Using The Workplace Attitudes Test With Existing Employees and The Supervisor Who Was Too Good

In most cases, people are hired for their aptitude and fired for their attitude. The primary goal of the Workplace Attitudes Test is to identify prospective employees with problem attitudes so the interviewer has the info and may decide not to hire them. In fact our welcome aboard letter reads as follows:

Congratulations,

You are about to enter a new era of employee selection. This is truly a breakthrough. Now for the first time you can understand the values that motivate potential employees. When selecting new hires you can avoid the landmines while you pick the cherries.

Without getting too complicated, we analyze workplace attitudes to predict likely behavior.

Wouldn’t you like to avoid potential employees who may sue you or your company?
How about identifying gadflies who would rather socialize than work?
Maybe you would like to know about people who are likely to be hostile to your customers or clients?
Conversely, how would you like to find people who are grateful to have a job, who are willing to put in extra effort, and who are team players?

Now you can.

All you need to do is have job candidates take the Workplace Attitudes Test which consists of forty-five questions, and we will evaluate it for you. You then receive a bar chart that describes the individual’s relevant workplace values and an overall score that tells you how likely they are to be disruptive in the work place. Remember, everyone is on their best behavior during the job interview. With the Workplace Attitudes Test you are in a position to hire good employees by avoiding bad ones. It makes you a better interviewer and applies to a variety of environments including business, non-profits, and the public sector.

Just because Ben Franklin wanted to make the turkey our national bird doesn’t mean that you have to hire one

This sums up the primary purpose of the Workplace Attitudes Test. Still, many companies have used it to evaluate and help existing employees. I used to think that this was a little like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped. After all, once a person has worked for your organization you should know who has problem attitudes.

Also, the test reports on bad attitudes and as mentioned these are difficult to discuss. For example, an interviewer might not want to say “I see here that you are quite judgmental” or “I note that you tend to be a bit vindictive.” Dale Carnegie who wrote “How to Win Friends and Influence People” would not approve.

You can have the information but you don’t need to state it in a negative way. Each attitude relevant to the workplace is not single dimension, rather it exists on a continuum. That is, each bad attitude that is related to “disruptive behavior” has a corresponding attitude that is related to “getting along with people.” Next, I will look at the nine attitudes to show you what I mean.

Judgmental versus Accepting

Vindictive versus Forgiving

Adversarial versus Accommodating

Egocentric versus People-Oriented

Entitled versus Unassuming

Undisciplined versus Self-Disciplined

Insubordinate versus Respectful

Risk-Inclined versus Cautious

Non-Traditional versus Traditional

Each of the “bad” or disruptive attitudes has a corresponding “good” of socially-skilled attitude. Note our research has shown that the bad attitudes are disruptive only when they are extreme.

When working with existing employees and when reporting the results to a job candidate, it is the positive attitudes that are reported. It is important for the interviewer to understand that extreme and negative attitudes are warning signals, but is better to report the results in a positive way.

Although, it is the primary goal of the Workplace Attitudes Test to screen out potentially disruptive employees it is also useful for matching people to different types of workplace environments and to help some employees perform their jobs better.

In terms of matching people to work environments, command-and-control workplaces such as the military or the Catholic Church will likely find that individuals with respect for tradition and a respect for authority tend to fit in better. Conversely, entrepreneurial or team-building organizations may not need as much respect for authority and tradition and would prosper with people who are more self-disciplined and people oriented.

In one instance, the Workplace Attitude Test helped a young supervisor work with older sales representatives. Joyce was in her late twenties and supervised six sales reps who were twice her age. She did a great job. All of her reports were done on time, her meetings were short and efficient all of her staff liked her, business was great and she was miserable.

She wasn’t sure why she was miserable and discussions with her boss didn’t help. The big boss wanted to keep her and gave her raises and more time off, but still she was miserable. At that time, the Workplace Attitudes Test was under development and the entire staff agreed to take the test. No one had warning signals but the test solved the mystery.

Joyce proved to be accepting, forgiving, accommodating, people-oriented, unassuming, self-discipline somewhat cautious and very traditional.

