The “You Can’t Train for Attitude” Myth
When I first began training for customer service and leadership, I firmly believed the adage that training can develop skills, confidence, and positive habits, but someone’s attitude is something that they bring to the table. Training, I believed, would have little impact on it.
Over the years, I began to realize how very wrong I was
After a while, I started to have second thoughts about training’s potential impact on attitude. I was sitting in a restaurant, reading through some participant feedback forms from a course a colleague had just delivered when one of the comments jumped out at me: “I learned that I should value coworkers’ contributions… I always thought the term ‘internal customer service’ was overrated. I changed my mind today.”
It occurred to me that this was not an outlier. Variations of this sentiment frequently appeared in the feedback we received, but up until then I hadn’t realized what it represented. These statements were more than just, “Hey, I liked the training.” They were reflections of someone, for the first time, seeing their job in a different light.
I dug through some other batches of feedback and found statements like: “I’m going to look at irate customers very differently,” and “I hadn’t realized how much I’m actually contributing to these awkward conversations,” and realized they were also indications of people reevaluating their attitudes.
One experience can change an attitude forever
After my revelation, I found myself becoming more aware of my own attitude shifts. The first was a month later, after a day of training in Malaysia. My client dragged me (literally) on the stage of a karaoke bar to sing with her and her team. I really, really hadn’t wanted to go. While I like to sing, the idea of belting out a random song in front of a group of strangers was terrifying. And, if I’m being honest, I’d always thought of karaoke as being kind of… well… lame.
To my surprise, I had a fantastic time. My attitude changed completely, and all it took was a single experience.
Changes in perspectives create changes in attitudes
It’s not unusual for some people to come into a customer service training program with a few preexisting attitudes that can affect their ability to connect with customers. Common examples are:
- I don’t like to smile
- Some/most/all customers are just idiots
- Why should I go above and beyond?
- It’s okay if I’m in a bad mood
Not coincidentally, these are also the very attitudes that drive managers nuts. And most learn the hard way that just telling employees to smile or to stop thinking of their customers as idiots has absolutely no effect on these attitudes.
Attitude change is driven by this one thing
Most people-skills training you will take focuses on whats and hows – introducing skills, techniques, timing and practices. That’s fine – these are what impact overall performance. But if you want to successfully influence attitude, they aren’t enough. Training has to communicate the whys in a way that captures people’s attention. You have to answer the questions your participants are silently asking, such as “Why should I care?” or “What’s the point?”
The best way to answer those questions isn’t with a workbook or an academic case study. The best way is to let people answer the questions themselves with simple exercises that create visceral responses – kind of like my karaoke night. When you approach learning the right way, it’s amazing the impact it can have on people’s attitudes.
“To change what you see, you first have to change where you stand”
