|
Working with People Who are Negative
More than 80% of the Time
by Mary Hauck RN PhD
President MRH Results
Most of us have no problem understanding and coping with good days and bad days at both work and at home. When the balance tips to break the 80-20 rule with negativity, blaming, and general crabbiness consuming 4 out of 5 days it is miserable for the negative person and the colleagues, friends and family who share space and time. What can you do for yourself and the person that drains you with constant negativity and pessimism? This article outlines ideas and strategies for dealing with negative attitudes and behaviors in the work setting.
Direct Approaches
Label the words or behavior as negative. Sometimes the individual has limited insight into how negative or nasty they are sounding or behaving. State out loud what is obvious to you and what others are thinking:
"You are being/sounding/behaving negatively"
"Hey, you are dragging me down with your negativity"
"I'm not interested in hearing more negative comments"
You are informing the other person of the impact they are having in the real time environment. You also call to attention that there are alternate responses to whatever the situation presents. Some people know they are being crabby and dragging everyone down. They tend to not care about other perspectives and should be left alone or told to contribute again when they feel better.
Request a positive statement. As soon as Ms. Negative finishes with a downer comment or story ask her to "Tell me something positive". With this request she may realize that being negative isn't how they want to present themselves. Ms. Negative may also decide that she doesn't want to interact with you because you do not share in the whining or victim behaviors. This makes it easier for you to interact more with the other balanced people in the work place.
Suggest alternative actions. Point out that we all choose our attitude and life is full of choices. Statements like:
"I'm sorry you are so unhappy. What would make your life feel wonderful?"
"If I believed the situation to be as bad as you describe, I would quit my job and find other work"
"Do you decide every morning that you are going to be negative all day? You know you have a choice about this".
It was helpful for a negative employee when I told her to come into my office and complain about everything she wanted fixed. This allowed her to grind her ax in privacy and not subject other employees to her negative talk. It was also a wake up call for her about how her destructive nonstop whining was bringing everyone down.
Reward positive attitude. Having a frank discussion about the rewards of positive attitude in the work place can be helpful to whiners and complainers. Spelling out expectations for interactions at work can include smiling, compliments, and positive comments.
Indirect Approaches
Hire a skilled facilitator. Sometimes it takes a neutral external party to point out the obvious and help a group build a positive culture that includes the negative person and the people impacted by them. If relationships are strained or the culture allows nastiness and back stabbing it is easier to gain cooperation in a group process to rebuild a more positive culture with outside help.
Ignore and exclude. This approach takes away the power of the negative person but is usually difficult to implement. That is because negative people tend to dominate and love to drop word bombs that end problem-solving dialog. It is actually helpful to smile and remain totally detached from negative comments.
Use selective hearing to tune out the negative. When others tune out the negative person they become background noise rather than a driving influence. Negative people want to get a reaction from you to share the misery. You can learn about yourself by thinking about what it is that the negative person is doing or saying that causes an emotional response in you. When you know your emotional reaction to the negativity you can use selective hearing to tune negativity out.
In summary, you have control over your own responses to negative people but not control over changing negative people. The best we can do is point out how their behavior and words impacts other people and ask them to choose a more positive attitude.
Please share your comments
on our blog!
| 
