How to Change Any Behavior Or Learn Anything New

The Four Stages of Learning - Keeping Going When Learning Gets Tough

When the going gets tough, put things into perspective.

When we learn new skills, we experience different emotions at different stages of the learning process.

For instance, at the beginning, we may not appreciate how much we need to learn. Then, when we discover what we don't know about a subject, we may get disheartened, and we might even give up.

This is why it helps to understand the emotions that you're likely to experience at each stage of the learning process, so that you can manage the emotional ups and downs that go along with learning a new skill.

The Four Stages of Learning helps you do this. In this post, we'll look at this model, and we'll highlight how you can use it to learn new skills more effectively.

Understanding the Model
Noel Burch, an employee with Gordon Training International, developed the Conscious Competence Ladder in the 1970s. It helps us understand our thoughts and emotions during the sometimes-dispiriting learning process.

The model highlights two factors that affect our thinking as we learn a new skill: consciousness (awareness) and skill level (competence).

According to the model, we move through the following levels as we build competence in a new skill:

• Unconsciously unskilled – we don't know that we don't have this skill, or that we need to learn it.
• Consciously unskilled – we know that we don't have this skill.
• Consciously skilled– we know that we have this skill.
• Unconsciously skilled – we don't know that we have this skill (it just seems easy).

Uses
The Four Stages of Learning is useful in several ways.

First, you can use it to understand the emotions you'll experience during the learning process. This helps you stay motivated when times get tough; and it helps you manage your expectations of success, so that you don't try to achieve too much, too soon.

For example, during the consciously unskilled phase, you can reassure yourself that, while learning this skill is difficult and frustrating right now, things will improve in the future. And, when you're unconsciously skilled, the model reminds you to value the skills that you've gained, and not to be too impatient with people who have yet to gain them.

It's also useful in coaching and training situations, because it allows you to be in touch with what your people are thinking and feeling. You can then help them understand their emotions as they learn new skills, and encourage them when they're feeling disillusioned.

Applying the Model
Let's look at each level in more detail, and highlight strategies that you can use to move yourself through each stage successfully, as you learn a new skill.

Level 1 – Unconsciously Unskilled
At this level, you are blissfully ignorant: you have a complete lack of knowledge and skills in a specific area, and you're unaware of this. Your confidence therefore far exceeds your abilities.

To move out of level 1, use tools like Personal SWOT Analysis and a Training Needs Assessment to identify your strengths and weaknesses, and to understand which skills you need to learn. As part of this, ask other people for their input, so that you can uncover weaknesses and skill needs that you might otherwise miss.

Also, make sure that you understand your learning objectives – there's no point learning skills in areas that don't align with your personal or work goals  .

Level 2 – Consciously Unskilled
By this stage, you've discovered that you need to learn new skills. You realize that others are much more competent than you are, and that they can easily do things that you are struggling with.

This level can be demoralizing, causing people to lose confidence or even give up on their learning efforts altogether. Therefore, it's important to stay positive at this stage.

Remember, learning might be uncomfortable in the short term, but these skills will help you reach your goals and build a better life.

Level 3 – Consciously Skilled
At this level, you know that you have acquired the skills and knowledge you need. You put your learning into practice regularly, and you gain even more confidence as you use your new skills.

You still need to concentrate when you perform these activities, but, as you get more practice and experience, these activities become increasingly automatic.

To move successfully through Level 3, look for opportunities to use your skills as often as you can. For example, you could volunteer for projects that require your new skills, or craft your job to use these skills more often in your current role.

Level 4 – Unconsciously Skilled
At this level, you use your new skills effortlessly, and you perform tasks without conscious effort. You are completely confident of success.

Once you master one set of skills, it's important to learn more if you want to continue to grow.

A good way to do this is to teach these new skills to others in your organization. This will keep information fresh in your mind, deepen your understanding of the material, and give you a rewarding way to pass this knowledge on to others.

Also, bear in mind that you may go backwards if you don't use your new skills regularly.

