"attitudes" - one of the most most ill conceived concepts

Yesterday I was driving back from a round of golf at Keeowee Vineyards with a friend who had been and still is somewhat successful at turning around failed nuclear power plants. He's a very smart Purdue engineer that has made lots of money over his life time. He asked me about my teaching and what strategy I used. He has been involved over his career teaching "root cause" to nuclear engineers. After a few minutes of discussion, he said, "I just focus simply on their "attitude" in order to get results I want.

This statement is very common among executives as their view of managing human behavior is like "finger nails on the chalkboard" to me. So the prof in me kicked in and I began to explain (probably more like lecture) the error ("stinking thinking") of this perspective. 

My response was that "attitude" by itself has no real meaning, it must have a target such as an object (ice cream) or a behavior (eating ice cream). Then in order to be motivational, the outcome of the desired behavior not only has to be favorable but also has to be salient to the worker.

It dawned on me that he had two totally different rounds of golf at Vineyards thurs (85) and sat (77). So I said, "You had expressed earlier and often that your attitude toward playing Vineyards was negative. But I know your attitude towards playing competitive golf is positive. So, first of all, no one can just say, "John, you have a bad attitude" without attaching a target of your attitude to the statement. Second, how come you played differently on different days. Maybe, your attitude toward Vineyards was more salient (dominant) on thurs and not so much on Sat relative to your desire to play well?"

This is what we have to deal with in the work place when we deal with employee attitudes. When we think or say, "the problem is your attitude" what we really mean is their attitude needs to be more positive toward the behaviors and associated outcomes that WE believe are important for success. So as a leader we are trying to shape the targets of their attitudes so they become more positive towards the behaviors we want and then we have to make the outcome salient to them for the attitude to have behavioral (motivational) effect.

I couldn't remember if I had blogged on this subject but its my lesson for class tomorrow, so John gave me a blog and some lecture material for class - just is!!!