Behavior occurs all around us everyday at work and the vast majority of it never catches our attention. But when someone does something unexpected or unacceptable, we automatically begin to develop an explanation for the behavior we observed. Unfortunately, the search for an explanation is often clouded by our negative affect (we are pissed!), and our knee jerk reaction leads to the fundamental attribution error (FAE).
Systems don’t behave, employees do, and it is much easier to blame employees than it is to search for systemic causes of behavior. But since YOU now understand the FAE, you know you should take a deep breath, get over your negative affect, and do some more investigating before you reach a conclusion about why your employee did something.
Harold Kelley’s work on attribution theory tells us to look for these three informational ques as we seek to reach an internal or external attribution:
In the video, I go through an example of how each of these three ques are applied to reach both an internal and an external attribution.
If you reach an internal attribution, I would suggest that you approach the employee with the intent to learn more about why they behaved the way they did so that you can help them improve. Be transparent, tell the employee everything you know and everything you have done up to this point to investigate the situation. Then, I would ask the employee what I believe is one of the most effective questions you can learn to ask as a manager, “Can you help me understand why you did that?” There could be other things going on that you are not aware of. The point is the behavior has to change and you want to help, but to do so you need to know as much as possible about the situation.
If you reach an external attribution, the advice is similar. I would still approach the employee, put all your cards on the table, and then ask “Would you be willing to partner with me and others to help improve this process so we can eliminate this problem?” With their help, you can fix that crappy system.
It is much easier to just blame employees when things go wrong, but don’t surrender to expediency. If you will take the time and effort to go through this process, you will be much more effective as a leader.
Tomorrow I will discuss an attribution process that can help us explain our own behavior, so stay tuned!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Related Posts:
Attributions: The Fundamental Attribution Error and the Self-Serving Bias
Attributions: Let’s First Talk About Locus Of Control
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