You know what I'm talking about--the ones that deal with group behaviour models, specifically what to do about the person who's giving everyone else agita?
I was doing a quick survey of the pop lit tonight, and they are still dealing with "how you can deal with the person who is making everyone else around them miserable". And they all have the "Oh, everyone has a key to them that works, and that's all you have to find. Everyone is really interested in what's best, they just have different "working styles"."
What utter and complete bullshit!
It was over 20 years ago, when I was in grad school v1.0, and we were working on a group dynamic theory that we called (internally, of course) "the asshole factor". It stated that as a group size approached 10, the chance that someone would be in the group whose express purpose in life was to fuck things up for everyone else approached 100%.
Wake up! There are jerks in the world! And trying to find out what motivates them (this was in an area of I/O psych that dealt with motivations) and then work with it is a waste of everyone's time. They aren't misunderstood, they aren't "working a different way"--they're just people who deal with things by causing as much pain and chaos as possible.
And it isn't up to you to provide them 20 years of analysis at the expense of your own happiness, just to try and keep things together.
I'm going to write a book entitled ""Let's blow this ice cream stand": When to get out", and it's going to be all about how to recognize poisonous personalities, and when to know it's time to leave and let someone else deal with the mess. I'll sell a bazillion copies to all the people who need to know it's okay to dump the steaming heap in the lap of the people who *could* do something about the problem, but it's so much easier to let it ride and have everyone else try to keep things going.
Here--cut this out and put it in your wallet:
Yes! This is your permission! You can bug out *now*!!! Stop feeling so guilty about something that isn't your fault. There is no grand cosmic entity demanding you have to stick around--just *leave*!
Posted by lsefton at December 28, 2004 11:36 PM