How to get the best from people - including yourself

A six-part series for UKASFP, by Paul Z Jackson and Janine Waldman, The Solutions Focus.

Part 5 - Top talent + terrible attitude: From problem to performance

Posted 29/05/2022

“Dear Solutions Focus, What do you do when a member of your team has talent but their attitude stinks?” 

Meet Lucy, an experienced senior manager in a city IT and software company. Her manager approached us and asked us if we could ‘fix' Lucy. He explained that while Lucy was good at what she did, her attitude was terrible.

The pressing problem was that she was rude to people. She was also dismissive towards company initiatives. As a result she was continually overlooked for promotion.

Regardless of how much they valued her skills, if her attitude didn’t improve, it would be time for her to move on. We followed a three-step process to turn things around.

Tell us what you want…

Step 1: Build a platform: find out what people want instead of the problem

We asked the manager what he needed to be different. How would he know that Lucy was improving? He replied, ‘She’d have a more positive attitude and support company initiatives, although I don’t know if that’s possible. I’ve tried everything and I just don’t know what to do next.’

We offered to facilitate a meeting between him and Lucy.

At the meeting we checked with each of them what they wanted. The manager repeated his request. Lucy acknowledged this and added. ‘I’d like to get promoted and it would be good if we could get on better.’ 

Given that both of them had been so wrapped up in the problems, this articulating of what each of them wanted was immediate progress.

What counted for Lucy

Step 2: Identify 'counters': discover what skills are in place, ready to apply to the new ambition

We subsequently had a few coaching conversations with Lucy alone, and it was clear that she was engaging, intelligent and passionate about getting results. When you are coaching, you can collect these 'counters', a list of good qualities and strengths.

We established immediately that she was excellent with external customers. When asked about applying these skills inside the organisations she said, ‘I can’t be bothered. It takes ages to explain myself to the sales and operations teams. Their internal processes just slow me down.’

As coaches we know that ‘Why bother?’ is a great question when attitude is the issue. So we asked her ‘Suppose you did bother, even a little bit, how might that be useful for you?’ 

Lucy thought about this, then said, ‘Well, if I do what my boss wants, he might leave me alone a bit more, which would be good. I’d also be more likely to get promoted, which would lead to a pay rise and more interesting work’.  In short, plenty of reasons to bother.

We'd established that she was an excellent project manager, and so she titled her personal change project as ‘Managing my PR within the company'.

Small changes for big differences            

Step 3: Affirm and action: Recognise what people are doing well and build on this

Within weeks, Lucy made impactful changes, such as praising people for what they had done (before telling them what they could do better).

She started meetings by asking people what they wanted from the session, rather than demanding explanations for slowness or mistakes. 

And most significantly, she treated people in the organisation in the same way that she treated her clients – re-applying something she already knew how to do.

Quickly things improved with her manager, who started to notice and praise the times she demonstrated a positive attitude. He even became curious about how she did that. 

Within four months Lucy was promoted to director – and she had a very positive attitude towards that.

It’s frustrating when you know that someone in your organisation is capable, but their competence is overshadowed by their attitude. It’s exciting to realise that by shifting our attention towards ambitions and results - at the heart of a coaching process - we can create rapid and painless improvements.

Paul Z Jackson and Janine Waldman can be contacted at  contact@thesolutionsfocus.co.uk and via  The Solutions Focus website