Dealing with negative people in your workplace

TechnoparkToday.com : A major share of a techie’s 24*7 is at office. A pie-chart drawn to capture the variety of colleagues, one works with is sure to have colours more than the vibgyor. Most of them don’t bother much, however there is one who has to be kept at bay – the negative coworker or the pessimist. He is the one who is always complaining about being in a mediocre organization, reporting to a wrong manager, working in a bad team and this list doesn’t even end with a worse comment on the aesthetics of work place.

Studies prove beyond question that both positive and negative people influence larger crowds. Being influenced by negativity is psychologically not recommended. Negative people though not bad at core, send signals that would hamper a lot of aspects like employee morale, productivity, dead line miss, conflicts within team etc. They can easily toss one’s positive outlook on work which is slowly going to hit the team.

There is no way out other than learning to keep a check at those negative-mongers. Here you go,

Tip #1 – Differentiate the ones who are fulltime negative to those who are occasionally negative. The later doesn’t harm as much as the former. Wiser decision would be stay away from both! If organization protocol demands working closely with such a person make sure to cut the discussions at professional levels. Don’t listen to negative talks and constantly communicate some positivity.

Tip #2 – Never read and respond to emails, voice mails and phone calls of such a co-worker as the first task in a day. Also avoid sharing seat with them in car pools and office buses. A day ticked off with negativity is most likely to proceed the same way.

Tip #3 – Don’t sympathize or pamper such a teammate. All they look for is an audience to hear their frustrations. When you are listening, it indirectly means you are endorsing it there by making them stronger.

Tip #4 – Intelligent choice would be to hang out in groups. This gives more room for distraction and negative topics would possibly get diluted. When in a group it is also easy to indicate that negative people are just tolerated and never celebrated.

Tip #5 – Constant company of negative people may definitely a personal influence. So, regularly tune self-positivity by reading books or engaging in artistic hobbies. It would be a great asset for most if a group of positive individuals start a blog and keep writing.

Being positive or negative means lot more to the people around than oneself.

Spread and save optimism – the greatest wealth of humans !

Author – Girija M