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Monday, November 16, 2015

Fundamental Attribution Error

Many managers struggle with employee performance, motivation and attitude. As a business coach, I find the majority of time, it is not the employee creating the problem, it is a poor process or lack of a process altogether. The following is an article discussing "Fundamental Attribution Error" I believe you will enjoy it!
In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error, also known as the correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics (personality) to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation rather than considering the situation's external factors. It does not explain interpretations of one's own behavior, where situational factors are more easily recognized and can thus be taken into consideration. Conversely, from the other perspective, this error is known as the actor-observer bias, in which people tend to overemphasize the role of a situation in their behaviors and underemphasize the role of their own personalities. The phrase was coined by Lee Ross some years after a classic experiment by Edward E. Jones and Victor Harris (1967). What does "Fundamental Attribution Error" mean in business? Managers and supervisors have a tendency to look at a team member and place blame on their inability to perform on the persons internal characteristics or personality. In other words, we believe a team member cannot do the job because of who they are or how they think. I've had hundreds of employees in my past, and as you probably agree, people are different. We think differently, act differently and respond to stimulus differently. This being the case, leaders should also recognize that different personalities respond differently dependent upon the type of environment, the tools they have, information that is presented to them and how it is presented. So how does this relate to the job? Beware of blaming people for things they really have no control over or are simply doing what they think is right in the environment they are and with the tools they have. For example: Let's say you have an employee who may have a problem completing a series of tasks in a specified order at a specified time. Instead, this person occasionally forgets steps, takes too long or just fails to document what they did. To the manager, this may seem as a simple act of insubordination or lack of concern on the part of the employee. The manager just committed "fundamental attribution error". Instead of looking for a process or method to resolve the challenge, blame was immediately placed on the employee and his or her personality traits or work ethic. The problem could have been corrected with a simple check list or log that allowed the employee to confirm and verify that all taske were completed and when they were completed. What I recommend is to have a system or process that encourages, measures and confirms specific tasks that limit the possibility of error rather than hoping someone follows verbal instructions and remembers everything they were told to do. I speak about this quite a bit in my workshops. Reduce or eliminate problems by focusing on the process rather than the person. Improve the process so that it is dummy proof and you eliminate the error. Don't expect everyone to know exactly what to do everyday, for every situation. Allow them the opportunity to have the information and resources to do the job as intended, at the time when it is most needed. Don't commit fundamental attribution error. I had a boss who told me many years ago; "If you eliminate all possible excuses from an employee, they have no reason to not perform well".

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