5 Tips for Overcoming Workplace Negativity with Enthusiasm

Negativity often occurs when people are impacted by decisions and issues that are out of their control. Examples of these include corporation downsizing, under-staffing that requires people to work mandatory overtime, budget reductions, and upper-management decisions that adversely impact staff.

Maybe it's not as bad as people think.  If you're a supervisor, help people create options, feel included, and feel part of the communication and problem solving.  If you're dealing with this on a personal level, try these tips to overcome workplace negativity with enthusiasm. 

1. Present Problems as Opportunities for Solutions
Whenever a problem is presented, respond with "How are we going to handle it?" People don't need to have all the answers, but they should be bringing solutions forward and thinking about them - not just complaining.  If you're a supervisor, make employees part of the goal-setting process, so they won't feel like they're just being ordered around.

2. Think Positive
The biggest impact you can have on negativity is to respond to it in a way which is both proactive and positive.  Think of positive and negative approaches as being like two magnetic forces. By keeping your positive approach strong and visible, you'll attract people to your end of the spectrum. In other words, you can't fight negativity with negativity.

3. Build Relationships Based on Trust
Use positive attitudes and enthusiasm to build relationships. Negative attitudes make it difficult to trust others, and without trust you can’t influence positive change. Taking action to build trust will increase comfort levels and strengthen relationships.

4. Win People to Your Way of Thinking
The only way to win an argument is to avoid it. When handled correctly, disagreements and debates are opportunities for positive change. When disagreements arise, show respect for the opinions of others, never tell someone they are wrong, and try to see things from the other point of view.

5. Disagree Agreeably
How do we do this and still have our ideas heard? Keep the lines of communication open by trying to see things from a different perspective. Take the time to really think about how the other person thinks and why they feel the way they do. People are entitled to their own opinion.
 

“The old saying that “success breeds success” has something to it. It’s that feeling of confidence that can banish negativity and procrastination and get you going the right way.”    - Donald Trump

Dealing with Negativity at Work

Have you ever worked with one of those people who are so unfailingly negative that they tend to suck all of the life out of a room? The person who has an objection to every idea and a snide comment for every cheerful effort? 

It’s a rare workplace environment that hasn’t experienced the corrosive effects of chronic negativity. Negativity can spread like a cancer in a team, eating away at everyone's engagement until the whole group is infected with negative thoughts.  If not stopped, it can even continue to spread among departments, regions... and even infect an entire company. 

So how does it start?  Many studies have been conducted on this, and all have generally found these to be the top five reasons:

    1. An excessive workload   
    2. Concerns about management’s ability to lead the company forward successfully
    3. Anxiety about the future, particular longer-term job, income and retirement security
    4. Lack of challenge in their work, and boredom.
    5. Insufficient recognition, and concerns that pay isn’t commensurate with performance

The facts.  Some people exude negativity. They don’t like their jobs or they don’t like their company. Their bosses are always jerks and they are always treated unfairly. The company is always going down the tube and customers are worthless. You know these people.  With them, your best course of action is avoidance.  On the other hand, sometimes normally positive people are negative. Some of the time, too, their reasons for negativity are legitimate. The good news is that unlike cancer, there is a cure. Enthusiasm and positive attitudes can spread just as quickly - improving performance and increasing productivity!

Tips for Dealing With Occasional Negativity:

• Listen to the employee or coworker’s complaints until you are certain that they feel heard. Sometimes people repeat negative sentiments over and over because they don’t feel like you have really listened to them. Ask questions. Clarify their statements. Make sure you have actively listened.
• Decide if you believe the employee or coworker has legitimate reasons for their negativity. If you decide affirmatively, ask if they’d like your help to solve the problem. If they ask for help, provide advice or ideas for how the coworker can address the reason for their negativity.  Do not get sucked into the problem, only provide brief suggestions for a way out.
• If you decide the concerns are not legitimate, tell them what you think. Tell the coworker you care about their concern and about their happiness at work, but you disagree with their assessment of the situation.  Don't spend additional time listening to their complaints, you will only encourage growing negativity and, potentially, behavior.
• If the coworker just wants to complain to a friendly ear, they don’t want your advice or assistance to address the situation. Listen, but set limits. Long term complaining saps your energy and positive outlook. Don’t allow that to happen. Walk away. Tell the coworker you’d prefer to move on to more positive subjects.

