Bret L. Simmons - Positive Organizational Behavior » Attitudes

Doubt And Trust

Bret L. Simmons — Sun, 22 May 2011 21:21:09 +0000

Dan Frank, the pastor of my church in Reno, challenged us to think this week about how we deal with doubt, then to share our thoughts online. As I thought about doubt, I realized that I don’t give much thought to doubt. I’m sure I have a folder in my cognitive file cabinet labeled “things I doubt,” but there is not much in it and I don’t visit it very often.

I much prefer to classify things I encounter as either 1) things I believe, 2) things I don’t believe, or 3) things I don’t understand.

Even though I love the truth, I don’t necessarily like everything I believe to be true, and not everything I believe matters to me. You might tell me something that I believe, and it matters to you, but it does not really matter to me. There are some things I believe that really matter to me, but I don’t fully understand them. It might be different for you, but I don’t have to fully understand everything in order to believe it. If the source is credible and trustworthy, I can accept what is given to me as true even if I don’t fully comprehend the issue. Things I believe but don’t fully understand certainly merit further consideration, but that consideration is not necessarily urgent.

There are some things I don’t believe where the issue for me is final, and other things I don’t currently believe that I am open to changing my beliefs about in the future. For example, I don’t believe that O.J. is innocent – case closed for me. I also don’t believe that drastic cuts to education funding in Nevada will either reform the system or help our ailing economy in the long run, but I’m hoping I’m wrong.

Every now and then I encounter something from a source that I don’t know well enough to trust that I simply don’t understand enough about to either believe or disbelieve. I suppose this is as close as I get to doubt. If the issue even merits my consideration, I try to quickly move it to one of the categories in either my “belief,” or “disbelief” folders.

If I trust you, one of the reasons is that you have a history of telling me things that I can believe, even though I might not like it; therefore, if you tell me something new I will be motivated to believe it. If you tell me something that turns out not to be completely true, it probably won’t mean that I will distrust you, but it certainly will mean that the trust between us will change. Some things that I previously would have believed and they would have mattered to me might now be things that I either believe but they no longer matter, or I believe but want to investigate further before deciding if they matter.

Trust is very important to me; consequently, I don’t give much thought to doubt.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Fairness Matters

Leadership: There Is No Substitute For Caring

Authentic Leadership

Leader Lab: The Importance Of Working With People You Like

Bret L. Simmons — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 17:57:40 +0000

My new post at The Leader Lab is entitled “The importance of working with people you like.” In this post I describe new research that shows how co-worker satisfaction affects job satisfaction and ultimately life satisfaction. That’s right, if you work with people you don’t like it’s probably affecting your well-being outside of work.

Read the full text of the article by visiting the link above, or listen to me read the text of the post by clicking below. After you read the article or listen to my podcast, please share your thoughts with me in the comment section below.

Leader Lab: Do Older Workers Have Bad Job Attitudes?

Bret L. Simmons — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 01:27:19 +0000

My new post at The Leader Lab looks at new evidence about the relationship between age and job attitudes. Contrary to negative age stereotypes, the evidence from 800 previously published studies on 35 different job attitudes shows that in general, older workers have more positive work attitudes than their younger colleagues. Most of the effects were only modest, but they were significant for 27 of the 35 job attitudes examined in this meta-analysis.

Please visit the link above to read the full text of my article, or check out the link below to hear me read the text. And please share your thoughts – I’d love to know what you think!

Do Older Workers Have Bad Attitudes by BretSimmons

Kiss My Ass

Bret L. Simmons — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:47:58 +0000

photo credit

A few days ago, Joe Scarborough told his critics to “kiss my ass” on his show Morning Joe. I was looking for an excuse to write about “kiss my ass,” so thanks, Joe.

I’m pretty sure I learned this phrase from my father. I can only remember him saying it with a smile on his face. I think one reason we moved around a lot when I was a kid was because my dad might have used this phrase a few too many times at work.

I think this was one of my favorite phrases when I was between the ages of 15 and 25. I don’t remember actually saying it to anyone but my friends, but I know I was thinking it when I quit my first job.

I can’t recall the last time I actually told someone to kiss my ass (it’s been a LONG time), but I must confess I still think it occasionally. For example, if someone asks me to do something extraordinary for them when they’ve never done a darn thing for me other than treat me like crap, I will say to them something like “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry, I really wish I could help you but I can’t right now.” What I’m really thinking is “yea, right, kiss my ass!”

So to all you arrogant, narcissistic, inconsiderate jerks I occasionally have to suffer, the next time you ask me to bend over backwards to make your little world more convenient for you, when I politely tell you “no, I’m sorry”, please know that I am really thinking “pucker up, Buttercup!”

