For most organisations, the need to attract and acquire the best talent is a considerable undertaking even if it is only a single position to be filled. Perusing numerous resumes, short-listing, interviewing, reference checks and eventual hiring and on-boarding employees is intensive for even the most experienced HR practitioners.

Involving as all this may be, it is only twenty percent of what is required to have the right people. Beyond all the neatly done resumes with impressive qualifications and seemingly good and relevant experience, freshly laundered suits, and succinct responses to well-rehearsed interview questions, employers seek talent with good attitudes.

Attitude is one of the most commonly used yet most misunderstood words. Parents, educators, employers, doctors and counsellors hinge heavily on the attitudes of their children, charges, employees and patients for success in raising, teaching, training, healing and guiding them. 

I am right with you if you would expect that anything that obviously packs this much importance would be a subject that is taught from our very early lives and yet if you were to pick five or six brains on the subject, you would end up with five of six different notions of the meaning and impact of attitude.

Most of our attitudes are shaped by the media, other people, conditions and circumstances around us.

When appreciating dear Aunt Jemima’s signature stew, you would compliment her on the beautiful taste of the wholesome dish, not a specific ingredient. This is because any dish is mixture of various ingredients in specific quantities put together in a particular sequence. 

Your attitude really is the same. It is a composite of your thoughts, feelings and actions expressed in your actions. 

To better understand this, it is imperative that you relook at the relationship of your mind to your body, how your conscious and subconscious minds work and how they direct your body to act giving you the reactions you then experience as your life. Let’s delve a little deeper into the thought part of your attitude.

The law of vibration decrees that nothing rests. Everything is in a constant state of movement - vibration. There is creative power flowing into your consciousness at any given time. 

This power has no form. It just is. It is neither good nor bad. As you begin to exercise your higher mental faculties, you give form to this energy. 

This is the first stage of attitude. You build either a negative or positive image that is then expressed on a conscious level through vibration for example words, gestures and so on. You may or may not internalise the image.

On a conscious level, you have in you the ability to accept or reject any idea whether you pick it up from your environment or originate it yourself. The main import here is whether or not the idea is internalised. When you internalize an idea, it is dumped straight into your subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is deductive, it cannot reject any idea impressed upon it by the conscious mind. The subconscious mind cannot differentiate good from bad. It accepts all ideas impressed upon it. The subconscious mind being the feeling mind, instructs the body to act based on feeling. 

Your subconscious mind is the universal side of your personality that connects you to other people. It communicates through vibration. When people connect with each other, their vibrations are in resonance. 

This is how when you have a group of people who resonate well with each other, they create a brilliant composite and become an extremely powerful force towards the achievement of a common goal.

The nature of the idea that is impressed upon your subconscious mind determines the emotion you express. . If the idea is negative, you will express negative vibrations while if it is positive you will express positive vibrations. Your intuitive factor is your strongest mental faculty with regard to feeling others. 

If you feel another person is troubled or upset, odds are that he or she is indeed troubled or upset. You feel it because it vibrates out of them – their actions, the words and even their expressions in silence.

Attitude is a composite of your thoughts, feelings and actions. It is the vibration you are in and it is determined by the nature of the ideas you choose to internalise or emotionalise. 

When you shift your attitude, everything in your world shifts too. Beyond great qualifications, experience and impressive personal presentation and interview performance, progressive organisations look to work with only those whose attitudes are trained to be independent of their external environment. 

Those whose thoughts, feelings and actions are in total alignment with goodness. People with great attitudes are inspired by their thinking irrespective of their environment. Because these are the people who thrive in any situation today’s dynamic environment throws them into. 

They embody great attitudes. They are teachable, adaptable and nimble. These are the people who scale corporate ladders several rungs at a time straight to their pinnacles!

The writer is an expert on attitude and human potential.