Attitude is the difference that makes the difference in business, high-performance sport, leadership, decision making and life. Attitude is everything. Here are a few famous quotes about attitude:
Attitude is everything. Here are a few famous quotes about attitude:
- Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. Winston Churchill
- People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude. John C Maxwell
- Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude. Ziggy Ziggler
- Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. Lou Holtz
- Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character. Albert Einstein
An attitude is defined in the dictionary as “a settled (habitual) way of thinking or feeling about something”. Our developmental definition is the gestalt structure of consciousness that drives perception and therefore experience.
What is a gestalt? A gestalt is an organised whole that is perceived as greater than the sum of its parts. A simple everyday example of a gestalt is a cake – add heat to the ingredients and it becomes more than the sum of its parts…
If that all sounds complicated, it’s because it is. To simplify all that, we call the mindset that filters and creates meanings, which drive our experience of the outside world, an “attitude”…
There is a structure to an attitude (different parts that make up a whole), but something wonderful and mysterious happens with attitudes; that is our ‘attitude” arises from an emergent property that cannot be calculated by adding up all of the parts. Parts such as experiences, thoughts, beliefs, values, identity, intention, etc.
Because of the dynamic interaction of the various elements in the human system, something more than and different from these elements arises. In systems language, this an emergent or “meta” property that arises from the elements mixing together. And emergent properties arise in physiological as well as psychological systems.
This makes breaking down the gestalt of “attitude” not only difficult but actually psychologically and physiologically impossible. Although some would disagree, claiming to have the secret sauce to creating the right or perfect attitude (a winning attitude for example). Few, if any of these people (authors, keynote speakers, etc.) in our direct experience actually understand or honour the true complexity of an attitude, therefore missing the point! Attitude is unique for each and every one of us…
An attitude isn’t linear! So, we have to experiment. We have to be experimental, experiential, and see what happens – each and every time. That’s right, there is no secret sauce – that’s the secret gestalt of an attitude!
So what does this mean in the field of coaching and human development? We have the opportunity to play, to enquire, to discover, to find the frame that governs the status quo for the person we are coaching – to discover a leverage point in the existing system for each and every client… There’s no fixed answer because everyone’s gestalt is unique!
That’s the beauty of developmental coaching. There’s thinking, feeling, beliefs, values, cognitive intentions (biases), lines of intelligence, stages of maturity and much, much more that goes into creating an attitude.
Developmental coaching is all about identifying the difference that makes the difference in attitude. It’s about coaching from one attitude to another; a more resourceful attitude. Sounds simple right? Yet the truth is to learn the skill of holding all that complexity, without an agenda, perhaps itself requires a particular attitude…
Looking for a Developmental Executive Coach?
Want to change your attitude (or learn to lead an attitude in others) in a particular context? Business, sport, relationships, finances, leadership, management, health, fitness, wellbeing etc.?
Engage a TCR developmental coach who has been trained and mentored in how to hold all the complexities involved in an attitude, without an agenda, to facilitate you finding the leverage for change in attitude.
