POSTED BY aaron Feb 05, 2007
Guy Kawasaki asks, are you an arse?
Alright, we know our readers are stand-up. This post isn’t for you. But there are others, those who struggle to keep their inner jerk inner. And for them, we offer the ARSE, a 24-question self-exam by Bob Sutton and Guy Kawasaki (and, yes, Electric Pulp.)
Now, we should come clean. We’ve been dancing around using the word asshole in this post - ARSE stands for Asshole Rating Self-Exam. You might be exclaiming “oh my!” right now, and for that, we apologize. But the word was selected very carefully by a Stanford professor, and we expect that makes it right.
The survey corresponds with Bob’s book, The No Asshole Rule. We offer it to the world in hopes of making it a better place.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Pretty funny. I scored a 2, but I have asked a few close colleagues and my wife to use the exam to create a third party rating for me. They certainly know better than I.
Isn’t one of the defining characteristics of an a-hole that they are not self-aware, and therefore don’t KNOW that they’re an a-hole? If my theory is correct, it would be interesting to have others use the test to rate us, creating a good metric: theA-Hole Delta, i.e., the difference between one’s a-hole self-perception and the reality of one’s a-holishness.
I wonder if the reality is that we’re all bigger a-holes than we think? I will have to buy the book and see if they answered this question. If not, then I’ve finally found my doctoral thesis topic!
March 16th, 2007 at 10:58 am
The solution here is to have tough and very confidential 360 degree evaluations. Organizations need to be committed to using these tools and need to hold their emplyoyees accountable. If these A-Holes knew their “enemies” were evaluating them their cowardly ways would change quickly.
April 1st, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Well, that was pretty much what I figured. A 3 on the ARSE scale, which isn’t much of a surprise. I’m one of those people blessed, or cursed, with an oh-so-wonderful personality. Not that I can’t be a nasty little person, but I only let my inner ARSE free when dealing with bureaucrats and telemarketers.
I just can’t figure out why people would do some of the things I’ve seen in that test. Does it make their lives better or their marriages longer-lasting? They may be able to bully people into doing what they want, but they aren’t making friends and are just making their own lives that much more difficult. Besides, aren’t ARSEs at least a little responsible for our environmental problems? And that’s as close to a horrible pun as I want to get. It might just push me a few points higher.
August 20th, 2007 at 1:21 am
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Sorry, it just sounds like a crazy idea for me :)…
November 1st, 2007 at 9:27 pm
i am very proud to score 23 marks. I am indeed a natural born asshole. The company i work with is an asshole company, i try to pretend to pretend i am not, but over the time, i was drawn by the art of asshole and now, i am glad that i too become an asshole.