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Soft skills update: Developing a winning attitude

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9th Jun 2009
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Peter Gill, director of business development consultancy Boreas Partnership (UK) Ltd, considers attitude and the impact it has on ourselves, those around us and the development of business success.

There's a saying that goes:‘Attitude, not aptitude controls your altitude’. When asked the simple question, “how are you today?”, what is your typical response? Is it:

  • “Fair to middling”.
     
  • “Mustn’t grumble”.
     
  • “Can’t complain”.
     
  • “I’m fine, thank you”.
     
  • “OK”.
     
  • “Actually, I’ve got a back ache/sore neck/sunburn/ a problem with my car/dog/spouse, etc.”

Do these responses sound familiar? Do you recognise yourself in giving such a response? Most of us, if pushed, would have to admit that these responses are typical of how we respond when asked the simple question: “How are you today?”As a test, try asking people during the day how they are and listen to what they actually say. “OK” came out on top when we did it in the office.

What if we answered “I’m fantastic, how are you?” Nothing else, simply “I’m fantastic, how are you?” What reaction would this provoke from the person you were speaking to? The likelihood is that you would get a positive response back. The other party would be likely to mirror and embrace your confidence and attitude – attitudes are contagious. If you don’t like the idea of using the word fantastic, then how about excellent, brilliant, wonderful, marvellous, stupendous or great - now you have a word for every day of the week, none of them being “OK”.

The issue here is one of attitude. The three key reasons for considering attitude this month are as follows:

  • Personal feelings and the effect on those around you
    Having a positive attitude will automatically make you feel upbeat. You will assume an air of confidence that in turn influences the people you work with, rubs off on them and gives them more confidence in what they are doing.
  • You reap what you sow
    Giving off a positive energy will in turn make positive things come back to you. For example, we often hear how a person that makes a decision on waking to have a successful day has exactly that. The positive mindset energises them and they achieve exactly what they had set out to achieve.

     

  • Customer relationships and staff
    Your staff members are often the people talking to the customer and prospects on a daily basis, helping with minor issues and dealing with the major ones, or just generally making contact. If the attitude of the staff is positive, upbeat and confident, the customer is likely to feel that the business is in control and doing well. The confidence exuded from the staff means that there are no problems that cannot be resolved and your business has a ‘can-do’ attitude. Long live the relationship with the customer.

Attitude
Attitude is how we express our likes and dislikes towards people, occurrences and things. We all have the power to control our own attitude. We have all heard about maintaining a positive mental attitude (PMA), so how do we do this and why is it important?

Developing a winning attitude, a can-do approach, is vital to all of us if we are going to live longer, healthier and more prosperous lives. Research has shown that if a person’s internal dialogue is continually negative then the risk that the hormones being produced in the body will lead to stress and therefore stress related diseases, is significantly higher than a person whose internal dialogue is continually positive.

What does your attitude have to do with client relationships? Everything! Your attitude in business affects everything from your promotion opportunities to the atmosphere in the office through to the client service. If you are at the helm of the business your attitude impacts everybody within the business. Whether you project a positive or a negative attitude, the people around you feel it and are also likely to adopt it.

Literally hundreds of books have been written on and around the subject of attitude: Napoleon Hill & W. Clement Stone wrote ‘Success through a Positive Mental Attitude’; Norman Vincent Peale wrote ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ and Dr David Schwartz wrote ‘The Magic of Thinking Big’. How many of us read and embrace such material?

How do we develop a winning attitude?
There are many ways a person can go about developing a positive, winning, attitude.

  • Maintaining a sense of perspective
    The simple things in life often provide the most pleasure and so keeping free time for a favourite pastime can be very beneficial. Successful people with a winning attitude often both work hard and play hard. This may have become a cliché, however, it’s becoming increasingly recognised in the workplace that in order to reduce stress, the individuals within the organisation should be encouraged to do something outside of work to take the mind off work. Go out there and have some fun, both at home and at work, because life is hard enough.
  • Help others
    Helping other people helps to maintain a positive attitude to life. This might mean helping a friend or neighbour outside of work or helping somebody else in work. Rather than ignoring somebody within work who is struggling to meet a deadline or achieve their goal, offer support and do something which will support the overall development of the business and people within, even if it doesn’t directly help you. Eventually this will come back positively to you.
  • Visualisation
    Visualisation is a technique that can be used to improve attitude and therefore achieve success. In the book ‘Psycho Cybernetics’ by Maxwell Maltz this technique is discussed in great detail. Put very simply, this technique involves projecting ahead, previewing events in your own mind and visualising yourself being successful.

    Sports and business people often use the visualisation technique ahead of important events. They focus on the end goal, psyche themselves up and visualise their success in winning. Their self motivation is evident in their performance on the day. Take the interview with the two tennis finalists at Wimbledon. The loser said it had been their dream to play in the final at Wimbledon; the winner said it had been their dream to win the final at Wimbledon. Decide what you want, play a successful outcome through in your mind, and then live it.

  • Assess your personal strengths and weaknesses
    This technique to help develop a winning attitude focuses on understanding our own strengths and weaknesses, acting on the former and ensuring that the latter don’t get in our way. While we can’t simply sweep our liabilities under the carpet, we can focus our attention on the strengths and take action to move forward utilising our key strengths. Understanding your own weaknesses adds to your strengths – play to your strengths.
  • Re-programme your brain
    Re-programming your brain is the method of ensuring the input is positive rather than negative. As with software systems, rubbish in equals rubbish out. If we are to develop a winning attitude we have to put the good, positive input into our brain so that we can work with positive information and encourage the output to then be positive. Reading the ‘doom and gloom’ over the past few months hasn’t helped many of us. Adopting a positive, winning, attitude can be made easier by adding the kind of positive input which dictates success. It’s up to us to decide whether to receive information either positively or negatively and then what to do with it.
  • Positive mental attitude
    Maintaining a PMA to develop client relationships is important as is the ‘bedside manner’. We often complain about doctors lacking in social skills when dealing with patients and we must take heed ourselves; clients will respond better when the person sitting opposite them has strong inter-personal skills. Being cool under pressure and able to put ourselves in the client shoes is important. How do we tend to respond when somebody is curt, off-hand or rude with us? We often find ourselves wishing we were dealing with somebody else and wanting to give the person a piece of our minds. The chances are we may never go back. Be the business people want to come back to and refer to others.

The winning attitude and supportive ‘bedside manner’ should lead to us being pro-active and solution orientated. The fact that most clients want us to be pro-active should confirm that this approach is likely to produce the desired results for them and us. Always promote your confidence in your business to your clients.

Armed with the techniques to develop or maintain a winning, positive attitude, we can focus our attention on developing customer relationships and to winning additional business; now that’s a result!

Summary
To develop a winning attitude, remember to:
 

  • Maintain a sense of perspective.
     
  • Preserve some me-time.
     
  • Help and support others.
     
  • Use visualisation techniques.
     
  • Assess your personal strengths and weaknesses.
     
  • Ensure positive input to create a positive output.
     
  • Develop a confident, positive ‘bedside manner’ with clients.
     
  • Be pro-active and solution orientated.

Peter Gill is director of the Boreas Partnership, a business development consultancy working with accountancy practices to increase fee income, reduce costs and increase profits per partner. For more information, click here
 

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