Attitude

Written by Jason Haines

“Ability is what you are capable of doing. Motivation determines what you can do. Attitude determines how well you can do it.” -Lou Holtz

How do you choose to show up everyday to your job, in front of your family, or anywhere you go and meet people? We don’t always get to choose our circumstances, but we can choose how those circumstances affect us while we are attending that moment. There have been times when we have faced certain situations that are out of our control or control our attitudes. These are the times that we must learn from, especially if we are leading people.

In the field of Lean leadership, we must always check our attitude and make sure we have a good attitude towards what we are doing. With Lean things are not always going to go right and the people who are being led will not always be happy. When things don’t go right leaders of any Lean project need to be able to be there to help with the problems and pick up their people to keep the project moving forward. Failure can be fatal if we have the wrong attitude towards it. If we don’t have a positive attitude the failure can stop and destroy the project, our careers, or the organization which in the long run will frustrate our followers or us. Because if we give up nothing will change for the better.

Attitude is something that we all must be very weary of because it is easy to get into the trap of having a horrible attitude. We are inundated with so many bad things every day whether it be through the news or other forms of life that show up as negativity. It is very easy for us feed into that negativity if we don’t stop and do our own research on the things we are being told. This goes into Lean management as well because we must find the root cause of how things failed and how we can fix the problems that are hampering the people on the floor. If we have a bad attitude, or a non-caring attitude, our people will always see how we act towards things.

Attitude reflects leadership and the attitude of the leader bleeds out amongst the people that they are leading. A leader with a bad attitude will not be able to get their followers to help them out in times of need. When this happens, the leader is stuck doing everything themselves and that is when the leader starts to get animosity towards their people. This hurts the whole team in the long run because they are not moving forward and stuck. When organizations are stuck, or not moving forward, they are more apt to fail or have major problems in the future.

For us to make a change in people’s attitude towards the organization we, as leaders, must look inward and make the proper changes in ourselves. Leadership must be started with the leader and fed forth to the people that they are leading. If the leader has a bad attitude, then the people that they lead will have a bad attitude. This goes in every facet of leadership because we as leaders must work on ourselves and be able to lead ourselves before we can lead anyone. Leadership must realize the people follow us, and if we have a bad attitude towards things our people will as well in our organization.

People feed off things that leaders do in any facet that they are in, but this comes through a lot in the attitude that we have towards the work we do. If we treat people as only a number people will see this and think we are using them as a means to an end. As the saying goes, “people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care,” and this holds true in anything that a leader does. Our attitudes as leaders must show that we care more about the people than we do about the job that is being completed. We must be part of the process and show the way to go to ALL our people. We learn this by learning to lead ourselves first.

So, what do I mean by leading ourselves first before we can lead others around us? First, we must learn what makes us go and how to have a good attitude towards all things. We must learn how to love, not like, but love every situation and not let it affect us negatively. When we let things affect us negatively, we lose our way and people following us lose theirs as well. We must learn how to be the light so when things get tough, we can keep people moving forward whether in success and in failure. As the leader we must know when to change that is best for the organization so we can continually be successful. When learning to guide ourselves we are learning our vision and then we can take that vision to other people. If we don’t believe in our vision people will not follow us.

Over the years I have had adversity that could have affected my attitude, and sometimes it did.  I had to make a turnaround and change the way those things affected me. There have been situations that have happened to all of us that we must find a way to respond to, so it doesn’t get us down. The biggest thing we need to do is access the situation and decide what happened and what we can change and do better next time. We need to step back and make sure that we do not make that same mistake and not blame it on our situation. I come from an area that does a lot of blaming their situation on where they come from, and that people from there are just not made to get ahead, but I think my family (minus a few) always taught me to hold our head up high and walk through the storm. There will be better days.

The biggest contributor to me having a decent attitude was always my grandfather who taught me about life and how to treat people. Though there was a time I lost my way, I am starting to get back on track to where I want to be. For a few years I had a lot of animosity that held me back in certain situations, now that I look back it wasn’t beneficial to myself or the people around me. My grandfather always told me to hang in there and it will get better, and now that I am growing professionally his words hold true. I hope to bring this mentality moving forward to my kids, future jobs, clients, and people I meet along the way. Your attitude takes you far in life. I am also thankful for my wife, who keeps me on the straight and narrow because the last year has not been the easy on any of us.

At the end of the day we as leaders must learn how to control our attitude because the people who follow us will see it and that is how they will react. As the famous saying goes, “attitude reflects leadership.” If the people see that we don’t care, then they won’t care about what we are trying to accomplish.

Helping grow your business through process improvement!!