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Attitude Problems, or how to survive being honest
April 18th, 2008
There’s a kind of excuse for anything, and it’s called Attitude Problems.
To be exact, other people’s attitudes. Someone else’s attitude is responsible for everything. There are management science sermons on Attitude, Teamwork, and nothing much in terms of substance, in business culture.
Attitude can mean disagreeing with anything, but it usually means who you’re disagreeing with, much more than what you’re disagreeing with.
There are people who don’t handle criticism well, sometimes not at all. Disagreement is a threat, not a suggestion or a useful comment. It may be taken as a personal insult, by very insecure people. In some cases, it’s a threat to authority, which may be the ultimate threat and insult.
Unless you’re a psychologist with a lot of time on your hands, don’t try to analyze this. Finding a cure is a bit more than you’re getting paid for, as an employee. It’s only your problem as an employee to the extent it affects you. Leave it at that.
There is such a thing as a negative attitude, a person who’s a real non-contributor, or a de-motivator. Apathy, dishonesty, malicious behavior, problem generators, or that invaluable asset to any business, the person who knows how to make everything a bit worse with a few words in the right place. These guys get away with it, because they don’t criticize, just add extra degrees of difficulty.
Unfortunately, a positive attitude is now some kind of ideologically-produced idiot, an unquestioning fool who has no opinions, but has a Can Do Attitude, or some other relic of 1940s management science. Someone who has no problems with anything, right or wrong. A cross between a vegetable and an answering machine
.
It’s a sad comment that honesty is also now regularly considered an Attitude Problem in the workplace. Ethical people, by nature, try to be honest. If there’s a problem, they feel obliged to tell their employer.
The problem with that is that their motives can/will be suspect.
Managers who are over-reactive to criticism are also hypersensitive to anything anyone mentions likely to lead to criticism
.
The irony is that the tendency is to listen to what you want to hear includes anything negative about anyone trying to tell something you need to hear.
It’s a form of denial. Whatever it is can’t be a problem, because you don’t want it to be a problem. So you go looking for reasons to discredit the source of the information.
The most common form of discredit in the modern, illiterate, workforce, is a Bad Attitude. The proof of a Bad Attitude is therefore someone telling you you’re walking off a cliff.
You’d think even the most ultra-paranoid non-achiever of a manager would realize that a person telling you you’re walking off a cliff is a bit more useful than the people who aren’t telling you you’re walking off a cliff. Certainly more trustworthy, at least.
But no. The criticism, or the implied criticism, is worse than the actual danger. Even the possibility is that terrifying. So the Bad Attitude tag is created, and usually remains.
Ethical people have a choice, although it’s not much of a choice.
You can be ethical, (you probably will, anyway, and you know it) and get stuck with the tag. But at least you’ll also know you’ve tried to do the right thing. You’ll get the Bad Attitude label, but you might prevent some real problems while you’re at it.
The choice is do what you know what is right, or what you know is wrong.
There’s only one other choice.
Get another job, and hope your boss doesn’t find another cliff and go broke before you collect your pay when you leave.
