Photo by satanoid

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about a study that was done with teen smoking.  The study concluded that anti-smoking ads are largely ineffective, as they address adult concerns about smoking.  Teens are influenced more by the behavior of their peers, the “cool” kids who smoke, than by the admonishments of their parents.  Which got my demented brain thinking about a workplace correlation.

Everybody has a boss.  You may look up to your supervisor, modeling yourself after their positive attributes.  You may think he’s a real asshole, and curse the ground on which he walks.  While your boss does have some influence over your behavior, who really drives the way you act when you’re in the office?  Probably your coworkers.  And I don’t mean that in a good way, either.

I can only offer up anecdotal evidence, but from what I’ve seen throughout my career, it’s the people you work with, rather than the person you work for, who have a greater influence over your actions.  I can remember my first real job, where, after completing my assignments faster than my coworkers, I was told by one grizzled veteran that I’d better “slow down, if you know what’s good for you.  You’re making everyone else look bad.”  Here I was, a greenhorn, just out of college, making waves.  I decided to conform, and downshifted to the speed of my slower colleagues, to the detriment of my company.  Instead, I should have told him that he didn’t need me to make him look bad;  that he was doing a good enough job on his own.

Or my first promotion, where I was taken under the wing of a shifty character, who showed me the secrets of disappearing and not getting caught.  Vanishing into thin air, long enough to give one a jump at the free buffet at Happy Hour.  No sense waiting until quitting time with the other suckers.  Who’s going to miss me on a Friday afternoon, anyway?

What peer pressure causes you to do is to compromise.  Not only are you compromising your principles, and your own standards of excellence, but also your career.  Managers are looking for people who stand out in a crowd, not at the crowd itself.  A couple of go-to guys make up for the rest of the run-of-the-mill mediocrity of the rest of the rank-and-file.  Do you want to be another dull, conforming schlub, or do you want to keep improving?

Your peers, while they form a support system, also form the golden handcuffs that keep you from standing out.  They’re the anchor that keeps you weighted down, preventing your rise to your level of excellence.  So even though your boss might be an asshole, he’s an asshole that once stood out enough from his peers to get promoted.

Perhaps he’s the asshole that the sun shines out of.

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