Coaching With the Four Stages of Learning

You can also use the Four Stages of Learning when you're guiding people through the learning process. Let's look at strategies that you can use with people at each stage:

Level 1 – Unconsciously Unskilled
At the beginning of the process, people may not know how unskilled they are, so you'll need to make them aware of how much they need to learn. You'll also need to explain why they need to learn these skills.

Be sensitive at this early stage, and give plenty of positive feedback   to keep people's motivation high.

Level 2 – Consciously Unskilled
During this stage, provide plenty of encouragement and support, and explain the idea of the Four Stages of Learning, so that people understand any feelings of discouragement that they are experiencing.

Also, help them improve their self-confidence, if required.

Level 3 – Consciously Skilled
At this stage, keep people focused on the skills that they need to learn, and give them plenty of opportunities to practice these skills.

For example, you could assign them projects that use their new skills, or set them relevant training exercises.

Level 4 – Unconsciously Skilled
At this level, you'll need to make sure that people avoid complacency, and that they stay up-to-date with their skills.

You may also need to remind people how difficult it was to reach this level, so that they are kind to people who are at an earlier stage in the process.

Key Points
Noel Burch, an employee with Gordon Training International, developed the Four Stages of Learning in the 1970s. You can use it to manage your emotions during a potentially challenging learning process.

The model has four learning levels:

• Unconsciously unskilled.
• Consciously unskilled.
• Consciously skilled.
• Unconsciously skilled.

The model can be a useful guide for your own learning, but you can also use it when you are coaching others, to guide them through the emotional ups and downs of acquiring new skills.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how coaching employees in order to create a highly engaged and accountable organization? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

9 Accountability Questions to Ask Your Team

Be honest…what’s your initial reaction when a team member slips up on a critical commitment or misses a deadline?

Perhaps after muttering a few choice phrases, you take a deep breath, and issue a stern reminder. Or maybe your style tends more toward sending an explanatory email, having a mini pep talk, or writing a Post-it Note reminder to deal with it later. Yet, there’s a more thoughtful, proactive, empowering, and collaborative way to handle things.

The catch is, you can’t wait until someone messes up, blows a deadline or shows a lack of accountability. Instead, ask questions ahead of time to set goals, manage expectations, and implement accountability measures.

Micromanagers Tell. Leaders Ask.
By asking better questions, earlier, you can really accomplish a lot. For example, it’s possible to rally everyone around a common goal, have them create a plan, take ownership, and even envision the appropriate actions to take should things go south.

If you involve people in the goal-setting and planning processes, you don’t need to persuade them of the benefits or “sell” them to gain their buy-in. When faced with an employee who falls short of the goal line, it’s easy to resort to friendly reminders. But statements—even positive ones—have a way of diminishing a team’s creativity and self-reliance, whereas asking a thoughtfully chosen question can ignite a conversation and encourage people to think, learn, problem-solve, act, or create.

As leadership coach and author Margaret Wheatley notes, “Good questions energize people.”

Here are nine accountability questions that you could ask your team to help them collaboratively set goals, and expectations, and to inspire action. 

1. What is our shared goal?
2. What’s our ultimate purpose behind this goal?
3. What does success look like?
4. How will we measure success?
5. What steps must we take to get there?
6. What are the deliverables?
7. What piece of this will you own?
8. How will we hold ourselves accountable?
9. How will we respond if things go off-course?

P.S.
Questions aren’t just for leaders.

If an employee is in a meeting and they can’t think of something smart to say, they can dive deeper into important issues by asking a question. If an employee is part of a project team that could use a gentle nudge toward accountability, they could query the group about a critical next step. Smart questions shows commitment to the work at hand, while pushing the team toward peak performance.

To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership training and coaching can benefit your organization? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Keystone Habits: The Hyperlink to Elevating Your Leadership Impact

In a compelling and insightful book entitled, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg coined the term “keystone habit,” to refer to a select group of habits that help to supercharge our success. 

A keystone habit is no more difficult to form than any other habit, yet it provides the most benefits.

In particular, there are three things Duhigg claims that keystone habits do: 

• They extend small senses of victory - By completing a keystone “habit loop,” as he calls it (cue - routine - reward), we’re filled with a sense of accomplishment. It’s a small win that we can then build from, acting as the foundation for success.

