Q: I’m a new manager in my company and my boss told me I need to work on how I interact with my team. He said my attitude is bringing down staff morale and affecting their performance. How can I turn this around?
A: Research shows it’s attitude, not aptitude, that makes or breaks your career. Your attitude is comprised of the beliefs you hold about life and about yourself. In other words, the way you look at life will determine how successful you will be.
Your attitude shows up in everything you do. Only seven per cent of communication is the words you use; the rest is made up of body language and tone of voice. Have you ever walked into a store and had someone ask, “Can I help you?” and you can tell by looking at them, and the way they said the words, that they’d rather be doing anything but helping you? That’s their attitude showing. Do you want to go back to that store?
In your case, if you’ve got a bad attitude, chances are your staff isn’t all that excited about coming to work and spending time with you or working hard for you.
You can turn your attitude around by becoming aware of your thoughts, because your thoughts create your reality. Your first step is to become aware of the negative thoughts you hold about your work and then change them into something positive.
This takes effort, focus and commitment, so pick one area that will make the biggest difference to your overall success and build from there. I can promise you that when you improve the quality of your thinking, you will improve the quality of your life.