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Is there really a benefit to working with jerks?

Brian shares his thoughts on positive to take away from working with people you don’t like.

Transcription

The main benefit to working with jerks.

I am Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Working with jerks.

Even the word jerk is kind of a funny thing, because in a very short period of time, relatively short period of time, the word jerk used to mean someone that was stupid.

It was used more often than that way kind of, in relationship with a moron, or it’d be the same type of synonym.

Nowadays, it means more of a person that’s just kind of crude, and mean, mean oftentimes a jerk as a person, that’s mean, you know, at least in American English, that’s how I hear it used most often.

So that’s how I’m using it here today I’m talking about the situation when you’re working with a jerk. Okay.

And there’s one huge advantage to working with a jerk.

That huge advantage is honesty.

Most people aren’t honest enough to come out and say, when they don’t like something, when they’re not happy about something, when, what their true opinion is of something because they’re afraid of getting fired, they’re afraid of getting of a bad situation occurring, they’re afraid of hurting people’s feelings, all this other stuff.

So a huge advantage of being around jerks is that you get that direct, honest feedback as quickly as possible.

So how do you survive working with a jerk is being as direct as you can back to them without tossing offense on it?

I think most of the time, it really isn’t the fact that someone’s being honest, it’s the fact that they do it in a crude manner, they oftentimes will have like, a little, a little extra zing in there a little emotional thing in with whatever offense that they’re, they’re giving or that they’re trying to get a reaction out of you. That’s really the issue with jerks.

But if you can do good at not reacting, and almost ignoring that piece of it, and just taking the good leaving the bad, the old salad bar effect of just leaving the rest there, I think you’ll be happy with the results. And you should surround yourself with at least a few of these people. It tends to be the opposite.

If you’re a business owner, or you’re an executive, if you’re one of the people in charge, oftentimes we surround ourselves with nice people, we surround ourselves with friendly people.

With the proverbial yes men, you know, the people that say yes to everything that you come up with. And don’t argue and don’t give you at least a contrary point of view, whether they agree with it or not a devil’s advocate, so to speak.

This is really interesting that I thought about this, I’ve talked about this before this book, winning through intimidation, one of the best business books you can read in terms of understanding psychology, especially with one on one relationships in business. And even if you’re, especially if you’re a solopreneur.

If you’re doing things, a lot of things on your own, but you still need to be able to work with other people. You know, what is the secret of that?

And he talks about this in his first chapter, he talks about the different types of people, I thought it was the first chapter, let me see here, I just had my finger on it. And now it’s gone.

Where did I put it, he talks about the three different types of people what he calls the three, it’s a three-person theory, and that there are three different types of people you run into.

The first type of person that he refers to, is the person that is really straightforward and honest with you about the fact that they’re out for themselves, and that they’re looking out for number one, and that they’re going to do everything they can to make as much money off of you as possible or get as much value out of your relationship as possible because they’re in it for them.

He discusses how important this person is because they’re being honest. And then most people believe that somewhere deep down, that in the end, most people are going to do whatever they want to in regards to their own self-interest.

And you just have to know that ahead of time whether they fooled themselves into believing it’s not true or not. In the end when the going gets tough. People are going to do the thing that is in their own best self-interest versus the thing that isn’t.

And the person that knows that about themselves, and is straightforward about it will oftentimes be more honest along the way. So a lot of these things that it comes, it comes with time you start picking these things up as you go along.

But it never surprises me the people that surround themselves with people who give them beautiful words and beautiful encouragement when it isn’t necessarily needed. And they surround themselves with these people.

They wonder why things tend to fall apart around them. They don’t they don’t realize that they’re, they’re poisoning their own well, with people that are still out for themselves, but aren’t being straightforward with you across the board.

Or they just don’t have anything important to say or to contribute, which is I don’t know, which is worse. Hopefully, that’s helpful to you. Just a quick thought of tonight.

Check out the book, Winning Through Intimidation by Robert Ringer, absolute classic, great book.

Also check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. It’s all about how to overcome competitive forces or the concept of competitive forces in general. You can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. That’s all the time I got for today.

You have a great night. We’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.