I was first exposed to the term “bad attitude” when I became an HR person in 1984. Supervisors would book time with me. “I have to do something about Angela,” they’d say.
“What’s the problem?” I’d ask them.
“She has a bad attitude,” was always the reply.
Back then, the standard HR response was to ask the supervisor to supply the details of incidents – dates and times and exactly who said what to whom – in order to begin something called a Paper Trail. The paper trail was a series of warnings. It makes me shudder to think back on the dozens of warnings I helped supervisors to hand out in those days. We didn’t know any other way to deal.
Thirty years later I can see the limitations on the Paper Trail approach very clearly. Once a supervisor has decided that he doesn’t want a certain person on the team, the supervisor holds all the cards. It’s easy to create a paper trail on anyone. If I worked for you and you decided I wasn’t your cup of tea, you could paper-trail me right out the door with no trouble.
The problem with the traditional approach to a Bad Attitude is that it does nothing to correct the real problem in the mix, which is the energy in the room. A supervisor whose tolerance for dissent is limited or nonexistent can plow through employees without ever noticing (and in many cases, without ever being made to notice) his or her own contribution to the attitude problem.
I saw this recently when I spoke on a panel at a leadership event. “Is a bad attitude contagious?” asked an audience member of our three-person panel.
“Definitely,” said the panelist on my left. “Once one person turns against the company, he or she can win other people over to their side.”
Geez Louise, what a paranoid worldview, I thought, biting my lip in half. The columnist on my right said “Isolate the person with the bad attitude, so other people won’t be infected.”
This is our view of an attitude problem – it’s on them, not on us! We, the leaders, have no part in the problem except to isolate or remove the bad apples in hopes of keeping the good apples worm-free. That’s delusional thinking. Anybody that we invite onto our teams has wisdom for us, even people we end up firing. We can learn something from them, if we can listen.
The entrenched concept of a Bad Attitude-bearing employee doesn’t require anything of a leader. Verbal warning, written warning, final probation, See Ya! Is the pipeline to separation, and we can keep our fingers in our ears the whole time. In reality, the only way a person who’s unhappy can influence the people around him is if they are slightly unhappy, too.
No Bad Attitude ever got a plugged-in, switched-on employee to say “You know, Marco, you’re right! I thought this was a great place to work, but you’ve shown me that it isn’t.” That’s the opposite of what actually happens in real life.
In a healthy environment, a person who’s unhappy vents and the people around her say “You know Marcia, you sound really discouraged. You should talk to our supervisor, Craig or the HR person, Margot. You should work it out.” Nobody is born with a bad attitude – it’s situational. If we can listen to the thorniest and most pesky employees on our teams, we can forget the Bad Attitude paradigm and encourage everybody to come into the circle and get some of the warmth we feel from the community fire ourselves.
If your HR folks are still writing people up and putting them on probation for having the wrong attitude, it’s time to look in the leadership mirror. We have everything to gain by asking our teammates at every opportunity, in the manner of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, “How’m I doing?”
Just asking the question, if you’re sincere, will raise the mojo level on your team. Imagine the conversations you can start about energy, workload, conflict, and other sticky human topics when you open that door!
