Dealing with a 'bad attitude'

Excerpted from the Executive Report: The Supervisors Guide to Managing and Motivating Difficult Employees. 

 

Identifying and correcting behavior often can be more difficult than dealing with performance.

 

Difficult employees are often characterized as having a "bad attitude." Identifying employees that way is a bad starting point for implementing change. What's a "bad attitude"? How is it measured? What standards will you use to determine if it has changed?

 

In short, "attitude" shouldn't be in your supervisor's vocabulary, but "behavior" should. Here's why: You can make behavior a part of performance - with the same types of standards you use for performance.

 

Suppose an employee refuses to cooperate with others or won't follow instructions or argues with customers, or all of the above.

 

That type of employee commonly fends off criticism by saying, "But I do my job."

 

Your answer: "Behavior is a crucial part of your job. So if you can't cooperate, in fact you're not doing your job."

 

To complete the loop, you can make cooperation (with you, other employees, customers, etc) a crucial component of the employee's job description.  Here's a typical statement used in a job description or as a standard laid out during a performance evaluation:

 

Maintain a positive work atmosphere by acting and communicating in a manner so that you get along with customers, co-workers and managers.

 

The greater the importance behavior is to the job, the greater the percentage this standard will apply to the job - whether it's 10%, 25% or 50%. You make the call on it and make sure the employee understands the percentage and the standard.

 

What you'll have done is take the vague "attitude" problem and turn it into something defined and measured. And it gives you a rebuttal to the person who says, "But I do my job."

 

Usually, the person who says that is doing the job at some minimum standard - while driving everyone else crazy. The answer: Raise the standard, to include behavior. Then your response is: "No, you're not doing your job."

 

DIGGING DEEPER

It doesn't require the greatest skills to manage good employees. They have initiative, jump in where needed and don't need someone looking over their shoulder. The people who are a drain on the workplace are the difficult employees. To get help with them, read the Executive Report: The Supervisors Guide to Managing and Motivating Difficult Employees.

Comments

[stephen]

frankly..it most states... one can fire anybody at anytiime for any reason...as long as it isn't an illegal one. While we don't want to be capricious..I have had several bosses who were... if an employee is more trouble than they're worth... sack'em!!

[Eswaran]

True the bad attitude can be managed by a clearer measure of co-operative behaviour. However the sweet spot of breaking ties with the organization for any one is when there is no learning flow between the organization and the employee. Hence when organization no longer benefits and the employee does not benefit either, the employee must quit - at least a reasonable one would!! - Let us keep the firing option for the rest.

[Brian]

Changing the job description does not address the root cause for the attitude issue. You can force an outward change but will benefit much more from an inward change. The manager must find out what the problem is and determine if it can be remedied. Most often employees with attitude simply need more attention and redirected to feel their expectations in the job are being fulfilled. If the problem cannot be remedied by management then dismissal is required to stop the spread of bad will.

[Deinera]

Funny how there's only one comment regarding trying to find the source of the problem behavior. There are always circumstances in which looking beyond just the obvious might yield you better results, especially if as a manager, you try to do something about it. Most people (mind you not all) aren't just just "behavior problems" at the onset. Most managers wouldn't have bothered to hire a person who was a pain in the butt at an interview, or within the first week of work. Taking a look at ALL of the contributing factors to what may be causing the problem behavior is better than simply firing one single person who is being more outward about their frustrations. A manager might find that they're not able to keep anyone in the position if on the surface it looks like only one "bad egg." The nicey-nice employees aren't always so nicey-nice to everyone. Food for thought.