 Tips for Dealing With Recurring Negativity:

• Avoid the person as much as possible. Just as you set limits with the coworkers whose negativity you believe is baseless or unwarranted, you need to set limits with genuinely negative people.
• If you are forced, through your role in the company, to work with a negative person, set limits. Do not allow yourself to be drawn into negative discussions. Tell the negative coworker, you prefer to think about your job positively. Avoid providing a sympathetic audience for the negativity.
• If you're feeling threatened by this person, don’t play into their use of fear to keep you from speaking up. Be specific about the behavior you want to stop and tell them how their behavior is affecting you. Restate what you’re asking them to change. Keep it very brief, document what was said and share it with your supervisor. You need to engage them so they know that you are trying to fix the problem. If this is harassment, they need to take action to address it. If you’re the supervisor of the abusive employee, you need to fire them. You’re enabling their behavior and your inaction could also expose your company to a lawsuit.
• If negativity among employees in the company is persistent, if the issues that warrant negativity are left unaddressed, and the negativity affects your ability to professionally perform your work, you may want to consider moving on.

"Negativity is expensive. It costs companies millions of dollars each year."   - Gary Topchik, Managing Workplace Negativity

8 Tips for Dealing with Negative People

How do you deal with negative or difficult people. People who seem chronically critical, indignant, angry, or just plain rude. How can you act in a way that doesn’t reinforce their negativity– and maybe even helps them?  Most of us use avoidance as our chief strategy, but this is neither practical nor effective, since it's often impossible to avoid a person completely and it creates unnecessary stress in our lives. Fortunately, there is a better approach. Here are 8 tips I've found through lots of research, and from my own trial and error.

1. Remember to focus on your response.
That's all you can really control.  This is something we must actively work on - to think before reacting.  When we're caught off guard, we end up resorting to a defensive position, which rarely turns out well. Instead, we have a variety of paths to take - We can chose to wait it out, not respond, or forgive.  Often, a wise approach is to ask yourself two questions -
     “If I don't respond, what is the worst thing that can happen?“
     “If I do respond, what is the worst thing that can happen?“
Answering these questions often adds perspective to the situation.  When we learn to control our responses, we’ll not only be doing a favor for our mental well-being, but we’ll also have diffused a situation that would have gone bad.

2. Understand the person's intentions.
It’s always easier to offer someone compassion if you try to understand where they’re coming from. Try to identify the person's trigger: What is making them act in this manner? What is stopping them from cooperating with you? Then focus on what can really be acted upon. Rather than dwell on what you can't change, focus on the actionable steps you can take to forward yourself in the situation.

3. Treat the person with respect.
No one likes to be treated as if they are incompetent. Compliment the other person for something they did well, tell them you’ve learned something new through interacting with them. Remember to be genuine. You might have to dig deep to find something that you appreciate about this person.

4. Express your frustration.
Take out some scrap paper and dump all the random and negative thoughts out of you by writing freely without editing. Continue to do so until you have nothing else to say. Now, roll the paper up into a ball, close your eyes and visualize that all the negative energy is now inside that paper ball. Toss the paper ball in the trash. Let it go!  Maintain a positive boundary. Then when you interact with this person try these tricks:

• Protect the positive space around you. When their negativity is too strong, just walk away.
• Help them feel more positive, not act more positive – which is more likely to create the desired result.  Listen compassionately for a short while and then help them focus on something positive right now, in this moment. Don’t try to solve or fix them.

5. Confront them.

Don’t play into their use of fear to keep you from speaking up. Be specific about the behavior you want to stop and tell them how their behavior is affecting you. Restate what you’re asking them to change while sticking with the facts, and not being hurtful.

6. Don’t take it personally, but know that sometimes it is personal. 
It could be a matter of opposite outlooks: Super-friendly people, for instance, may be at odds with all-business-all-the-time types — and vice versa. Understanding those basic differences gives you a glimpse of someone else’s viewpoint, which may help temper your irritation. You can’t write off everything someone says about you just because the person is insensitive. Even an abrasive person may have a valid point.

 

7. Act instead of just reacting.

Don't wait until the person gets angry before you try to deflect the situation. If you know someone who seems to deal with difficult thoughts or feelings often (as demonstrated in their behavior), don’t wait for a situation to help them create positive feelings. The most effective response to meanness is compassion. Where there is meanness, there is often a lot of pain, both in the unkind person and for the person on the receiving end of a mean joke, comment, or email. Remember that it's only when mean people are actually happy that they will stop trying to take us down with them.

 

8. Choose to Eliminate Negative People In Your Life.
Negative people can be a source of energy drain and deeply unhappy people will want to bring you down with them. Be aware of this. Being exposed to chronic meanness can be very similar to being in an abusive relationship. Cut negative people out by avoiding interactions with them as much as possible. Remember that you have the choice to commit to being surrounded by people who have the qualities you admire and enjoy. 

Remember that YOU can make the world a better place by working on yourself – by becoming self-aware, tapping into your compassion, and protecting your positive space. You may even help negative people by fostering a sense of peace within yourself that their negativity can’t pierce.

