In my book, 50 Things You Can Do NOW to Help Keep Your Job (May 2011, Kings Crown Publishing), I relate how just about every one of the fifty individual items mentioned in the book can be placed into one of two buckets. One of those buckets is labeled “Communication skills” and the other is labeled “People skills.” The underlying factor common to both is how well you manage your attitude. There’s a near limitless supply of technically qualified candidates for just about every kind of job (some of those jobs are filled quicker than others, though), but not every technically qualified candidate has the right attitudes to ensure success.
Leadership IQ tracked 20,000 new hires over a three-year period and discovered that when new hires fail, it’s not because of any lack of technical proficiency–it’s because they failed to display the necessary attitudes for success. Leadership IQ reports that 46% (that’s 9,200 people) got fired, received poor performance reviews, or had letters of reprimand placed in their personnel file within their first eighteen months on the job.
Here are the top 5 reasons why new hires failed*:
- 26% failed for lack of coachability
- 23% failed for lack of emotional intelligence
- 17% failed for lack of motivation
- 15% failed for wrong temperament for the organization
- 11% failed for lack of technical competence
Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, lists in his book, Hiring for Attitude, the differences between high and low performers (which parallels my assessment in 50 Things):
- High performers are highly collaborative, assist others without being asked without seeking recognition or reward
- Low performers routinely seek out individual recognition and focus on personal reward
- High performers provide constructive, respectful feedback to colleagues
- Low performers often provide feedback that angers or belittles colleagues
- High performers take personal responsibility for quality and timeliness of project work without excuses or blame
- Low performers blame others consistently for errors, delays and poor quality of project work
- High performers are self-directed learners, and are self-motivated to acquire new skills and knowledge they need for the job
- Low performers have a negative disposition and often provide excuses for why a process or task won’t work instead of determining how to make it work
Thomas Jefferson once wrote “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
The evidence speaks for itself.
*as published in The Journal of the American Management Association Vo. 10, No. 4 Winter 2011-2012, p. 22.
