Today there is great weight put on a person's attitude. It is as if this is something for which they are individually responsible and should be held to account for.

The inference seems to be that no matter what you do the way that you approach it is your responsibility.

For example, you work for a meat wholesaler and your job is to get up and four O'clock every morning to be at work for five. You spend the next twelve hours throwing large lumps of meat around then go home to rest and get ready to do it all over again the next day.

At five O'clock in the morning you are up for it.

You work with a great bunch of guys and you get to spend a lot of your time interacting with the buyers and it feels good to be able to brighten their day.

You have a good attitude and are looking forward to the day.

At half past six you drop a side of beef that was thrown to you by a colleague.

It happens.

Unfortunately the drop was seen by the new manager who says, "You, my office, now!"

He goes on to tell you many secrets about how to handle meat. How much it costs, how he doesn't expect people who work for him to act like clowns, how bad it makes the company look and exactly what will happen to you if he ever catches you horsing round again.

When he has finished you go back out to the shop, how do you feel?

How is your attitude? And who is responsible for it?

Are you full of the joys of spring or do you spend your day morose and resentful trying to work out a way to get your revenge on the manager?

Attitude is our responsibility, but not only our own attitude.

We are responsible for the attitude of those around us and they are responsible for ours.

Until we realise the power that we have over the attitude of others we will always run the risk of condemning another for a "Bad Attitude".

We will lose the value that person could have brought to us if we had taken the time to find out why they had a "Bad Attitude" and what we could do about it by changing the environment that caused the "Bad attitude".

Is a "Bad attitude" permanent?

In reality there appears to be two ways that this question has been received.

The first from those who react very strongly to the suggestion that they are not in complete control of their own attitude. The suggestion is that whatever anybody else does it has no effect on them and because they are an island everybody else should be an island too.

The second group are those who have understood that the way others behave affects the way we feel and realise therefore that the way we behave has an affect on the way that others feel. The realisation is that we can create the environment in which others work, especially if we are the boss.

This environment can be supportive and positive or dismissive and negative.

This is a responsibility that we all have.

If we choose to create a positive environment it is easy for others to be positive.

If we create a negative environment it is very difficult for others to maintain a positive attitude.

Interestingly there is a third view.

This is that the way we react to stimuli changes over time suggesting that as we mature we are more able to deal with negative stimuli without affecting our attitude whereas the less mature approach is less controlled, a negative stimulus receiving an autometic negative reaction.

This suggests two answers to the original question, Is a bad attitude permanent?

One is that in the less mature the bad attitude is probably not permanent and is the result of a reaction against a negative experience.

This suggests that by providing a positive experience it may be possible to change a bad attitude into a good attitude.

In the more mature individual the attitude may be more permanent or just require more positive experiences to overcome the greater volume of negative experiences that person has been exposed to.

Either way there can be no excuse for treating as permanent a bad attitude that was in all probability created by the person making the judgement.

Peter A Hunter
Author of "Breaking the Mould"
http://www.breakingthemould.co.uk