• They act as the soil from which other good habits grow - When we complete a keystone habit loop, we’re more inclined to engage in other good habits. For example, when we exercise, we’re likely to drink more water, take a vitamin, and eat healthy meals.

• They provide you with energy, confidence, and the momentum to achieve more - As the keystone habit becomes solidified in our daily routine, it helps to build momentum. When we see progress in our leadership impact using a keystone habit, it creates a platform to engage other leadership behaviors.

In architectural terms, the keystone is the centermost stone in an arch that helps to interlock and hold the other stones in place, yet it bears the least weight. Without that keystone, the arch would collapse; it’s an integral part of the structure. Similarly, a keystone habit is an integral part of any good habit routine. 

Not only are they no more difficult to form, but they also help to promote other good habits while also helping to eliminate bad habits. In short, if you want to supercharge your impact as a leader focus on developing a set of keystone habits that will support and empower you.
 
Fundamentally speaking, habits themselves play a key role in our lives. In fact, where we are right now, today, has more to do with our habits than anything else considering that 45% of all human behavior is habit-driven. A large part of what we think, say, feel, and do are primarily controlled by our habits. 

The short cut to developing leadership skills and accelerating your influence is finding your keystone habits. Leadership skills are really chains of micro-behaviors.  And research has revealed that leadership skills are clustered into two distinct groups. The first group is called getting things done and second is focusing on people.

A keystone habit is most likely to start a chain reaction of behavior changes within the group of leadership skills where it conceptually belongs. For example, if you develop a tasked-oriented skill like Manage Priorities, the habit will likely spread to related skills, such as Plan and Organize Work, Create Urgency, Analyze Information, Make Good Decisions, or Delegate Well, because all of these skills focus on getting things done. But the same habit is unlikely to influence people-oriented behaviors like Listen Actively, Show Caring, Or Mentor and Coach.

Most Likely Keystone Leadership Habits 

Getting Things Done

The three leadership skills that are most strongly related to all other task-oriented behaviors are:

1. Plan and Organize Work
2. Manage Priorities
3. Create Urgency

Focusing on People

The three leadership skills that are most strongly related to all other people-oriented behaviors are:

1. Influence Others
2. Overcome Individual Resistance
3. Coach and Mentor

Great leadership have skills that belong to both groups—they get things done while focusing on people. Based on the situation, they automatically respond to their habitual behaviors, sometimes providing support and other being directive. In order to be a great leader, you too, will need to develop or improve skills in both getting things done and focusing on people, so you will need to establish at least two keystone habits, one that accelerate your development of skills in each group.

Keystone habits work because they focus on making a dynamic change in your impact as a leader They produce a trickle-down effect. Soon you will notice more opportunities for improvement from the keystone habits that you're forming.

Success with a keystone habit happens when you take that first step. Right now, make a list of all the leadership habits you'd like to develop or improve. Pay close attention to the ones that can have a ripple-effect in your role.  Then focus on forming this habit over the next 60 days. You'd be surprised at how this small change can generate many positive outcomes.

Please contact us if you’d like to enroll yourself or your leadership team in our LEVEL 2 coaching program. We'll create a personality profile and design a customized leadership workout intended to accelerate the development of the keystone habits that best fit your profile.

To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership training and coaching can benefit your organization? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

How to Create an Unstoppable Culture

Edgar H. Schein is considered to be the “Father” of Organizational Development. He’s also the author of the classic, Corporate Culture Survival Guide. Schein postulated that an organization’s culture has three levels:

• Artifacts—things you see such as orange: walls, furniture, tennis shoes and tee shirts.
• Espoused values—it’s what people talk about. E.g. Be Transparent.
• Assumptions—unspoken ways of behaving. It’s getting into the reflexive “this is the way we operate when we’re not thinking too hard about it.”

The metaphor I like to use is a rope. When all three levels (strands) are connected and aligned you have a strong culture.

It’s easiest to align the first two levels. Getting assumptions aligned, as you know, is a lot trickier.

I’ve reframed Schein’s term assumptions to habits because assumptions are the things we do when we’re not thinking about what we’re doing. A corporate culture is really a collection of habits. Sub cultures such as sales and production while sharing some of the habits with the main culture also have a different collection of habits.

