What makes one person highly productive while the person sitting next to him is unproductive? What drives one person to success while others watch the clock? What makes a person pick a paper thrown on the floor in the middle of the office while others just walk over it as if it were not there?

Attitude, self-image and direction.  Attitude is the wellspring of behavior and a basic part of human nature, yet, many, lack the proper attitude to achieve personal and professional success

Now questions that pop up are: “Can we really change attitudes?”  “Is changing attitudes of staff members the job of a manager or that of a psychologist?”  The answer lies in the words of William James (an original thinker in the disciplines of physiology, psychology and philosophy 1842-1910) and Warren Bennis (an author and pre-eminent expert on the subject of leadership, 1925 - ):
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.” (William James)
“The basis of leadership is the capacity of the leader to change the mindset, the framework of another person.” (Warren Bennis)

As a leader and manager, one of your primary responsibilities is to get your employees to produce desirable results through specific behaviors.  However, we need to know that attitudes (thoughts) are reflected in behaviors (actions) and the key principle to understand in changing employees’ attitudes is that you can’t change it for them; they must change it themselves.  They must buy into that change and see “what’s in it” for them to change.  With that in mind, the following is a process for that change:

  1. Evaluate performance gap and define required change:

We need to identify exactly at what performance level the employee is, where we want him to be and what is keeping him from getting there.  For example, a sales person is bringing 5 sales a week, we need him to bring 8 sales a week and he is not doing so because he is not managing his time properly to be able to contact more people.  A team leader is not delegating any of his daily tasks and he is too busy to develop his subordinates because he is not finding time do that even though it is part of his job.  The following principles should be applied when we identify the required behavioral change:

    • The outcome of the behavior should be positive and help you and the employee reach your goals and it should be meaningful to both of you.
    • The behavior must be specific and easy to understand.  Relating to the examples above: time management, delegation of specific tasks
    • The outcome must be easy to measure: Increasing sales by 3 a week, scheduling time for weekly training
  1. Plan of Action:

Knowing where we are and where we want to be is not enough; we need to know how to get there.  Our strong will alone is not enough to take us where we want to go: we need a road map; a written, step-by-step action plan.  We can not tell a sales person: “Manage your time better and your sales will increase by 3 a week”.  We have to sit with this sales person and develop a step-by-step plan, together, ensuring better management of his time and leading to a specific increase in sales.  The plan should include:

    • The possible obstacles that might keep us from achieving our goal and the possible solutions
    • The detailed and simplified steps required to achieve this goal
    • The benefits of reaching this goal and the consequences of not doing so
    • Method of tracking the results
  1. Behavior Changes:

This is where the action plan is applied.  The steps included in the action plan are implemented and included in the daily activities of the employee.
Relating to the above team leader, in order for him to find more time to develop his people, he should:

    • write down all his daily activities
    • specify the ones that could be delegated
    • identify who should handle them
    • sit with the people who would handle those tasks and specify time for training them
    • physically block weekly time on his organizer for developing staff

By doing this, the team leader would have accomplished very simple steps towards an important goal that he was achieving

  1. Measure Results:

This step ensures the return on the time and effort investments we made.  If we do not measure the results, we would look like a person who bought a lottery ticket and did not check if he won or not.  Measuring the results should be our focus from the first step so that at the end we would see the direct impact of the behavioral change.  If the impact was not satisfactory enough, some changes should be done in the plan and/or the evaluation levels.

Use this process to get the most out of yourself and your people.