 "To all the other dreamers out there, don't ever stop or let the world's negativity disenchant you or your spirit. If you surround yourself with love and the right people, anything is possible." - Adam Green

  

Criticism and Complaints: Unmet Needs

Behind every criticism and complaint is an unmet need. What you could ask yourself is “What need might I have that’s not being met?” Then you can reframe the complaint to expressing a need. Giving yourself permission to express your needs helps validate them. Often, if we can see that our need is being heard, our pain is less acute. With luck, your partner will understand your sincerity and pain, and you can work through the issue(s) by:

• Talking about what you want in your relationship, not about what you don't want
• Avoiding phrases such as "You always" and "You never".
• Having your partner repeat back what they heard.  Check that the message was heard in the way it was meant to be delivered.
• Brainstorming and discussing solutions to the problem
• Agreeing to set a time frame to re-evaluate how things are going. 

But what if your honesty and vulnerability aren't met with openness, and a shared desire to move forward constructively?  This is a clear indication that you have some work to do.  If your partner is open, you can begin this process together with the aid of self help books, or seek the unbiased help of a couples counselor. If your partner is unwilling to do either, it's likely a sign that you're in a dead-end "toxic" relationship.
 

Toxic doesn’t only entail obvious damage like physical abuse or name-calling. It also represents all the internal turmoil that results from an unhealthy relationship.  Sometimes it's hard to know whether you are in good, mutually supportive relationships with your partner, friends and family. There are several signs to look for:

It’s all about the other person.  You have feelings, too, but the other person won’t hear them. You’re unable to have a two-sided conversation where your opinion is heard, considered and respected. Instead of acknowledging your feelings, they battle with you until they get the last word.

You feel tired, drained or exhausted being around this person.  Every day brings another challenge. It seems as though your partner is always raising complaints about you, or is filled with general negativity.

You're always wrong.  The other person constantly puts you down or insists that they're right. Toxic partners are controlling and demeaning. They gain their power from taking away yours.  They tend to "keep score" and blame you for past mistakes you made in the relationship.  If both people in the relationship do this it devolves into “the relationship scorecard” where it becomes a battle to see who has screwed up the most over the months or years, and therefore who owes the other one more.  If this goes on long enough, both partners eventually spend most of their energy trying to prove that they’re less culpable than the other rather than solving the current problem. People spend all of their time trying to be less wrong for each other instead of being more right for each other.

You’re not allowed to grow and change.  Whenever you aim to grow and improve yourself, the other person responds with mockery and disbelief. There is no encouragement or support for your efforts. Instead, they keep you stuck in old judgments insisting that you will never be any different than you are now.

You lack trust.  You find yourself constantly doubting your partners words, and don't feel comfortable making yourself vulnerable by expressing your true thoughts and feelings.
 
You or your partner drop “hints” and other passive-aggression.  Instead of stating a desire or thought overtly, you try to influence each other. Instead of saying what’s actually upsetting you, you find small and petty ways to piss your partner off so you’ll then feel justified in complaining to them.  A person has no reason to be passive-aggressive if they feel safe expressing any anger or insecurity within the relationship. A person will never feel a need to drop “hints” if they feel like they won’t be judged or criticized for it. 

You don't feel heard. When you express how you feel and ask for what you want, does your partner listen and make an effort to meet your needs? If they refuse to acknowledge that your feelings and needs are important, then you need to ask yourself, “What do I need to do for myself to be happy and satisfied with my life?”

If you’re experiencing even just one of these signs, check in with yourself to see if the relationship is doing more damage than good. Evaluate the relationship and what it’s worth to you.  Be honest with yourself. If both parties are not fully committed to actively working on changes such as mutual respect, open communication, and positive regard, then start walking and don't look back. 

It may also be helpful to look at what you can be responsible for. The way other people treat you can be a reflection of the relationship you have with yourself. What can you do to start taking care of yourself? 

There are other great questions to ask yourself:

• Are your thoughts, opinions, and aspirations important, valued, and supported by the other?
• Have you been questioning yourself and doubting your decisions despite believing you're right?

In the book How to Be An Adult in Relationships by David Richio, he emphasizes the art of mindful loving.  Especially in conflict, it's important to protect yourself, and your internal spirit.  Here are some tips:  

• Don't allow yourself to get weighed down by the conflict, or let the other person belittle you. 
• Ask for what you want 100% of the time.  Say yes to yourself twice as often as you say no, but be willing to compromise.
• Choose reconciliation over ongoing feuding.  Never retaliate or use violence.
• Confront or turn away from those who bring you down, put you down, or try to control you.
• Express your creativity - begin a project you have only imagined.
• Cultivate a sense of humor.  Learn to play and to see the humor in daily events.
• Be bold in your decisions.
• Spend more time in nature.
• Dance, write, draw or sing your feelings.