Joyce’s sales reps were, well, sales reps. They too had good people skills, but they had little respect for authority, were a bit undisciplined, and quite entitled.

In short, Joyce wanted to please people, and her sales reps tended to take advantage of her. She met everyone’s needs but her own.

I am reminded of a great quote from the movie, “Three Days of the Condor” when a young CIA agent asks a grizzled old veteran played by John Housman, “What do you miss about the old days (referring World War II)?” Houseman replied, “The clarity.”

Joyce finally had clarity and the story has a happy ending. Joyce got a private office and a gatekeeper secretary. The sales reps could no longer barge in and talk to her at anytime. They had to make an appointment, unless it was critical, and they received an incentive to get their reports on time.

Joyce regained her sanity and the organization kept a good supervisor. To learn more, see http://www.workplaceattitudes.com/.

People Can Seem To Be So Darn Nice

I have come to the conclusion that I am a lousy interviewer. I have hired some real turkeys. I remember thinking what nice people they seemed to be. In future blog entries I’ll tell you about some of the worst but the person that I am thinking about now is a drama queen named “Gloria.” Of course, at the time, I didn’t know that she was a drama queen. After all, she made it obvious that she thought that I was clever and intelligent and that counts for a lot.

Later, I developed the Workplace Attitudes Test (WAT) and she agreed to take the test. The results showed that she is - well, a drama queen. She tested very high on entitled, undisciplined and insubordinate but what did I know? Now I consider the WAT the best darn bad-attitude screening device available today and Gloria deserves some of the credit for inspiring me to develop it.

Gloria did some part-time work for my company and then moved on when she found a full-time job. Gloria makes a good first impression because she has seemingly good social skills which are important in an interview. On the job, she is a disaster. She cannot focus because she prefers to socialize, and she quickly ignores the chain of command. She often fails to do her job or finish a project and always blames someone else. In other words, her survival skills are highly developed and she has a tendency to scapegoat people.

Supervising Gloria became a Herculean task for her new boss. Picture this, she was on several committees, interacted with almost everybody, especially the higher-ups and to her, work was party time. Several of her colleagues and her immediate boss became fed up with her but by then she had friends in all the right places.

It took over a year but after countless intrigue, much of it orchestrated by Gloria herself, she was finally encouraged to move on. And if you don’t want to fire someone like Gloria, you give her a good recommendation to make sure that she moves on. Did I mention that one of the people that Gloria befriended was the organization’s legal counsel? He thought a good recommendation might be wise. Of course, one can’t outright lie but everyone agreed that Gloria has great people skills. Take a look at www.workplaceattitudes.com and see what Gloria helped inspire.

Will Disruptive People Answer Honestly?

When developing the questions for the Workplace Attitudes Test I was concerned that problem employees would not provide extreme responses. For example, take the following options:

Q. When someone insults or slights me . . . (select one of the following answers)

A. I tend to remember it a very long time.
B. I can hold a grudge, but not often.
C. at first I get irritated, but soon forget it.

Turns out, I did not need to be concerned because they did select some extreme answers. In this case, the extreme answer is “A.” In follow-up interviews I discovered that people with strong or extreme attitudes are proud of these attitudes. They tend to believe in absolutes. Later, correlating extreme answers with job performance suggested that attitudinal rigidity inclines one to disruptive behavior.

I am reminded of Lee Marvin’s line in the movie, Paint Your Wagon. He said, “When I was conceived, my parents did not have the benefit of marriage but you, sir, are a self-made man.” It turns out that there are a lot of self-made men (and women) out there and they are proud of their status.

If you listen carefully you can often hear, “You’ve got to watch your back all the time,” “You can’t trust anyone,” and “It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.” Yep, people will tell you what they really think if you just give them a chance.

Skilled interviewers can sometimes pick up on attitudinal rigidity but most often the interviewer concentrates on “can do the job” rather than “will do the job.” Also many interviewers may feel it is not polite to ask these types of questions. That is why the Workplace Attitudes Test is so valuable. It asks questions that you may not be inclined to ask face-to-face, and people are willing to answer accurately. For more info see, http://www.workplaceattitudes.com.