Remarkably Unprofessional Behavior

Millennial Time

Treating People As Adults At Work

An Admirable MBA Student

Bret L. Simmons — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 15:41:38 +0000

I’ve had the privilege of teaching MBA students since 1999. I’ve met both exceptional and abhorrent people over the years. One that I admire as much as anyone I’ve ever met graduated last weekend.

This woman is a single, working mother of a young child with special needs. During the two years I’ve known her, I’ve watched her juggle the demands of her job, child, and coursework with professionalism and grace. I’ve listened to her describe her demands in a matter-of-fact way, but never once heard her complain. She was always positive, always in search of solutions instead of excuses or pity. On top of everything else, she confronted personal health issues and also lost her job. Her response to losing her job was to start her own business.

She had plenty of very legitimate reasons to quit, but she determined to persevere instead.

I think that’s pretty impressive.

If you read this, you’ll know I’m talking about you. I want you to know that in addition to earning your MBA, you also earned my admiration and respect. People like you make the work I do very worthwhile. Thank you.

Exposing Some Truths About Motivating Millennials In The Workplace

Bret L. Simmons — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:12:04 +0000

Tanveer Naseer guest posted at my blog recently an article entitled “Leadership Failure In Our Education System.” I returned the favor by guest posting at his site an article entitled “Exposing Some Truths About Motivating Millennials In The Workforce.”

There is a strong perception that millennials are radically different and harder to manage than the rest of the workforce, and there is no shortage of consultants feeding that perception and selling snake oil to solve the “problem.” The truth is the hype about generational differences in the workforce FAR exceeds the evidence, which is largely anecdotal. A new study I review in my post shows that the work values of millennials are not that much different than the rest of the generations in the workforce, which means the “problem” of managing younger workers is largely a mirage.

The study did confirm that younger workers do have a sense of entitlement, meaning they strongly value extrinsic rewards (e.g. pay, promotion) but are less willing than previous generations to put in long hours to work for those rewards. More than any other generation, younger workers value leisure and time away from work.

The study also confirmed that across all generations, intrinsic rewards remain highly valued. Contrary to popular belief, there really is very little new under the sun when it comes to the fundamentals of motivating behavior at work.

Please click this link and visit Tanveer’s site to read the entire article. While you are there, take a look around at the rest of his blog – he has great content.

Entitlement Vs. Responsibility

Leader Lab: Creating Satisfaction At Work. No Instant Pudding

Bret L. Simmons — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:06:23 +0000

My newest article at The Leader Lab is entitled “Creating Satisfaction at Work: No Instant Pudding.“ In it, I discuss some recent research that shows employees with a positive core self-evaluation (a personality trait) are more likely to be satisfied at work and more likely to behave in ways (e.g. seek more complex tasks) that enhance their satisfaction.

That opens up the familiar can of worms about is it the people that make the place, or the place that make the people? In reality, it’s both. Getting both the right people and the right work environment to drive satisfaction is not easy.

Please wander over to The Leader Lab and check out the full article now!

Personality And The Fate Of Organizations: My Review

Interpersonal Citizenship Behavior: My Most Recent Research

Bret L. Simmons — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 18:07:28 +0000

Research Presentation

View more presentations from Bret Simmons.

My colleagues and I recently conducted some employee research on job performance. Our study sample was employees of a state agency. All of the employees were clerical/office workers, 77% of them were female, and the mean age of the employees that responded to our survey was 44. Employees completed surveys about their job attitudes, personality, and some organizational characteristics. Supervisors rated employees on their performance and interpersonal citizenship behavior.

The value of this type of research to the organization is it gives them a focused understanding of things we know drive employee performance in this specific workplace. Hopefully, some of what we learn about this workplace is generalizable to workplaces with similar characteristics. We can never tell an organization everything that affects performance, but we can give them an idea of a few things we know for certain have an effect so that they can develop some focused interventions.

In this study, we looked at some very established employee attitudes and personality traits. The big attitudes we looked at were organizational commitment (the extent they like working for the organization), job satisfaction (with pay, promotion, supervision, co-workers, and the work itself), and trust in the immediate supervisor. The personality traits we looked at were core-self evaluation (locus of control, self esteem, self-efficacy, emotional stability) and secure attachment (how well people can work autonomously and with others).

In addition to these well established variables, we also looked at organizational climate and something called interpersonal citizenship behavior (ICB). ICB is the extent to which a worker goes above and beyond their normal job description to help their co-workers.

Of all the variables we studied, only ICB was a significant predictor of employee performance in this organization. The only significant predictors of ICB were satisfaction with the supervisor and satisfaction with co-workers. The slides shown above provide the specific questions we used to assess performance, ICB, and satisfaction.

Employee personality was not a direct and significant predictor of employee performance. This was not a huge surprise since personality rarely has a direct effect on performance. The very important job attitudes trust and commitment also did not affect performance in this study, which was unexpected.

