Posted by Claire White ¦ Business Skills
Your attitude is your foundation for everything
According to successful business leaders, your attitude is your foundation for everything. The cycle below shows how having a great attitude is directly related to achieving the lifestyle you desire.
- Positive thoughts lead to a positive attitude
- Positive attitude lead to engaging communication
- Engaging communication lead to excellent customer service
- Excellent customer service leads to customer loyalty
- Customer loyalty leads to business success
- Business success leads to profits
- Profits give you the lifestyle you desire.
A similar model, the Service Profit Chain, was developed by leading academics Heskett et al (1994) who through long term study were able to prove that employee satisfaction was directly linked to profit. The reason for better profits? Better Attitude.
In an evidence paper on Employee Engagement within Marks and Spencer, Rayton et al (2012) identified the direct link between employee engagement and the sales performance of stores, and on employee absence, and were able to calculate that over a four year period,
“Stores with improving employee satisfaction had delivered an average of £62 million more sales to the business each year compared to stores where satisfaction was declining.”
Over the same period, those same stores also showed an 8% lower absenteeism and consistently delivered better results in relation to customer satisfaction.
So, it's official - if you and your team have a great attitude, your business will have greater success.
So what is it about attitude and how does it affect us personally?
The following are closely ruled by your attitude...
- Your mood
- Your self esteem
- Your communication
- Your interactions
- Your thought process
- How you perceive things
- How you perceive people
- How others perceive you.
It's been said that a positive attitude is the WAY you dedicate yourself to the way you think. But beware... the same can also be said of a negative attitude.
We're not born with a good or bad attitude, it's something we learn from our experiences and we definitely have a choice.
So how do you control it?
- Be aware - get your own attitude right first before you tackle anyone else. Having a good attitude in business can be the difference between success and failure. When things go wrong you need to have the right attitude - positivity is crucial.
- Choose to have a great attitude - recognise you have a choice - it's not what happens that matters, it's how you respond to what happens. And how you respond is something you can fully control.
- Think - is what you're reacting to important and actually 'need' your attention?
- Hang around with positive people (it's true that you 'become' the people you hang out with - negative people are worse than negative events. The event is soon over but the person may hang around for years!)
- Treat attitude seriously - getting it right can be a BIG game changer. If you're not actively conscious about the impact your attitude has and how to control it, you will always find that things happen to you.
In short you have no ability to control some of the things that will happen to your business but you do have full control over how it affects you. Be conscious. You do get to choose.
And just to hit home the point that attitude is everything - watch the video below from the truly inspirational Nick Vujicic who most definitely made the right choice.
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