If you are in any way interested in the development of the attitudes and self-esteem levels of others as a manager, parent, teacher, or friend, then don't expect to change someone else's attitude with "a carrot or a stick" by using incentives, lectures, punishment, complaints, or flattery. Attitudes don't work that way!
For years business managers have used incentives to boost attitudes to improve productivity or increase sales. But even though they get short-term improvements, the same businesses find that before too long they have to put a new incentive program into effect. They didn't really change any attitudes. They did nothing more than create a short term, temporary effect in their employees' outward behavior, not a change in their attitudes. If you use an incentive of one kind or another to change an attitude, it may appear to work, but the effect won't last; you will find yourself needing to resupply another incentive each time the previous incentive wears off.
Another time that we frequently use the wrong method to change attitudes is when we are attempting to help someone else improve an attitude that we believe is working against that person. In spite of the fact that school counselors, parents, husbands, wives, managers, and friends, frequently tell some individual "You need to change your attitude," telling someone that has never done any good at all. In fact, just saying that to someone can have the wrong effect (it is negative programming) it will work against the individual instead of for him. It reconfirms his preprogrammed belief that all the bad things he already thinks about himself are true! In fact, it is precisely when a person's attitude is "down" that it is the hardest for that person to figure out any way to change it. Why should they? How can they?
Our attitudes are determined by our beliefs, and if we believe we are less than the best, to us that is fact, that is reality, that's the way it is. Of course, it isn't true at all. It's just true to the person who believes it. Recall for a moment the natural process by which attitudes are created in each of us: "Programming creates beliefs, beliefs create attitudes, attitudes create feelings, feelings determine actions, and actions create results." Each of those steps; behavior, feelings, attitude, and beliefs, is the logical and expected result of our conditioning. It follows then that every attitude we have, good, bad, or indifferent, is the natural result of the programming that preceded it. Every one of us from time to time suffers from a less than perfect attitude. A "bad attitude" doesn't belong solely to the student who won't study or to the company employee who didn't get a raise, or to the best friend whose personal life has just fallen apart. Attitudes, good and bad, are an everyday part of our lives.
Listing # 0080 |