What excites me about the habit frame is that it provides an opportunity to actually do something about it. In my opinion, the word culture by itself is too vague. The power of talking about habits is that we know stuff about habit formation. And the research is clear: rigorous and consistent coaching is one of the best tools for forming better habits.

 Check out our related posts on:

13 Ways to Create a Coaching Culture

Creating a High Performance Culture

To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, trainer and Culture Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning we can help your create an unstoppable culture? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com    or    Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, branches, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Creating a High Performance Culture

Culture n. 1. The sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings transmitted from one generation to another.

Creating a high performance organizational culture is probably the single most important aspect of success. 

In societies around the world, people’s beliefs, ideas, laws and rules for conduct are formed and developed by the culture in which they live. The culture of a society or community is one of the most powerful influences on a person.

Positioning People—Organizing a High Performance Culture

The first consideration of culture is having the right people in the right place. There are three important aspects to look at when position people effectively;

• A person’s interests or likes
• A person’s attributes
• A person’s skill set

Take the time to list what skills and attributes are needed for each position you lead.

Transforming the Belief System

Belief systems provide a core set of values on which we base everything we do, say or believe. An organization's belief system set the precepts from which it conducts business, those that govern its planning, direction and action.

Team Buy-In

The advantage of team buy-in comes when the store leader is no longer the only one holding the team members accountable. Achieving team buy-in requires the following steps: sharing with your team our plan for creating a winning environment, showing them the results and rewards of the environment, and obtaining the team’s commitment

Tough Decision Making

There comes a point in the process of creating a winning culture when you realize someone may not fit anywhere. This is time to make the decision that someone may fit better in a different position or different company.

“Culture is the mother of all institutions.”

Use these Elements to Build a Culture of Real Engagement

Team member engagement is like a box of Legos: You’ve got to fit a lot of different pieces together if you want to create something great. 

A study of 100 organizations identified these pieces that are crucial to building a sense of 
engagement in your team.

• Variety of skills used. Most team members want to use all their skills, not just one or two day after day. They’ll be more satisfied with their jobs if they have regular opportunities to use their full range of talent.

• Deep involvement with stakeholders. This means a sense of really serving people: identifying stakeholder's needs and fulfilling them in meaningful ways, with the customer’s best interests in mind.

• Coordination within the enterprise. The back and front of the operation that work at cross-purposes to each other, or organizations where communication is inconsistent, don’t tend to attract and keep a highly committed workforce.

• Training opportunities. Training should address personal development, not just job duties. Talk to team members about what they’d like to learn so they can continue to grow and contribute more to the organization.

• Autonomy. Team members feel more engaged and fulfilled when they’re empowered to make decisions about how to do their jobs. Outline your store's priorities and assign tasks, but don’t micro-manage.

• Relationship with managers. The best managers create engagement by demonstrating their expertise (technical and managerial), and earn their people's respect by listening to their opinions and implementing the ideas that make sense.

It’s important to note that an engaged workforce will create an engaged stakeholder base.

4 Important Ways to Avoid Culture Creep 

If your organization's culture is drifting away from core values, you've been afflicted with 'culture creep.' Oh no. 

Many of us love going to the beach. One of the things associated with romping around in the water at the beach is how easy it is to drift away from where you’ve “pitched camp” on the sand. 

We get focused on what we’re doing in the water and bit by bit we drift away from where we were. It’s not intentional, but the environment in which we’re operating has subtly shifted us to a different location. We experience this at more places than the beach. 

One of the most common places is in the workplace. Unfortunately, the area most negatively affected by this is organizational culture. The effort of establishing a quality culture can be easily undermined by what we like to call culture creep.

Culture creep is a slow disintegration of many of the aspects we have purposefully put in place to maintain and perpetuate the culture we worked so diligently to create. When you’re in the ocean, you make it a point to occasionally look up from what you’re doing in the water so you don’t drift too far from where you established your place on the beach. Leadership must do this very thing in order to avoid allowing the day-to-day tasks to cause you to drift from what you established your culture to be. Culture creep.

