Personal attitudes and workplace performance (2)

It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, if it catches mice it is a good cat.” (Deng Xiaoping).

Several researches prove that less than 20 percent of people employed in an organisation are enthusiastic about going to work each day. It is not that they are lazy, or that they do not want to work. Rather, it is because a lot of them have become bored and disinterested because of their daily routine, hence there is little to challenge, excite and motivate them in the workplace.

For some others, the problem they have concerns their relationship challenges, especially with their colleagues, superiors and even subordinates. As a result, the daily work routine and cycle eventually creates unhappiness, lethargy and disinterest in the workplace. The resultant effect is that the personnel begin to manifest bad attitudes, which inevitably will hurt the business.

Market studies for instance show that 23 percent of the customers that leave a business for its competitors do so in protest of the bad attitudes of the personnel in the business that they are leaving. That is certainly a high price to pay for not treating customers as valuable business partners. This is especially crucial in a highly competitive business environment, because angry, dissatisfied or hurt customers can be damaging to any business. This should also be a source of real worry for any organisation that wants to continue to build its customer base.

It is worth emphasising that personal attitudes generally describe the manner in which the intrinsic and personal characteristics of a person show forth in the ways that he feels, thinks and acts. And, when these characteristics persist over a period of time, they become ingrained in the person’s behaviourial traits, thus coalescing to form personal attitudes. Personal attitudes thus become who the person is known to be, in terms of behavioural tendencies, personal dispositions, knowledge, relationships, perceptions and past experiences.

People’s personal attitudes would therefore often manifest in the course of their relating to self, other people and their environment. Not only that, a person’s personal attitudes will show forth their belief systems, thinking patterns and general life values. That is perhaps why it is often said that a person’s attitude determines that person’s altitude in life and endeavours. That means that, if the person would be great someday, his attitude must be a great one indeed.

While it is possible to help a person improve his competence and skill levels, no one can actually change another person’s negative attitude. Only the person in question can do that. A change of attitude in this regard is achieved only through a deliberate and systematic personal change process induced by a strong desire to be a different person. And, this can only be as a result of self-awareness and self-evaluation by that particular individual.

The fact that attitude is rooted in a person’s disposition obviously puts any business at risk when such a business is populated with personnel that have bad attitudes. It means that customers would largely be turned off with such people and indirectly by the business that they represent. It is for this reason that organisational coaching, which is also referred to as team coach can be a vital tool in facilitating people and organisational transformation. 

What coaching can achieve in this regard is not to change peoples’ supposedly bad attitudes by attacking, condemning or judging them, but by presenting mindset changing scenarios to them through the presentation of alternative belief platforms. How this is done is simply to utilise the basic indexing questioning and mind frame supporting questions that define and underly transformational thinking. In this regard, the coach gently but firmly challenges toxic and inhibiting personal beliefs, as the client is supported to become more personally aware of both promotional and sabotaging traits.

In organisations where workers exhibit negative personal traits, it is usually as a result of a negative mindset, which inevitably breeds a culture of selfishness. It also creates an unduly critical spirit and a high degree of pessimism. In organisations where these toxic characteristics become established, there would always be the loss of enthusiasm among the personnel, and a situation that sabotages their freedom. In such an environment, personal creativity and innovativeness will be limiting, leading to a drop in initiative and of course personal motivation.

Quite often, a lot of these issues are not addressed in the workplace because they do not appear that obvious, mainly because they are personal and “hidden” in the workers’ personalities. But, with time, these so called soft skills’ issues grow exponentially and become potent dangers to the organisation’s bottom line profits. Personally, I would rather have a worker that may not have the best skills, but is willing to grow and develop the skills, than have a highly technically skilled worker with a bad attitude and negative mindset.

Emmanuel Imevbere