How to respond to Negativity?

The following is a excerpt from an article, the link is below for the full piece.



"I'm getting to the end of my patience," Dan,* the head of sales for a financial services firm, told me. "There is so much opportunity here — the business is growing, the work is interesting, and bonuses should be pretty good this year — but all I hear is complaining."
When he passed his employees in the hall and asked how it was going, they would respond with a critical comment about a client or they would grumble about the amount of work they were juggling.
"How can I turn around the negativity that pervades my team?" he asked me.
I asked him what he was doing now. "At first, I told them how much opportunity we had in front of us, and I reiterated our mission statement," he said. "I wanted to remind them what we're all working towards. Now though?" he threw his hands up in the air, "I'm just pissed. I want to shake them out of their slump."
Dan's response is completely natural and intuitive. Unfortunately, it's also completely ineffective.

Initially, he tried to counter the negativity with positivity. When that didn't work, he became negative himself. Both responses reaped the same outcome: More negativity.

Here's why: Countering someone's negativity with your positivity doesn't work because it's argumentative. People don't like to be emotionally contradicted and if you try to convince them that they shouldn't feel something, they'll only feel it more stubbornly. And if you're a leader trying to be positive, it comes off even worse because you'll appear out of touch and aloof to the reality that people are experiencing.

The other instinctive approach — confronting someone's negativity with your own negativity — doesn't work because it's additive. Your negative reaction to their negative reaction simply adds fuel to the fire. Negativity breeds negativity.

So how can you turn around negativity?


Here's what I'm suggesting, translated into a three-step process for effectively turning around negative people:
1. Understand how they feel and validate it. This might be hard because it could feel like you're reinforcing their negative feelings. But you're not. You're not agreeing with them or justifying their negativity. You're simply showing them that you understand how they feel.
2. Find a place to agree with them. You don't have to agree with everything they've said, but, if you can, agree with some of what they're feeling. If you share some of their frustrations, let them know which.
3.Before, he never missed an opportunity to highlight — and criticize — a person's negativity. Now he didn't miss an opportunity to highlight — and praise — a person's positivity.
And it worked. Eventually the mood in the sales group turned and they worked together to bring in the largest client the company had ever won.

As for me? The truth is, it's often easier to teach this stuff than it is to do it. In the heat of the moment, I can still get frustrated with other people's frustrations. But following these three steps has helped tremendously. And having a partner who reminds me of them? That helps even more.


Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/2012/10/05/how-to-respond-to-negativity/?intcmp=fbfeatures#ixzz28iVYTYfA