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We all have bad days, but how do you know if you really have a negative attitude at work?
We all have days at work that we wish we could do over. Or, better yet, we should have just stayed home.
Your three-year old was up all night and then screamed when you left him at daycare and you were late to work once you finally got him settled and you stubbed your toe when you got out of your car and so you weren’t very pleasant to your administrative assistant when she greeted you at the door with a problem. And all that before 8:00 a.m. on a Tuesday.
Yes, we could have handled that better (please apologize to your admin as I did mine – she was just doing her job).
That’s not really an attitude problem, just a bad day that is, hopefully, out of the norm.
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If someone asks you to check your attitude, it could be you or it could be them.
If two people, who aren’t talking to you at the same time, ask you to check your attitude, it’s you.
You don’t need to get defensive when this happens. I’ve had days when I had to go sit in my car for a few minutes in order to turn back into the person I need to be at work. I then thanked the person or persons who suggested that I might want to check my attitude (it didn’t necessarily take two, I knew they were right).
And even that isn’t really an attitude problem, at least not if it’s only an occasional stress reaction.
The real attitude problems in the workplace belong to those who don’t recognize or care that their behaviors are inappropriate or causing stress to others.
This should be easy to spot and deal with, right? The supervisor sees what’s going on and the person either improves or is eventually fired.
Unfortunately, this is what I see happening over and over and over again:
Employees who are normally not at all problematic get themselves involved in whatever the attitudinally challenged employee is doing, thus muddying up the situation and making it impossible to identify where the real problem is.
As an employer, I don’t have the time, energy or tolerance for this.
If someone is wrong, let them be wrong.
For example:
Employee A (we’ll call her Agnes) is speaking inappropriately in front of a program participant. Employee B (we’ll call her Belinda) knows that they shouldn’t be speaking in front of the participant. What should Belinda do?
WIN ALL AROUND
Belinda says, quietly, to Agnes, “Let’s go out in the hall” and then leaves the room. Agnes follows and they speak quietly, communicating professionally. Everybody (Belinda, Agnes, the participant and the overall work environment) wins.
WIN LOSE
Belinda says, quietly, to Agnes, “Let’s go out in the hall” and then leaves the room. Agnes yells loudly and in front of the participant, “Don’t walk away from me!” When Agnes comes out of the room yelling, Belinda goes back in, closes the door quietly, and attends to the program participant. Belinda is behaving completely professionally, the program participant is taken care of, and Agnes’ inappropriate behavior is on display for everyone else to see. This pinpoints Agnes as the problem and the supervisor can respond accordingly, helping to improve the overall work environment by either helping Agnes to improve or working toward terminating her.
LOSE ALL AROUND
Belinda says, quietly, to Agnes, “Let’s go out in the hall” and then leaves the room. Agnes yells loudly and in front of the participant, “Don’t walk away from me!” When Agnes comes out of the room yelling, Belinda yells back, they get louder, the program participant and everyone else can hear them behaving ridiculously at work. Then Belinda goes and tells the supervisor (who heard the commotion, she’s not deaf) about Agnes’ inappropriate behavior.
The supervisor can only say that she heard Belinda behaving the same way. Belinda could have been the hero, but instead turned herself into just as big a problem as Agnes.
Didn’t we learn this stuff in kindergarten?
I’ll say it again: If someone is acting like a fool, let them be the fool all on their own. They don’t need your help.
So, this is how you know that you have a negative attitude at work:
- You behave outside of the workplace norms and do not change your behavior when it is pointed out to you
- Not only do you not change your behavior, but you blame others for even mentioning it
- Your behavior is disrespectful to co-workers and/or customers and this has happened more than once
You can read more articles about attitude in the workplace here.
