[February 10, 2017] There’s an old saying that a bad attitude is like a flat tire, you’ll never go anywhere without changing it. In my experience, that’s very true. We’ve all had both good and bad days in our personal lives and our attitudes have reflected it. But it is the bad attitude of a leader that makes for particularly bad leadership.
My first interaction with a “real” U.S. Army sergeant was at the Combat Basic Training facility in Fort Polk, Louisiana; August and the hottest and most humid time of the year. He was a combat veteran of Vietnam and the early 1970’s vets were not being treated well by American society at that time. Reflecting back on my training days at Polk, I think he might have been taking out some of his frustration on us. He certainly had a bad attitude and all us Privates suffered for it.
Remember that leadership is about convincing others to do well. It’s about showing them that they matter (respect) and that they are capable of great things (trust and confidence). It’s about leaders who exercise their social and intellectual skills to influence people to achieve a particular goal they would not normally try to obtain. A leader with a good attitude can achieve anything.
“The only disability in life is a bad attitude.” – Scott Hamilton
Like a good attitude, a bad attitude can be contagious.1,2,3 Good attitudes means that a person is well mannered, has a bright outlook, respectful and admirable, and happy to be around. Bad attitudes means dwelling on problems, rudeness, self-absorption, and unpleasantness. At home and at work our attitude influences how we behave around others.
Sadly, a bad attitude is as destructive as it is easy. Leaders especially find it easy with the power they weld over others. Those with bad attitudes make the lives of others in their sphere of influence unpleasant at best. It also makes the lives of those with a bad attitude much less successful and insufferable to them too.
The sergeant who gave us Privates such a hard time in basic training was never relieved of duty but he was admonished by the company commander. Many years later I discovered that he retired early from the army. He needed help and apparently he never received either assistance or good treatment from the military chain of command.
I learned from the unpleasantness of those months at Fort Polk and I promised myself that I would never repeat those mistakes. I’ve taken it to heart and, hopefully, I never showed a bad attitude around soldiers like the army sergeant did around us.
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- https://www.peterstark.com/leaders-attitude-contagious/#
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/joefolkman/2016/02/03/5-attitudes-that-define-great-leaders/#244ad325783d
- http://katenasser.com/leaders-don%e2%80%99t-coach-a-bad-attitude/