In defense of negativity

There’s good reason to not feel so positive these days.

Events, attitudes, and circumstances can throw us for a loop. We react based on fear, experience, upbringing, our values, understanding, and openness to change. We can react negatively in spite of our age and all the self help books we’ve read.

"We have good reason. Negativity is akin to grieving."

Why not be a sourpuss? You can share with the world your anger by wearing a frown on your face, ignoring people you work with, being snappy with answers to questions, being incredibly aloof, only giving out small tidbits of information but not all the information your coworkers need to do their jobs well…

What else can you think of?

Perhaps you could also rally resentment against a manger by quietly questioning their whereabouts when absent from the office. This is especially effective when you know the manager is at a legitimate meeting, but no one else does. You could undermine the manager’s leadership when they have delegated something by going to that person and asking any series of questions such as: “why doesn’t he do it?” or, “Does he even know how this is supposed to work?” or better, “that’s not appropriate.”

One could make a new employee whom they resent perhaps for not being a part of their hiring decision, feel incredibly unwelcome through several vibrant ways:

• the silent treatment,

• withholding information, and

• pointing out faults superficial, made-up, or exaggerated to fellow colleagues.

"Negativity Tip: This last is best executed in small huddled groups where upon the new person coming across you in the hallway or break-room, you immediately stop talking and remain silent until the person passes."

Denying critical elements a new person needs to do their work is also an excellent negativity tool to wield. Examples of this could be falsifying customer deadlines, conveniently forgetting each week to make an extra copy of the office key for the new employee, or forgetting to convey important messages.

This type of anger transfer is especially useful in spreading negativity as the new person has nothing to do with why you are angry, hurt, or unappreciated. The effectiveness of this negativity is wonderful because the poor sap never sees it coming and will be completely blindsided by the treatment.

But why go to all that bother?

Wouldn’t all this bad behavior only drain energy from you? What good could come of it? If you find that you’re not able to accept new direction or effect change in your workplace positively through collaborative healthy means, perhaps a job change is better for everyone, especially you.

The difficulty in negative behavior is that it rubs off. Like it or not, we tend to learn and mirror patterns we witness in others. Negativity is best tackled quickly.

Luckily, good leaders know this too. Good leaders know how to ignore petty negative passive outbursts and when to step in. They understand that learning the root of the anger will help bring resolution quicker moving everyone forward. Establishing trust and creating an environment where a negative employee can open up and start to describe what is wrong in a one on one environment can lead to mutual understanding and positive change in how you work together. Long term everyone benefits, even if this employee chooses to leave the company.

How have you tamed a bad seed?

What tools do you use to help your teammates shine?

Originally posted by me on the L2L blog, November 6th, 2009.