So, you know how sometimes life surprises you and someone says something so profound that you (mentally) gasp and then a split second later you wish you’d thought of it.

Well that happened to me about 5 minutes ago.

My 13 year old daughter, Phoebe,  is sitting next to me and helping me do some data entry for the business (to earn extra pocket money).  She was wittering on, as teenagers sometimes do (when they are not being moody or sulky and not speaking) and I was doing the obligatory Mum being interested noises.

And then she said something so profound and honest I had to ask her to repeat it.   She said this…

“Don’t get confused between my personality and my attitude.  My personality is who I am, my attitude depends on who YOU are”.

And it got me thinking.

How often do we complain about other people ?  How often do we curse a client for being offhand with us, or a supplier for being unreasonable or a member of staff for having a bad attitude?

And how often do we stop and think if there is anything we are doing to cause their attitude?

Hiring on attitude is the most important thing you can do.  Yes technical skills or experience may be important but you can teach knowledge and skills, the other person can learn them.  But you cant (easily) teach attitude.  If someone has the right attitude, well that’s more than half the battle.  The salesperson who can maintain their positivity despite losing the order, the customer services person who can maintain their calm when being verbally attacked by an irate customer, the IT support person who can motivate the supplier to move mountains they are all worth their weight in gold.

As is the teenager sitting beside me.

For a free report on how to hire on attitude click below