We all want to work with people who have a “good” attitude, and we want to avoid people with a “bad” attitude. And we all know what that means, right? We all want to work with people who get stuck in, are cooperative and easy-going, and who are problem-aware but solution-oriented. We want to see smiles and feel supported, see action that is decisive but not rash, and hear voices that resonate without selling. And we want to work with people who act as we’d like them to, especially when we’re not looking.
Because attitude is intangible, it can be hard to understand, as our assessments of it are totally subjective, and even harder to manage. Behaviour and performance are easily managed, but “managing” attitude is a minefield full of biases, misconceptions and unfairness. If you try to control attitude, you will fail. Fostering attitude, well, that is something we can do.
The source
So where does an employee’s attitude come from? Well, there are two main sources – life lessons and current situations.
Life lessons: If, for example, someone is used to feeling unfairly blamed, not supported and unappreciated, the chances are they’ll be a bit anxious, a bit sceptical, won’t take responsibility and won’t put themselves out. They need to protect themselves above all – feeling the victim, because that’s what their experiences taught them. To everyone else, that looks like a bad attitude.
Current Situations: If, for example, someone feels they don’t understand or agree with things that affect them, and they have no influence or control, it is natural that they might resist – nobody likes to feel disoriented and powerless. Until they feel that sense of understanding and control, and know they can act, we have to expect them to be, at the very least, uncommitted.
Own Goals
Life lessons: We don’t confuse attitude with knowledge or competence, do we? We’d rather hire people who can’t (yet) but want to, than people who can but don’t want to, obviously. “Can do” versus “will do”. But who do we usually hire? In my experience, the favoured candidate is usually the one felt to have the skills the manager wants right now, so they can do the job right now, even if there are a few little warning signs along the way. Set, forget, and hope.
Current situations: Then there’s the situations and cultures people find themselves caught up in. Imagine a work environment that’s about blaming rather than solving, about demanding more than supporting, about telling more than asking, about controlling more than empowering, about criticising or ignoring more than appreciating, about restricting more than growing, about, well, you get the picture. How can someone in such an environment maintain a “good” attitude when they feel a good day is one when things didn’t get worse? It’s obvious, but we’ve all experienced it.
Fostering great attitudes
“Bad” attitudes come from life lessons or current situations where people feel they must protect themselves from whatever they fear most – maybe embarrassment, maybe failure, maybe loss of reputation, maybe losing control, maybe being treated “unfairly”, maybe something else. It’s all subjective, but it’s absolute truth, and it’s all about risk of loss one way or another.
To foster great attitudes, the first thing is to enable psychological safety. For example, an environment where people are safe from blame, even when they make an honest mistake. They also need to feel accepted, of similar values, not constantly judged, safe from bullying, rejection and victimisation, and free to be themselves, however those things feel to them.
The next big thing is to empower, which means known rules and consequences, along with freedom and support to act within those guidelines. For example, not being blamed doesn’t mean not being accountable, the difference being that blame is an attack, where accountability is a stable platform. If you want people to push themselves, maybe take on some new things, you have to provide a safety net, not spikes.
It’s not a perfect world though, so there will be mistakes along with transgressions of performance and behavioural codes, even with the best of intentions and attitudes. But there can’t be surprises or inconsistences in rules and consequences. Known and predictable = safe, even with potential risks.
Perhaps the last of the big-ticket items for fostering a great attitude is the relationship between an employee and the most influential person in the group – their manager. If an employee knows the power figures around them sincerely want them to succeed, believe in them as a person, has their back and will lend them an ear, then they have no reason to defend themselves, to shirk responsibility, or generally cause trouble.
Action Steps
There will always be some who don’t respond to empowering environments and a supportive culture, so you need to avoid them. If employers look for those signs when hiring, and they will be there, the chances of this fundamental mismatch in attitude are low. Hire the person you believe in ahead of the experience you’d like.
The other step stems from Heider’s Attribution Theory, where it is natural for us to see the acts of others as a reflection of their true character (especially under stress), yet we know that our actions and reactions are responses to the situations we find ourselves in. Of course, there is no objective rationality to this way of thinking, yet we all know we do it every day.
If the environments and experiences you create for people don’t have them acting defensively, then there is no need for the behaviours, expressions and words you see as bad attitude. They have nothing to react that way to, so they won’t. Instead, if you create an environment of openness, trust, inclusion, empowerment, collaborative problem-solving, friendship, and respect, that’s what they’ll react to.
You can’t control everything, and you can’t hope to change people. However, you can give them the chance to be at their best, and, for most people most of the time, a good attitude will be a part of that.
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