Got my review yesterday - ack!

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...and the VP says "you seem to be unable to understand points of view other than your own" and "you state your opinions too forcefully". I have been labeled as an "attitude problem" because I have trouble kissing butt, despite the fact that my actual job performance is very good.

Shoot me now. I try, I really do.

All you really need to do (easier said than done I know) is try to understand what people are telling you when they are giving their point of view and take it into consideration when making yours. I'm like it sometimes, you know, if I have an opinion on something strongly enough, I make it known and no-one is spared. But you have to be careful with this too and be a bit more soft as others may then view you as a troublemaker for being 'forceful' with your opinion, even though you have no intentions of being so. And, provided its not a case of you having conflicts with the boss as you gotta do everything they say whether you agree with it or not, as for the part where you don't kiss butt, I salute you! I don't kiss butt either unless it is something I agree with, why go along with something you don't agree with? Unless you do actually have an attitude problem, which I can't really say, the only thing I can suggest is that you are labelled as having an 'attitude problem' because you are not willing to be like everyone else i.e. part of a flock of sheep. This makes you stand out and look stronger than them and they can't handle it. So I don't think you need shooting at all, you just need to be softer in your approach towards your opinions and, like I say, I know it can be easier said than done as I have had to learn this lesson myself over the years.

Something that works for me with trying to juggle different people's points of view is to think of it like a logic problem - for example, I used to do scheduling at a job a few jobs back and would make lists like 'Ok - we need 10 people today, but Susan wants the day off and Frank is scheduled to have the day off . . .'

You can do the same thing with opinions - just logically try to figure out what you can do to offend the lowest number of people . . . and take their opinions and work them into the equation as predictors . . .
It is sort of fun . . .

Don't quite understand why employers put more emphasis on social skills rather than job performance...

i never understood that, either. i could see it if it was a job requiring social skills, such as wal-mart greeter, or if you work in a social milieu (like in a communal cube farm) but if you're a coder or bookkeeper or, like me, someone who inspects door panels for quality control in a walled-off corner of the plant, then who cares?

Because even though the individual has a good individual performance, if their "attitude" or behaviours are causing the team to work inefficiently or causing disharmonies, overall team performance goes down. Don't you see?

My comany puts me into the ADA category which means HR goes over my review - adds examples; sugguested alternate behaviors; etc and sends it by the Employee asistance Councilor (a shrink).

Usually It is very helpful. Here are some rules/ideas that I've gotten to help in this area.

When someone is done talking count to ten before answering.

If I disagree or at least am not 100% with what somebody has said ask "can you put that in different words, I'm not quite sure what you said" etc.

On a team I am not the final say. I may disagree politely once but then it must go to a group concencus if the issue is important. If not give the other person 2 out of 3

Run meetings like sugguestion gthering sessinons. Everyone puts their ideas up and then descides together. This relieves me of thinking I have more than one vote