their 70s and beyond. From that standpoint, high school is a great place to be really setting in the kinds of values and behaviors that you would like to continue to develop as you go on in your career.

And frankly, if you've been out of high school for quite a while and you go back to a reunion, you see that a lot of people haven't changed all that much. They really haven't.

Q: Is a lot of this advice something the reader can use on the job, at home and at play?

A: No question about it. Because, again, if you take the best way to avoid being a jerk is to live by the golden rule, certainly that applies to dealing with one's family, friends and any others that you come into contact with during the course of your life.

There certainly can be people who act like jerks as parents or as siblings or as children. And there are things that can be done in those arenas as well to prevent some of the problems and certainly to deal with them.

Q: While you were researching Jerks at Work, did you learn anything new about yourself?

A: It made me really stop and think, "Have I ever really acted like a real jerk at work?" And the answer is yes. Yes, I have.

And I think the key thing is that it's not enough to say, "Gosh, I shouldn't have done that" or "That was really a mistake." The key is to not repeat that behavior again.

So if you got upset over something or if you said something that you shouldn't have said, and you say to yourself, "Gee, looking back at that, that was a real mistake," it means nothing. Even if you go and apologize, it means nothing unless you truly commit not to repeat that behavior again. Then you're going to grow and you're really going to learn from it.

So if you find that you've acted as a jerk, it's not enough to say, "Boy, I'm sorry, I really messed up." What you really need to do is commit to yourself not to do it again.

Search Career Pro News.com          Search WWW