For a while now, we’ve noticed that you’re not really a team player. Your heart’s not in your work. You don’t fit in with our corporate culture. You’re disruptive and don’t work well with others. You just have a bad attitude.
While that infamous tag is nothing more than a layman’s way of describing a behavior, disposition or point of view that isn’t appreciated or understood, it remains one of the most durable and damaging reputations a person can be saddled with.
Bosses, teachers, coaches and parents fling the phrase around promiscuously, as if they know what they’re talking about.
Nothing scientific, really. Just a feeling they get from you.
You’re too negative. You’re too critical. You’re too sarcastic. You’re too arrogant. You’re too mean. You’re too inflexible. You’re too wishy-washy. You always disagree. You slack off. You whine. You’re a monster. You’re a mouse. You’ve got a chip on your shoulder.
You’ve got an attitude problem, buster!
Executives. Athletes. Children. Celebrities. Politicians. Nobody’s exempt.
Leona Helmsley, Rickey Henderson, Joe Barry Carroll, Bart Simpson, Sean Penn, Tim McKyer, John Sununu: all-star problem attitudes. Donald Trump, Jerry Lewis, James Dean, Ty Cobb, Axl Rose, Daryl Gates, Pol Pot-the list is endless.
“In a superficial way, people with bad attitudes don’t interact, negotiate or cooperate with other people,” says Thomas Tutko, a psychology professor at San Jose State University in California, well known for his work in athletics.
“In analyzing what a bad attitude is, it is the individual who is independent, autonomous and really does what he wants to do,” he adds. “A second form of bad attitude is someone who continually downplays and downgrades everything you’re working for.”
Granted, the phrase “bad attitude” is vague and imprecise. After all, bad is a pretty subjective word. Bad according to whom? And a relative one, to boot. Bad compared to what? What is it, specifically, that is not appreciated by those in charge?
“The phrase `bad attitude’ doesn’t make any sense to me. I guess the better phrase would be `does somebody have an inappropriate attitude?’ ” says James Collins, a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
“Does someone who is surly or gruff working at Nordstrom (department store) have a bad attitude?” he adds. “No, he has an inappropriate attitude.”
What people think of as bad attitude is closely related to a person’s self-esteem, says Nan Emmons, training and organizational development manager at Raynet Corp. in Menlo Park, Calif.
“If my self-esteem is being challenged by actions around me, I develop this attitude,” says Emmons. “If I am not feeling significant for any reason, I don’t let blow over anything that reinforces it.”
So a bad attitude could be a response to bosses who make workers feel worthless, institutional regulations that hamstring rather than help and situations that lead to frustration rather than success, she says.
Maybe the problem really lies in whoever is pointing the accusing finger. If only one person doesn’t like your disposition, it may be a mere personality clash, says Tutko. If everyone thinks you have a problem, you’d better start looking in the mirror, bub.
Label it `B’ for bad
Being thought of as an attitude problem-fairly or unfairly-could have far-reaching effects.
“Once you get labeled-no matter if you try to be the most perfect person in the world-it really stays with you, and it’s a hard thing to erase in the work force,” says personnel consultant Cheri Johnson, president of Johnson & Associates Inc. in Los Altos. “If you have a chip on your shoulder, people remember that.”
On the job, the bad-attitude rap could be the kiss of death.
“I think that bad attitude is the key to job loss. And the key to poor maintenance of the job. Ultimately, if you have a bad attitude you’ll lose your job or your company,” says corporate consultant Jean Hollands, president of the Growth & Leadership Center in Mountain View, Calif.
In the past year and a half, about 80 percent of the 200 corporate types Hollands has counseled in her Distinguished Executive Program have needed some kind of attitude adjustment. It doesn’t come cheap. The price tag for the program is at least $5,000 per person for a month of unlimited sessions.
“These are people who are sent to us because they are critical to the company’s product or path and for some reason are not living up to their potential,” Hollands says. “What I’ve learned from this is that it is all attitude.”
Usually that attitude develops from previous experiences on the job, in school or at home, says Hollands. Through the years, you simply develop a style that works for you. For example: You were bullied in school, so now you react with arrogance.
My way
“The biggest attitude problem is when you believe the way that you work and the way that you give support is the only way to do it,” says Hollands.
Take the case of Larry Seehorn, a one-time high-tech entrepreneur whose unrealistic expectations were his undoing.
During most of the ’70s and ’80s, Seehorn concentrated his attention on devising start-up schemes or developing innovations. Some ideas were successful, others weren’t.
But with each one, Seehorn’s style was the same. He’d fill his four-bedroom Sunnyvale, Calif., home full of employees and use it as his base of operations. As time went on he would become unrelentingly pushy, critical and overbearing, demanding that everyone involved give up their lives for his project.
“I was an engineer out of control,” says Seehorn, 53.
The stress of it all led Seehorn to Hollands, whose advice on how to modify his behavior went unheeded. Eventually, his roller-coaster lifestyle led to a stroke in 1985 and his second divorce five years later.
Now Seehorn is trying to lead a more sedate life as the owner of an ice-cream store in Hawaii.
Use caution with children
For children, being dubbed an attitude problem-a description that hints at desperation on the part of a befuddled adult-is a brand that could trouble them throughout their education.
Whether it does depends on how the phrase is used, says Palo Alto, Calif., psychologist Arthur M. Bodin. If a teacher says it cheerfully to a savvy 12-year-old with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, it’ll probably be accepted as good-natured ribbing.
If it’s told to a 5-year-old kindergartner who is fearful of the new school environment and unsure how to follow a teacher’s direction, the tag can be damaging, says Bodin, a past president of the Family Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association.
“I would say that in general, that phrase, `You’ve got an attitude,’ may provoke further what could turn into a power struggle-crystallizing it and formalizing it and making it hard to back away into a more cooperative way of interacting,” Bodin adds.
Chip away at the problem
For athletes, it can cost respect, playing time and money.
“If a manager or a coach sees you as not interacting and they need someone with talent who can inspire others, they might not let you in to play,” says Tutko.
Sometimes there are more serious results. Consider former Golden State Warriors center Chris Washburn, a first-round draft pick.
Washburn’s bad rep dogged him from college to his pro basketball career and helped grease his downward slide after he was banned for life from the NBA because of his drug use, says Tutko. It probably also contributed to the cocaine-possession charges that landed him a three-year jail term.
Obviously there were more factors involved besides Washburn’s attitude. Whenever the question of attitude arises, there’s usually more involved. To get to the real reason someone is acting the way they do, you have to go beyond the surface.
For instance, in one of his Stanford classes, Collins taught a black student whom some white classmates thought of as having a bad attitude. What they were seeing was really an expression of his anger about past racial incidents.
“If you have those kinds of experiences, no matter who you are, you are going to have a reaction to it,” Collins says. “Does it mean you have a chip on your shoulder, or are you just reacting to an experience you’ve had?”