Here are 4 important things to be aware of so you can avoid culture creep in your organization. 

1. Maintain accountability - It rarely happens that an organization has this abrupt paradigm shift in its culture. 

Accountability being consistently applied across the organization is absolutely imperative. Not just accountable for doing their job, but also for maintaining alignment with the organizational values. Your values are the foundation of your culture, so don’t allow your foundation to slowly crumble.

2. Crush double standards - The obvious of not playing favorites is the easy target. What is more challenging is making sure there isn’t a double standard for the employees and leadership. Few people, if any, will actually call out a leader who is operating under a double standard, but the impact on culture and morale will be unmistakable. 

Once this begins, it’s extremely difficult to change without replacing the “rogue” leader.

3. Keep things public - Make it a point to take opportunities to highlight the actions of those who are exemplifying your desired culture. If there is a difficult decision that needs to be made and the solution is difficult or somewhat unpopular, yet it supports your culture, use this as an internal PR opportunity to boost your culture. 

Culture is ubiquitous and should be treated as such from all aspects.

4. Celebrate small victories - There doesn’t have to be some gala event for every act that supports your culture; there does have to be recognition. Re-visit your rewards and recognition program and see how many of them include cultural nuances. 

It can be a public, heartfelt “thank you” on the team level or something a little more grandiose for your annual event. Whatever level you decide, make sure it’s part of how you honor the efforts of people who support and perpetuate the culture of your organization.

Look around. Have you drifted?

The Role of Training in Shaping Culture

Training has a specific and unique role in the maintenance or the shaping of culture: Many company values and beliefs are disseminated though training programs, through onboarding programs and systems where new team members are "socialized"--first introduced to the organization's culture. 

According to author Peter S. DeLisi, "shifts in the larger culture influence individuals, who in turn influence organizational culture, which in turn affects organizational structure."

To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, trainer and Culture Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning we can help your create a high performance culture? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com    or    Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, branches, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Best Techniques for Changing A Company Culture

Effecting a successful change in culture requires using a combination of techniques. A U.S. Government Accounting Office study outlined these techniques and their degree of importance for creating a positive culture change.

Degree of Importance     Technique

Very Great	·        Display top management commitment and support for the new values and beliefs associated with the culture change. ·        Train employees to convey and develop skills related to values and beliefs
Great	·        Use a management style compatible with values and beliefs
	·        Communicate values and beliefs to employees
	·        Offer rewards, incentives, and promotions to encourage behavior compatible with the values and beliefs. ·        Convey and support values and beliefs at organizational gatherings ·        Make the organization’s structure compatible with the values and beliefs
	·        Set up systems, procedures, and processes compatible with values and beliefs
Moderate	·        Replace or change responsibilities of employees who do not support desired values or beliefs ·        Use, stories, legends, or myths to convey values and beliefs ·        Make heroes or heroines of exemplars of values and beliefs. ·        Recruit employees who possess or will readily accept values and beliefs.

To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Coaching Employees Who Need an "Attitude Adjustment"

If you’re like most managers, you avoid dealing with employee attitude problems, even though you know that employee attitudes matter a lot. Attitude affects productivity, quality, and morale. It also has a huge impact on collegiality, cooperation and cohesion. It can be the difference between employees embracing or rejecting development opportunities. Attitude can make the difference between retention and turnover. Good attitudes drive positive results. Bad attitudes put a drag on results.

How many employees have been "worked around," fired, transferred, or retired because their supervisors had the authority but not the courage or skill to tell them about an offensive but simple-to-correct habit? Leaders can change this pattern with our latest e-book where we provide the reader a conversation structure to address 10 different sub-optimal attitudes with employees at all levels. 

So why do most managers avoid dealing with sub-optimal attitudes. Avoid it, that is, until they can no longer be avoided? By then it’s too late, and the conversation is doomed to become a difficult confrontation.

Attitude is hard to talk about for three basic reasons:

1. It seems so personal—like maybe it’s none of your business.
2. It seems intrinsic to the person, so probably impossible to change. That’s why people say things like, “That’s just who he is.”
3. It seems intangible, so it is hard to describe in clear terms. You might think, “She is doing her job, after all. Who’s to say she has to do it with a smile on her face all the time?”

