You know that awesome Internet meme, the one that gets spread around social media, gets talked about by celebrities, gets a million YouTube views? Your attitude is like that meme. Your team’s attitude, your group’s attitude, your company’s attitude is like that meme. Your attitude goes from you to your co-workers and from them to their co-workers, from those co-workers to your customers and so on. It is up to you whether you are infecting people with an upbeat, positive, motivating message or if you are infecting people with negativity, complaining, and ill will. It is up to you alone. Not your boss, your boss’s boss, the CEO, the guy in the elevator, just you. Did your attitude make someone’s life a little better today, the world a little better or did you take a little away?  The most amazing thing is the amount of change your attitude can bring.

 Don’t believe it? It definitely applies to ethical behavior. NPR did a story in May, 2013 on a study at the University of Michigan about how your colleagues are one of the primary drivers of ethical behavior.

Key quote, “That’s right, David. He’s finding that the effects of having an ethical supervisor are completely neutralized, if people felt their peers were unethical. So when people felt they had ethical peers they reported problems. When they felt that coworkers were unethical they were much less likely to speak up.”

The fact that you have such influence on your peers’ attitudes, means that we must own our own culture. It isn’t just what you say to your teammates, it is also how you respond to their comments. Is what they are saying making you better? Is it constructive? Would you want them to say that your customer?