Based on the mountains of evidence presented in the previous chapters, people are petty as hell. And you’re probably ready to admit that you are petty, too. You are not alone.
According to the research we conducted for this book (SHRM, 2019), 97 percent of people report having engaged in petty behavior. To a social scientist, that figure is jaw-dropping—it indicates that the pettiness phenomenon is pervasive. It’s downright ubiquitous.
Knowing that most people are or have been petty is liberating, in a way. Now what?
We also know that everyone holds a certain level of self-awareness, making them cognizant of their own behaviors. And it’s a given that everyone would benefit from less pettiness in themselves and others. So, the opportunity presents itself: to reduce the prevalence of pettiness by helping people focus on their own behaviors.
Let’s make that a real-life challenge. What would it take to stomp out most pettiness? I believe it starts with our personal perspectives.
Armed with our newfound understanding of petty behaviors and their consequences, we have the metaphorical tools we need to catch ourselves, when necessary. Now I’d like to introduce an actual tool: the Stomp Out Most Pettiness (STOMP) Checklist, presented in Figure 7.1. It provides an overview of the petty behaviors you encounter every day, as well as a way to quantify their prevalence in your life in the form of a Pettiness Index.
The STOMP Checklist is fairly intuitive. Each behavior listed was identified using a content validation survey of 15,000 professionals in the U.S. workforce. Surely you recognize almost everything on the list, even if you haven’t seen them described so impassively.
The behaviors are weighted according to how frequently they are practiced. Their frequency is inversely related to their severity and, potentially, their consequences. For example, complaining about noise levels is a fairly common thing to do, with minimal severity and hardly any consequences; as a result, this listed behavior is weighted as 1 for severity. By contrast, throwing a tantrum is a much more potentially detrimental activity; as such, it is weighted as 4.
While severity weightings are important, they are not the only factor to consider when thinking about one’s own behavior. How often do you engage in these behaviors?
The combination of severity and frequency in the checklist makes for a rich source of personal data that you can use to assess yourself in comparison with the rest of the population. For a working example, take a look at my own filled-in STOMP Checklist in Figure 7.2.
My Pettiness Index is 69! Two-thirds of the population of workers in the U.S. will have a Pettiness Index somewhere between –120 and 300, where –120 represents low pettiness and 300 represents high pettiness.
(If you score of Pettiness Index of 740, it means you engage in every petty behavior listed every day. It goes without saying that you are an absolute pettiness disaster and need professional help! But let’s be honest, in my experience I have never met anyone whose score is above 350, so the likelihood of finding someone above 700 is nil. By the same token, I have never met anyone at the other end of the scale, at –350. I don’t know any actual saints or angels, but I’d like to believe their Pettiness Index might be in this range.)
Figure 7.1. The STOMP Checklist
Figure 7.2. Alex’s 2018 Year-End STOMP Checklist
So how does one use the STOMP Checklist? I recommend it to identify two things in your life:
The first will give you an overall perspective of how your pettiness compares to other people’s. The second will help you understand the aspects of your pettiness with the greatest potential for life-altering consequences.
The STOMP Checklist is also useful for self-monitoring your performance on the job. Performance is the most important behavior in any organization. Pettiness often precedes poor teamwork, failure to meet goals, company policy violations, and other indicators of low performance. As a result, monitoring your own pettiness is often likely to improve your performance. High performers tend to monitor their performance more often and more deeply than low performers.
Remember: the higher the Pettiness Index, the greater the problem. Don’t believe me? Use the checklist to score any of the examples of petty behavior in Chapters 3 through 5. (Spoiler alert: they’re already in order from trivial to minor to major to significant.)
The STOMP Checklist is more than a self-assessment. It can be easily applied to assess pettiness in others. I recommend its use in a variety of cases, including:
Pettiness is pervasive. Nearly 100 percent of individuals have experienced pettiness in the workplace. That’s not an exaggeration—nearly 100 percent. Let that sink in for a moment. Pettiness is a disease afflicting our collective organism on the same scale as the physical ailments we are all too familiar with.
However, this is one pervasive disease we can defeat without expense or suffering.
All we need to do is be intentional in our perception of pettiness. Start each month by asking yourself, “What is my Pettiness Index?” That simple question is enough to start the journey to mindfulness and self-awareness.
This is at the heart of the commitments in the Stomp Out Most Pettiness Pledge:
This is my charge to the global community: Project Stomp Out Most Pettiness (Project STOMP). Its lofty goals: (1) to encourage use of the STOMP Checklist; (2) to know your Pettiness Index; (3) to take the Stomp Out Most Pettiness Pledge; and (4) to refer at least one person to the cause.
Pettiness is so ubiquitous that if we defeat it in even the smallest degree, we can truly make a difference.
To learn more about Project STOMP, please visit projectSTOMPoutmostpettiness.shrm.org.