In this organization, it did not matter how the employees felt about the organization or the work itself, but it did matter how they felt about each other and their direct supervisor. These interpersonal connections facilitate the employees’ ability to do their jobs.

Relationships matter.

Here are the recommendations we made to the organization based on our specific findings:

Encourage employees to help each other at work and recognize/reward them when they do.
Provide supervisors the training to become excellent leaders. Recognize and reward them for their treatment of employees.
Focus on selection and promotion systems. Hire employees with a history of helping others at work and ONLY promote to management employees that are good citizens.
Include interpersonal citizenship in your formal performance appraisal process

Do You Know What Drive Work Performance? Part 2

The Importance Of Understanding Personality And Attitudes

Bad Employee Attitude. Really?

I Am Responsible For The Attractive And Unattractive Parts Of Who I Am

Bret L. Simmons — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:48:55 +0000

The next meditation on developing courageous followership from Ira Chaleff’s book The Courageous Follower is: I am responsible for the attractive and unattractive parts of who I am. This is a tough but important principle to practice.

We are who we are. By the time we reach adulthood, our personalities are relatively stable. Our responsibility is to understand our personality and how it affects what we are attracted to, what we like to avoid, and how we interact with others as we engage in both the activities that we love and those that we despise. We can’t change who we are, but we can control what we do and how we interact with others along the way. It is unacceptable to blame personality for bad choices or bad behavior.

Our attitudes, on the other hand, are subject to change. As I have said before, please stop thinking in terms of “good attitude” and “bad attitude” - those approaches are not useful. If we can identify a specific attitude at work in ourselves, then we can take specific action to change that attitude. For example, if we realize that we have low job satisfaction, then by understanding the most powerful drivers of satisfaction at work we can partner with others to try to improve those characteristics of the job and work environment with the hope of eventually becoming more satisfied.

Because of the self-serving bias in explaining our behavior, it is much easier to see and take credit for the attractive parts of who we think we are, and much more difficult to identify and take ownership of the unattractive parts. We are very skilled at deceiving ourselves into into believing things about ourselves that are distorted or simply not true.

One way we facilitate this skilled unawareness is to surround ourselves with people just like us. We are much more comfortable with people that we perceive to be like us along a dimension that is core to our identity and much less comfortable with people that provide a stark contrast to who we think we are. This exclusivity makes it easier to justify who we are and those that fit with us and to discount and disregard any notion of a need to change and grow.

We also must assume full responsibility for our own happiness. Smile, because happiness is a choice and we should appreciate how the attractive parts of who we are can make a significant difference in the lives of others.

We need to see clearly how who we are affects how we follow because how we follow will more than anything affect who we ultimately become.

The Importance Of Understanding Personalities And Attitudes

ACT Change: Recognize Hypocrisy And Patterns Of Self-Deception

Attributions: The Fundamental Attribution Error And The Self-Serving Bias

Exclusivity Fits

Attributions: The Fundamental Attribution Error and The Self-Serving Bias

Bret L. Simmons — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:07:50 +0000

In this third video in my series on attribution, I explain the two powerful attribution errors that often lead us to develop an inaccurate explanation for the behavior we observe in ourselves and others. The explanation for why folks behave the way they do will always be a combination of something internal which we believe they can control - e.g. personality, attitudes, values – and something external which they cannot easily control – e.g. policies, procedures, training, staffing, equipment.

There is a powerful tendency to attribute to internal causes nearly all of the behavior we observe in others. So we blame folks when things go wrong and make them heroes when things go well. This is a Fundamental Attribution Error because it is very likely that their behavior was driven by external things outside of their control.

Systemic causes of behavior are powerful but often very difficult to clearly identify and understand. Instead of struggling with the complexity, people prefer quick, seemingly simple explanations (those folks are lazy) and solutions (get rid of the deadwood) so they can move on to the next fire they have to put out. They rarely see how their own actions cause the very problems they lament.

There is an equally powerful tendency to cast ourselves in the best light possible as we explain our own behavior. When things go well, it is of course something about us – e.g. talent, attitudes, motivation – that can explain our success. And when things go poorly, we always seem to find an excuse in factors beyond our control. This Self-Serving Bias leads to inaccurate explanations, ineffective action, and interpersonal conflict.

These attribution errors are so powerful that even if you are aware of them you will struggle to avoid them, especially when the stakes are high and the problems hit close to home. But you will never become a truly effective leader or follower until you can master your attributions.

“The cure can be worse than the disease.” Peter Senge

Tomorrow I will discuss one process we can use to help us explain the behavior we observe in others, so stay tuned!

Attributions: An Introduction

Attribution: Let’s Talk First About Locus Of Control