'The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering their attitude.’ William James, psychologist, 1842-1910.
Change in the workplace is not new. Nonetheless, today the combining forces of technology, economics, and politics are accelerating the pace of change. Pressure is on both organisations and their people to transform and to perform if they are to not just survive but thrive.
The people who do best in periods of change are those people who possess skills and the right attitude. The issue is that these two features do not necessarily co-exist in every individual (see: ‘Why Good Talent Can Be Poor Talent, 3rd April, 2017), nor are these people in high supply.
Before we go further let’s understand what comprises ‘resilient talent’. Individuals who are:
Confident in themselves and their capabilities;
Optimistic and positive;
Highly self-aware, regularly assessing their skills and capabilities;
Inwardly strong and persistent;
Disciplined and dedicated to continuous learning and developing multiple skills;
Fit and keep themselves so in both body and mind;
Focused upon generating success for their organisation, team, as well as themselves;
Self-directed and in full control of their career, knowing what they want and when.
If organisations are going to attract, retain, as well as develop people with these features current recruitment methods, leadership development, and organisational operating models need to change.
Most organisational recruiting is focused upon short-term skill needs without understanding that in times of significant change the skills required to work in today’s workplace will not necessarily be the skills needed in tomorrow’s. As the pace of change accelerates the rate of skill depreciation corresponding accelerates, with many skills becoming outdated. Too often there is also a focus upon recruiting ‘sector experience’ than can in turn be narrow and limiting.
To compound these two issues, many organisations use psychological profiling to support their recruiting decisions, as well as their development programs, without understanding that most of these instruments are rooted in traits that form a person’s personality that in the main are static – traits that mean personality does not change much once formed. A trait today can, like a skill, become outdated tomorrow.
Attitude is very different to personality, for it is highly dynamic in nature being the outcome of an individual’s current thinking - their beliefs - about themselves, others, their organisation, etc., what psychologists refer to as an ‘object’. Our attitudes, like our beliefs from which they are formed, can and do change from moment to moment during a day. Few organisations recruit for attitude; maybe many should.
Many organisations have unwittingly developed constraining structures, processes, systems and cultures that suppresses ‘talent’ who invariably will leave such organisations, for they know that there are far better environments elsewhere where their skills and attitudes can work ‘with the grain and not against it.’
Leadership is the underlying issue in this triad of: resilient talent, outdated recruiting, and operating models. Leaders are urgently required, but only those who can in William James’ advice can: ‘alter their attitude’.
Highly effective leaders share all of the same characteristics as ‘resilient talent’. However two constructs really stand out as ‘leader critical’: firstly, the need for ‘future orientation’ and secondly, positive attitude.
‘Future orientation’ is the capacity to think about the future – as a leader, where ‘we’ are going rather than where have we been looking for the opportunities of tomorrow rather than focusing on the problems of the past. Psychological research concludes that only some 10% of people are ‘future orientated’ that includes entrepreneurs, top sales people, inventors and creators but excludes many business leaders as being too occupied with the ‘here and now’ – short-termism.
To maintain ‘future orientation’ requires an individual to generate positive beliefs about them-self as well as what and where they want to be in say five years – they can delay gratification for something more meaningful. The positivity of such people means that they can inspire other people, their friends, their work colleagues, their customers and other people they may interact with. These people are optimistic and significantly enthusiastic to be around. This is not to be confused with ‘charisma’, for many uncharismatic people have been great leaders, entrepreneurs, sales people, and inventors.
A word of caution: a high percentage of us - up to 90% according to research - think of ourselves as being ‘better’ than we are. We suffer from what has been termed, ‘illusory superiority’.
Interestingly, William James suggested some 125-years ago that ‘true’ beliefs can prove ‘useful’ to the believer, but other beliefs not.
(William James was a leading Harvard academic, firstly a philosopher and secondly a major founding father of psychology. He was the author ‘The Principles of Psychology, a twelve-hundred page ‘masterwork’ published in 1890 that has ever since influenced generations of thinkers from philosophy, psychology, medicine, science, and sociology).