That’s why most managers mostly avoid giving employees constructive feedback about attitude unless the behavior is truly egregious. Unless behavior is so incessant that even you can’t take it anymore, you probably let most of the behavior slide. Sometimes you might make an offhand comment, a hint, and a suggestion. And you don’t push too hard, because those with poor attitudes are also most likely to take offense. Telling an employee he has a bad attitude is a good way to make a bad attitude even worse. When you do let it slide, those with “good attitudes” typically work around it just fine. This sort of thinking is how sub-optimal attitudes become accepted and absorbed into the culture, putting a drag on performance while hiding in plain sight.

The term attitude is used to zero in on that very special category of employee performance problems that matter so much but seems so hard for so many managers to actually get their arms around. As long as you think of attitude as a personal internal matter, it is going to remain intangible, and you will remain out of your depth. Plus, whatever your employees maybe “feeling inside is indeed none of your business. Stop focusing on the inside/personal stuff. 

Focus on the outside.Feelings are on the inside. Observable behavior can be seen, heard and felt. When we talk about attitude, it’s not about who the person is, it’s about how the person behaves. No matter how intrinsic the source may be, it is only the external behavior that can be and must be managed.

If you focus on that observable external behavior, all of a sudden it becomes really simple. On the outside, attitude is all about communication practices. And communication practices are habits. Habits can be changed, but it isn’t easy. The only way to shift from a sub-optimal habit to a much better habit is through consistent, disciplined practice of a proven technique over time. The proven technique functions as a replacement behavior. At first it is very hard. But it gets easier and easier over time. And eventually the best practice becomes a new and much better habit.

Do you want to be good at dealing with employee attitude problems? Here’s what you need to do:

• Don’t let attitude be personal issue. Instead, make it 100 percent business. Make great attitude an explicit and regularly discussed performance requirement for everyone. Make it all about the work.

• Never try to change an employee’s internal state; speak to only the external behaviors. It’s not about what the employee is feeling deep inside—the source of attitude issues—but rather what the employee is expressing on the outside. External behavior is something an employee can learn to perform, and it’s something you can require.

• Refuse to allow attitude—great, good, or poor—to remain vague in any way. Make it 100 percent clear. Define the behaviors of great attitude: words, tone and gestures. Spell it out. Break it down. Monitor, measure, and document it every step of the way. Talk about it. Hold people accountable.

• Describe the specific words, format, tone and gestures.  For example, when responding to others, "I’ve observed you folding your arms, rolling your eyes and saying ‘No.'"

• Connect behavior with tangible work outcomes. “This makes other people, including me, reluctant to approach you even when they need something from you. Also, when you manifest disdain for someone, that person has an automatic incentive to diminish the weight of your opinion. And it diminishes your personal brand in our organization."

• Make reference to the performance requirement or best practice from which the negative behavior deviates. “We all need to be available and welcoming to each other to keep each other in order to keep each other informed, cooperate each other, and meet each other’s business needs."

• Define the replacement behavior that you will use as a specific performance expectation against which to measure the individual’s improvement. Discuss some possible replacement behaviors and then decide on one. Using the previous example, the replacement behavior is smiling wide, opening arms wide, and saying “Yes. tell me more about that.”

• Continue to follow up in your ongoing one-on-ones. Pay attention. Monitor, measure, and document as best you can. Ask the person to self-monitor and report on progress on a regular basis.

It is no doubt true that every case is different, especially if one really tries to understand the inner feelings at the source. The good news is that inner feelings of each employee are none of your business. Using the outside lens of communication practices, we’ve identified in our experience the six most common types of individual attitude problems—aberrant communication habits—that have a negative impact in the workplace, and we have come up with names for the employees who exhibit them:

1. Porcupines
2. Entanglers
3. Debaters
4. Complainers
5. Blamers
6. Stink-bomb throwers

We will show you how to address these six most common attitude issues in a future post.

Also, check out our related posts about how to reduce workplace drama:

 Handling Employee Drama

How a Simple Triangle Greatly Reduces Workplace Conflict

To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership training and coaching can benefit your organization? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.