How to Manage - and Beat - Negativity
One of the most important things for any company to successfully tackle is the onslaught of negativity.
Negative energy can delay or even wreck projects, increase costs, prevent effective change management,
raise stress levels and cause high employee turnover.
Negative energy can delay or even wreck projects, increase costs, prevent effective change management,
raise stress levels and cause high employee turnover.
More often than not, you don't see it coming. Suddenly you wonder why absenteeism has shot up. You take a look at production figures and find they're dropping. You had a feeling something was going on with A-Team but surely it can't be having that much of an effect on everyone else!?
Yes, it can. Negativity springs from discontent. For an invisible energy, it sure has a lot of guile. Subversive in the extreme, it has a no-holds-barred approach to personnel influence. One incident can light the blue touch paper for a negativity attack and open the floodgates to a costly, caustic and cohesive problem that doesn't intend to go away.
There are 3 common approachs to negative assault. First, to tolerate it. Live and let live. It'll blow over. People are what they are. Etc..
Then, when patience starts to run dry, memos go out reminding colleagues of intolerance towards certain behaviours.
When the memos have no effect there may be actions taken to 'make an example' of a situation, or worse still, of a person.
Yes, it can. Negativity springs from discontent. For an invisible energy, it sure has a lot of guile. Subversive in the extreme, it has a no-holds-barred approach to personnel influence. One incident can light the blue touch paper for a negativity attack and open the floodgates to a costly, caustic and cohesive problem that doesn't intend to go away.
There are 3 common approachs to negative assault. First, to tolerate it. Live and let live. It'll blow over. People are what they are. Etc..
Then, when patience starts to run dry, memos go out reminding colleagues of intolerance towards certain behaviours.
When the memos have no effect there may be actions taken to 'make an example' of a situation, or worse still, of a person.
What can I do about negativity?
You can tackle it head-on, as a collective. And let everyone be clear about the strategy - leave no room for it to fester in the shadows.
Negativity is a cause unto itself - it wreaks havoc because it can.
Like Dark Energy, negativity doesn't want to be found and stays away from the spotlight. In the polarity stakes, you can consider it Dark against its opposite number, Positivity, which is correspondingly Light. Instead of trying to deal with the symptoms, go straight for the cause. When you do this, everyone will pitch in with you.
When you handle negativity correctly, you find yourself in a win-win situation. Any pointing finger can only turn to you feebly for a fleeting moment, if at all, when you appreciate that no-one is to blame. When you apportion blame, you realise your own worst fears as the blaming finger comes flying straight back at you. Habitually, shop floors will blame the management and management will blame the workforce. Break this cycle, and you have a chance to move forward. "Blame culture" became a watchword for a reason.
Get creative with your approaches. Get people involved in new initiatives, like creating new KPIs they can enjoy working with. Set up mentorship programmes that give people opportunities to learn from each other. Rest assured, you're going to find one or two people who prefer to stay on-side with Negativity, and threaten to undermine your best efforts.
Negativity is a cause unto itself - it wreaks havoc because it can.
Like Dark Energy, negativity doesn't want to be found and stays away from the spotlight. In the polarity stakes, you can consider it Dark against its opposite number, Positivity, which is correspondingly Light. Instead of trying to deal with the symptoms, go straight for the cause. When you do this, everyone will pitch in with you.
When you handle negativity correctly, you find yourself in a win-win situation. Any pointing finger can only turn to you feebly for a fleeting moment, if at all, when you appreciate that no-one is to blame. When you apportion blame, you realise your own worst fears as the blaming finger comes flying straight back at you. Habitually, shop floors will blame the management and management will blame the workforce. Break this cycle, and you have a chance to move forward. "Blame culture" became a watchword for a reason.
Get creative with your approaches. Get people involved in new initiatives, like creating new KPIs they can enjoy working with. Set up mentorship programmes that give people opportunities to learn from each other. Rest assured, you're going to find one or two people who prefer to stay on-side with Negativity, and threaten to undermine your best efforts.
How can I get everyone on board?
The honest answer is, you can't please everyone. But you can get the vast majority of personnel on board in a Positivity Drive, because right from the start they'll get to see the benefits; they find themselves looking forward to coming into work, they rediscover a sense of purpose and become energised by the results of their own efforts. Those couple of people whose defences are so high that they refuse to take part, they're there to remind you how far you've come, and they will either make progress in their own way, or leave. You provide a great track for them to run on, while the KPIs that the majority has helped to create (and are now buying into) will do the rest.
While you're cultivating a programme like this, the pressure on you comes down. Witness a new balancing act in the making, and watch it perform on the high bar. You'll soon see this performance reflected in the bottom line, just as long as you don't focus on the bottom line and let it take attention away from your personnel and their progress. This is advanced training, and you're all taking part - helping each other learn how to focus productively, get the best from available resources , and just as importantly, how to make those benefits stick.
While you're cultivating a programme like this, the pressure on you comes down. Witness a new balancing act in the making, and watch it perform on the high bar. You'll soon see this performance reflected in the bottom line, just as long as you don't focus on the bottom line and let it take attention away from your personnel and their progress. This is advanced training, and you're all taking part - helping each other learn how to focus productively, get the best from available resources , and just as importantly, how to make those benefits stick.
How do I start motivating people?
You start by interacting with an energy that speaks for itself. Today is a new day for you to share. The workplace is a major part of your life purpose, where you get to collectively make things happen in a microcosmic world. Everyone gets rewarded by being present in that workplace and everyone needs to feel valued. By being Present with them, by investing your energy in the Now, and by incorporating the laws of physics in considering your strategy, the results you know are potentially there can be obtained.
Meetings, when you have them (a Productive Meeting template is part of the free worksheet) should always start with a short agenda and end with agreed actions. If you don't make absolutely sure that every meeting follows this pattern, you'll be wasting a lot of time on pow-wows. When your meetings do follow this pattern, within a very short time you will be seeing positive results in accordance with the strategy you adopted against Negativity. You'll see more productivity, less down-time. Then check the bottom line.
Would you like a free worksheet on Managing Negativity? Containing:
Meetings, when you have them (a Productive Meeting template is part of the free worksheet) should always start with a short agenda and end with agreed actions. If you don't make absolutely sure that every meeting follows this pattern, you'll be wasting a lot of time on pow-wows. When your meetings do follow this pattern, within a very short time you will be seeing positive results in accordance with the strategy you adopted against Negativity. You'll see more productivity, less down-time. Then check the bottom line.
Would you like a free worksheet on Managing Negativity? Containing:
- Simple strategies to start your Positivity Drive
- A Productive Meeting template
- How to establish ground-breaking KPIs
- How to fix breaks in communication
- Sustainable action plans