TUDE

That post heading isn’t one of my own inventions. I have borrowed it from an article I just read recently (click here). I think I have heard something like this before but  the article  really brings home the importance of an employee’s attitude. In particular the point that you probably can not change a person’s attitude but you can change their skill and knowledge levels. When I was a Human Resource Manager (too many years ago now) I remember that the biggest people issue I had to constantly deal with was attitude and it’s connection to motivation.

This does bring up a couple of very interesting challenges that you can examine in your organisation provided that you accept the statement that you need to hire for attitude and train for skill.

1. Do you actually hire for attitude. There is a whole blog post in itself. I would guess that most people do not or don’t know how to even of they wanted to?

2. If you do (1) poorly and you don’t  do any training then how far are you behind in maintaining and developing an effective workforce?

3. If you are training your staff are you developing the appropriate to skills to match the attitude you desire?

4. Do you even know what attitude you want your staff to have. Have you examined what your customers or clients expect your staff’s  attitude to be?

What do you think? Do you have any answers?

Now for the  big question. If you are a training organisation then the majority of you would have hired trainers and assessors based on a qualification (in Australia that would be C IV in Training and Assessment) but those qualifications do not take into account attitude. I have said it before in other blog posts that good trainers have the appropriate qualifications but great, inspirational trainers have personality and the right attitude. Often competency based programs do not adequately cover attitude or personal attributes very well because they are predominantly designed to cover skill and knowledge. In the time frame that they are taught the aspect of  attitude may be discussed but it could never be adequately covered or expected to be assessed.

So , do you know what the appropriate attitude for your trainers should be?

Do you recruit your trainers based on their attitude?

Do you help your trainers to understand what the appropriate attitude should be and assist them to develop this attitude?

Or, are you just hiring and maintaining a group of qualified trainers? Qualified does not mean best or great or what your customers and clients most likely expect or want.

Over to you……….