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Bob Sutton

Professor Emeritus, Stanford University · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

academicauthor@work_matters ↗LinkedIn ↗profiles.stanford.edu/robert-sutton ↗Wikipedia ↗

Robert (Bob) Sutton is an organizational psychologist known for his research on workplace culture, leadership dynamics, and scaling organizations. He has authored several bestselling business books and co-founded the Stanford d.school and Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

16statements → 5claims → 5claims resolved → 80%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 2.38/5average debate potential →

4 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 11 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Bob argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Sutton: Emotional intelligence is only 10% as important as IQ
“EQ is one of the most overrated concepts on the planet. It's there, it matters, but if you look at the evidence, it's about, a good guess, 10% as important as old-fashioned IQ.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 14:26 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
88% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

270 words/min while actually speaking · 15 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Bob Sutton: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,194 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Bob Sutton said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Supported
Sutton: Emotional intelligence is only 10% as important as IQ
“EQ is one of the most overrated concepts on the planet. It's there, it matters, but if you look at the evidence, it's about, a good guess, 10% as important as old-fashioned IQ.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 14:26 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: High emotional intelligence enables malicious manipulation of others
“People with high EQ are especially good at manipulating others to ill means. So it exists, but it's a concept that has been way over glorified.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 14:59 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Assertion Supported
Sutton: Proximity to a toxic coworker dramatically increases job loss risk
“What this research shows is if you're within 25 feet of a toxic person, so what I would call an asshole, the chances you're gonna become toxic and lose your job go way up.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 23:33 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: Effective toxic leaders rely on dedicated workplace toxic handlers
“If you were going to be an effective asshole, Get yourself a toxic handler. To calm people, people down to clean up the mess, to tell them that it really wasn't that bad.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 29:31 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: Power without respect turns individuals into vindictive jerks
“In general with human beings, if you put them in a position where they have some power over people, but they don't have prestige, they're not esteemed. And it turns out that having power without having stature or respect. So you think of somebody at the DMV wh…”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 31:04 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Assertion Supported
Sutton: Baird CEO Paul Purcell enforced an explicit no asshole policy
“Paul Purcell, he was CEO for years, W.R. Baird, now called Baird Financial Services Firm. They have a no asshole role. He tells people during the interview, if I find out you're an asshole, I'm going to fire you”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 28:31 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: An asshole leaves others demeaned, de-energized, or disrespected
“The way I define an asshole is from the receiver's standpoint, somebody who leaves you feeling demeaned, de-energized, disrespected.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:20 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: Be slow to label others as assholes, quick to judge yourself
“If you look at all the biases we have as human beings, it's probably best to be slow to label other people as assholes and to be fast to label ourselves.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:22 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: Unpleasant colleagues often just have a bad user interface
“There are certain people who just, they just have a bad UI. And once you get to know them are actually great.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:18 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: Manage toxicity by exiting, defending yourself, or fighting back
“There's three basic kinds of strategies. There's you get out. The other one is you reduce the damage you suffer, which is either by kind of getting away from the toxins or not having them bother you so much. And then the last one is changing the, your situatio…”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:36 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: Humans lack self-awareness and cannot judge their own toxic behavior
“The evidence about self-awareness is we just suck, and the worst person to ask if they're an asshole”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:36 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: Self-awareness requires external peer feedback, not internal reflection
“In terms of self-awareness, the researchers who studied this essentially say, don't look in the mirror. Find somebody you know and trust and ask them, what do you think?”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 17:41 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: Effective relationships embrace intense conflict motivated by shared interest
“I believe that the most effective human relationships are frank and actually can get conflict that to outsiders can look pretty ugly, but the difference is that when it's done in the context of, I'm doing this in our collective or your best interest, even thou…”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 19:02 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Assertion Supported
Sutton: Getting a hostile person to do a favor reduces their dislike
“There's very good evidence that if somebody does a favor for you, it's really hard for them to dislike you because of the two dissonant elements, which is, I don't like this person, but I'm doing a favor for him or her.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 19:52 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Assertion Partly supported
Sutton: Office communication drops sharply beyond 60 feet of physical distance
“Essentially once you got more than 60 feet away from someone, and this was in a closed office environment, you might as well be in another country.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 23:15 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide
Insight
Sutton: Lack of eye contact reduces empathy and increases hostility
“When we have communication, even with people aren't strangers who, when we don't have eye contact, we tend to be less empathetic and more nasty.”
Bob Sutton Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 33:01 a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | The Asshole Survival Guide Jan 2, 2019 14m
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