Attitude is the biggest work challenge

When I train leadership classes, the most common problem that I hear about from students is that they don't know how to manage their employees' bad attitudes. I advise them to stop trying to manage their employees so much and lead them more.

Using a collaborative leadership approach means involving everyone in your organization in team discussions, which demonstrates that everyone is equally valued to you as a manager. To open up collaborative discussion, a leader can state their perspective with "I" statements and follow them with open-ended questions to understand their employee's perspective.

Often times an employee's negative attitude comes from their different perspective or values that are not shared by the manager. Managers create their employees' bad attitudes, or add to them, by not communicating respectfully and actively listening to understand them. It takes some extra time to figure out how to get on the same page, but it will pay off with increased understanding and respect at work, therefore, more work can be accomplished. You create a win-win situation in which the employee is treated as they want and the employer getting better work results.