A Bad Attitude Is Like A Flat Tire

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A bad attitude is like a flat tire: You can’t go anywhere until you change it.

46% of newly hired employees will fail behind 18 months, while only 19% will succeed, says a study by Leadership IQ. It’s not that the 46% are technically incompetent or the 19% are the crème of the crop; in fact, only 11% of new hires fail for lacking necessary technical skills. So what then are the biggest factors for their failure?

Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, suggests that if you want to hire the best people in your company, you need to take a look at their interpersonal skills. His training and leadership company, Leadership IQ, launched a three-year study to determine why a majority of new hires fail and how business and healthcare organizations can avoid hiring the wrong people. The study interviewed 5,347 hiring managers who have collectively hired more than 20,000 employees during the study period.

The results showed that 26% of new hires fail because they can’t accept feedback, 23% because they’re unable to understand and manage emotions, 17% because they lack the motivation to excel, 15% because they have the wrong temperament for the job, and only 11% because they’re not technically good enough. This shows that hiring people merely for their qualifications is a big mistake employers often make.

Schools overvalue academic excellence and undervalue the development of interpersonal skills. In the real world, our interactions with other people play a major role in our success. To quote Winston Churchill: “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”