Six year old (precocious) daughter: Is daddy an a-hole?
Mother: Why would you say that?
Daughter: He screams at Joey’s soccer game and sometimes gets kicked out.
Mother: He’s very competitive which is why he is successful.
Daughter: When he reads me a bedtime story he’s always checking his Blackberry.
Mother: He has a lot of people he needs to help in his company.
Daughter: He doesn’t listen to you and talks mean to you.
Mother: You’re right, he is an a-hole.

As much as I wholeheartedly agree with the philosophy behind one of my favorite books, Robert Sutton’s, The No Asshole Rule, I have to conclude that a-holes have always been around and probably always will. An even more disheartening truth is that more often a-holes seem to win whereas nice guys do unfortunately seem to finish last or at least far behind their obnoxious counterparts. And here’s why:

1. They’re not afraid to go first – so they’ll take something first while you’re being polite.
2. They’re not neurotic about hurting your feelings – they figure if you’re foolish enough to be thin skinned, it’s your fault if you get hurt.
3. They’re compelling – they will keep you awake and alert which feels better than feeling bored.
4. They’re watchable – you will keep your eye on them which will keep you focused which also feels better than feeling distracted.
5. They keep you on your toes – and then still manage to step on them.
6. You’ll go out of your way to get respect, love or liking from them – because doing so is a real coup compared to getting the not-so-special respect, love and liking from a giver who gives it to everyone.
7. You know where they’re coming from – they are clear about what they want and don’t want as opposed to nice people who can be so vague that they exasperate you when you just want them to “spit it out.”
8. You’re afraid of what you want to do to them as much as of what they will do to you – they frustrate and infuriate you so much that you will do anything to not have to deal with them, including appeasing them and giving them what they want.
9. They’re arrogant because they’re confident – you think they are assured about what they’re doing which makes you all the more vulnerable if you have self doubts.
10. They use their aggression to their advantage – and your disadvantage if you’re busy trying to not come off that way.
11. They feel both entitled and deserving of whatever they get and take – and so they have no compunction about going after it.
12. They’re not afraid of – and in fact enjoy and take pride in – being an a-hole – and to some extent, you’re jealous of their brazenness.

Doing an “a-holectomy”

Ironically, I (MG) have been seeing increasingly more a-holes in my coaching practice. I know what you’re thinking? Why would they ever go to a shrink for advice or help. There are two main reasons:

1. First the a-hole reason. They’re having a lot of turnover at their company (which doesn’t bother them), but they’re looking for another round of financing and investors are nervous with their management issues and are also having flashbacks of other a-holes who didn’t turn out to be as “F**k You” brilliant as the “F**k You” behaviors they thought they could get away with.

2. The not quite an a-hole reason. They don’t feel so badly about being abrupt and dismissive towards employees or even their spouse, but they absolutely adore their young children and conversations like the one above get to them, because they really don’t want to hurt their kids’ feelings.

I’m reminded of one such man who came in to see me with his fourteen year old only child after his wife said, “You better go see Goulston with Joanne. She’s got a real problem with you.” Now this guy wasn’t that keen on his wife, but his daughter was the absolute love of his life and so he agreed.

When they came in, two things were clear. First, he didn’t have a clue why his daughter was having a problem with him and second, the last place his daughter wanted to be was in my office.

She didn’t talk much, but I could see that as he talked about his bewilderment in a completely non-emotional manner, each sentence out of his mouth was like nails on a chalkboard to her. And she bunkered more deeply into the corner of her side of my couch.

I imagined that he was on better behavior with me than he probably was at home and intuited a scene that probably went on with some regularity.

I stopped the man and followed my hunch and said to his daughter, who was not making eye contact with me: “What’s it like when your dad is talking to you at home in your bedroom, making you nuts and you scream at him at the top of your lungs, ‘GET OUT. LEAVE.’ And then when he does and you close the door behind him you flip him off raising your middle finger at the door.”

She hadn’t told me any of that, but apparently my intuition was spot on, because at that point Joanne, curled up in a ball and started sobbing uncontrollably and nearly dry heaving in what I can best describe as primal agony.

It was clear that something she hated more than her dad, was hating him. It was eating her up inside. And my understanding it and not judging her had released an emotional tsunami that had been building up for weeks or longer.

