Coaching Solutions: The Curmudgeon
Every office has one: the curmudgeon. Their negative attitude can darken the skies of any sunny situation. Like cleaning the office microwave, working with someone who has a negative attitude is a task all but most intrepid souls avoid.
But people with negative attitudes are more than unpleasant to be around, they present a real problem.
The risk in allowing a bad attitude to persist is like the risk a gardener takes in ignoring a pernicious weed. If you don’t treat it, the weed can get worse or even spread. What could have been a one or two hour inconvenience can take weeks to correct.
Bad attitudes can have far-reaching implications. Think about it: that bad attitude sure interferes with the employee’s own work, but also with their ability to cooperate, which can translate into department-wide issues like poor communication or missed deadlines.
Now imagine how that department reflects on its manager.
Often we think just telling someone, “hey, fix your attitude,” should be enough, or -- what’s worse -- we think a conversation with HR can fix the problem. But what a person with a bad attitude needs is coaching. They have spent years pacticing that attitude. One meeting isn’t going to change it. Turning around bad attitudes is a journey.
Like any journey, it’s best to prepare as thoroughly as possible beforehand. Here are a few tips to tuck away before you embark.
In your first meeting with the employee, your goal is to build self-awareness. Using language that’s cooperative and opportunity-based (words like “we”, “share”, “opportunity”, “observation”, “perspective”) keeps the conversation positive, open, and reduces the risk of the employee putting walls up.
Next, using framing techniques to keep your conversations results-oriented. Here, framing means dovetailing questions about attitude with questions about the employee’s work. “with a positive attitude, how will you improve how cooperative you are?” or “through thinking positively, change how you interact with customers?” are some good examples of questions which frame the employee’s attitude within the context of their work.
As the journey progresses, get the employee talking about the good things. Questions like, “what are you learning about yourself?”, “what are you appreciating about your teammates?”, or “what are you noticing at work that is more positive?”, can all facilitate the process of changing a negative attitude into a positive one.
Basing further conversations around what the employee has learned from books or inspirational videos can help accelerate their process of change. Both of these techniques work well when used at a slower pace and when they are kept in neat, manageable chunks. The last thing you want is someone who already has a negative attitude to think you’re assigning them more work.
Finally, don’t forget to try asking the employee to commit one random act of kindness every week. This builds self-awareness, engages them with their coworkers in a positive way, and can be a great way to make their progress concrete and visible.
Turning around negative attitudes can be challenging, but the rewards are worth the effort both for how they can transform the employee and for value they can bring to your leadership brand.