Comments on: Attribution: Let’s Talk First About Locus Of Control

By: Bret L. Simmons

Bret L. Simmons — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:46:43 +0000

Welcome, Susan! LOC is a big and important concept by itself, so I appreciate your added insight here. Due to perceptual biases, we are probably more likely to accurately perceive LOC in others than in ourselves. I think it will be easier for a leader to examine their attributions than it will be to examine their LOC, and I think the big payoff is in attributions, as I will explain this week.

As a personality trait, theoretically people should NOT be very successful shifting thier LOC over time. I do believe personality traits are maliable, but the changes are often very slow.

Another key for leaders is to realize YOU will NOT be able to change someone’s LOC, so don’t even try!! People are who they are and we can’t change their core personalities – don’t even want to. But we CAN change their behavior and we CAN work on their attributions.

The key to all of this is understanding how to read personalities, attitudes, and attributions in people and understanding what you should and should not try to do as you interact with them.

Thanks for stopping by and helping this conversation along, Susan! Bret

By: Susan Zelinski

Susan Zelinski — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:47:22 +0000

Bret,
I think your readers would gain great benefit if you expanded on the response you provided to Tom in one of your subsequent posts on the topic.

Internal LOC is a critical success factor for leaders for a multitude of reasons. Of particular importance from my perspective – those with ILOC are more resilient to personal and organizational challenges, learn from every opportunity and are more productive because they focus on what they CAN do rather than what others are doing to prevent their execution and delivery.

It’s a great topic to expand on and I believe would offer leaders some awesome opportunity for evaluation and introspection! Of additional value would be to suggest how people can shift their LOC from external to internal over time.

Be well in life and leadership!

By: Bret L. Simmons

Bret L. Simmons — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:55:25 +0000

Good questions, Tom. As a personality trait, LOC is going to be stable. I want to know if someone has a tendency to accept responsibility and more importantly how they go about that. I want to get as many of the folks I manage to being able to take autonomous action, and I think someone with an internal LOC will get there faster while someone with an external LOC will have a harder time with that. Someone with an external LOC will be more inclined to look for something or someone to blame when things go wrong, and I want to be able to anticipate that. Hope that helps! Thanks for sharing your questions. Bret

By: Tom Glover

Tom Glover — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:45:56 +0000

Bret, this is good stuff. I’m really interested in knowing more about two things that you said in your video:

First, you said that when you meet someone new LOC is one of the most important things you listen for. I’m wondering why this one is so important for you?

Second, and I assume the answer to my first question has something tho do with this one, you said that you prefer to work with someone with and internal LOC. Again, I’m wondering what it is that you prefer about working with folks with internal LOC?