After a few moments, when it was so clear that she was emotionally gone and beyond conversation or consolation, her father stopped trying to make conversation. Instead, he stared at her and started to cry and touched the tears on his cheeks almost as if the wetness was blood and not quite knowing what to make of it.

I asked him what he was thinking and in a look of utter bewilderment he said, “My daughter, who I love more than anything is in incredible pain, and I think I’m somehow causing it. But that is the last thing I would ever want to do to her. I just don’t get it.”

I told him, “I think you just got it. Stay there, it’ll be okay.”

After several minutes Joanne stopped crying and looked much relieved and that was the beginning of a breakthrough between them that lasted. I’m not sure he ever understood how she could feel that he was hurting her. However he was certainly clear about the fact that she was hurting and that he loved her and didn’t want her to feel pain whatever was causing it.

A final caveat is that it turns out that a number of these a-holes have ADHD and are adrenaline junkies. They’re smart and they’re risk takers and that helps them to keep their adrenaline (i.e. natural Ritalin) at a high level. They absolutely can’t stand boredom or being listless which they feel when they come off an adrenaline high. That causes some of them to become irritable and nasty… sometimes really nasty…sometimes even abusive.

For some of these with true ADHD, treatment with the proper medication and coaching can really calm them down, help them listen better and make them more deliberate in their dealings with their employees and increase investor comfort.

I think however that the best experience was when one of these former a-holes was properly medicated and coached told me how he read a bedtime story to his daughter, had his Blackberry shut off and was totally present with her. After he finished, she snuggled up to him and said, “Thanks for reading to me daddy, I love you.” Made him cry when he told me, made me cry when he told me. He even told me that next on his list was to listen to his wife.

And that, as Mastercard would say is: Priceless.

• What to Say to a Jerk (P.S. may not work with an a-hole)

Know any founders who:

1. Had a terrific idea with which they achieved initial success, but haven’t been able to get beyond that or duplicate it?
2. Act out their underlying anxiety at being possibly a “one trick pony” in visionary’s clothing by being frenetic, unfocused, “name dropping” and embellishing the heck out of their success to try to attract more business and investors?
3. Keep changing their mind on what the company should focus on so that their people never know what to do from week to week?
4. Take out their anxieties and fear of failing or being discovered as a first act with no second act to follow by continually agitating, spinning and “throwing their people under the bus?”
5. Instead of setting highly talented people in their organization up to succeed, set them up to fail?
6. Often look for outside saviors/rescuers instead of utilizing the untapped skills and talents of their now dispirited people?
7. Have become lousy listeners?
8. Inwardly do not mean to hurt or upset anyone and do not take delight in doing so, but whose fear of failure is ever present and drives them to act poorly?

If so, what can such a founder do? And what if that founder is you?

1. First, don’t feel panicked or ashamed if you don’t have a new great idea.
2. Sit down with your great inside people (and stop looking to and paying outsiders that you are impressed with to rescue you).
3. With your top people, identify the key stakeholders who buy your products and services, who have invested in your company AND all the people in your company that do the work to build, service, market and sell your products and services.
4. Put yourselves in all your stakeholder’s shoes and articulate from their point of view what would dramatically exceed their expectations with regard to the quality/price/value of your products and services (for your customers and clients); generate a great ROI either near term or longer term with an explanation of the latter (for your investors); be the best work experience of their careers (for your employees).
5. Generate a vision (i.e. way beyond a mere extension of what you’re already doing) of something extraordinary and disruptive and then a doable strategy with the actions for fulfilling it that will enthuse, exceed the expectations and spontaneously enroll all your stakeholders.
6. If you have trouble staying focused on a single task and following through on it; if you keep jumping around from one interesting thing to the next; if you keep interrupting people rather than hearing them out and if instead of being deliberate in your communication and actions you’re all over the place, you might want to consider being evaluated for ADHD by your doctor or a psychiatrist. You needn’t be ashamed if this sounds like you, because you’ll be in the company of many other successful people, who became even more successful once they had this checked out and treated if it was present.
7. If all else fails, get a CEO or COO to manage you and the rest of your company before you manage to run the company into the ground.