by Amy Gallo
Turning Negativity into Productivity Dealing with a pessimist on your team can be a frustrating and time-consuming experience. Attempts to ignore or counter frequent negative comments may simply incite further negativity. Good news: by being proactive you can help the pessimist change his behavior and enable your team to achieve greater productivity.
What the Experts Say The first step is to figure out what is causing your team member's negativity. Roderick Kramer, William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that it is the role of the leader to understand the underlying cause of the pessimism before acting. "Some people are dispositional pessimists whose knee-jerk reaction is to see the negative in everything, while others may be expressing a pessimistic point of view based upon informed logic," Kramer says. Some common sources of pessimism include resentment at not having been promoted, a need for attention, or a need to cover for a lack of knowledge or skill. Read more
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