Dealing with Workplace Negativity
Evelyn Aiyedona
Training Consultant | HR |Project Management| Customer Service |Performance and Productivity Coach| Helping individuals /organizations actualize and maximize potential for effective growth and productivity.
The human nature is very complex and having an understanding of how it operates can help solve a lot of workplace issues such as negativity.
Negativity spreads like wildfire and if not checked can disrupt workflow and performance.
In an organization, you'll always have people with positive and negative behaviours, how you manage it goes a long way to determine its impact on your team and organisation.
People with negative behaviours never see or say anything right about their organisation. Try engaging them and they'll suck the life and energy out of every situation.
Can such people add value to the organisation? It depends on what extent you are willing to help them. Some bosses would rather take the short route ??
To help negative people you must first try to understand the reason for such behaviour.
Some lack confidence in carrying out their task and use negativity as a cover up for their incompetence. For such employees or team members, one could help build their confidence by developing their competence through training, coaching and mentoring. This will in turn diminish the negative behavior.
Other employees put up negative attitude because they feel they've been/are being treated unfairly.
To address this category of people you need to get instances of such unfair treatment to help you determine if truly they were/ are being treated unfairly or they just have a sense of entitlement.
Let's take this scenario.
Mrs. Uko works for company A and the policy states that she's only entitled to one month maternity leave but she feels unjustly treated because her friend Mrs. Oku in company B is entitled to three months maternity leave.
While it's true that some employee can be treated unfairly, the scenario above just shows a sense of entitlement and disregard for the terms of employment. Mrs. Uko should be set straight.
In as much as I'll like to categorise negative behaviours under the points above, I'll also like to say that there are individuals who are just naturally negative and no workplace intervention can help them except they decide to do a mindset shift all by themselves. For such, you know what to do ??.
The success of every team or organisation is dependent on its people.
I'm interested in your 'people' and the overall success of your organization and can't wait to inspire/motivate/train and transform your team for effective growth and productivity.
Don't hesitate to contact me
Evelyn Aiyedona
Human Capital Development/ Training Consultant
PS.
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Drop a comment if you find this article useful.
ARCHIVIST at Access BANK PLC
6 年Good note you drop here for us to read and better our status at work and change our behavior at workplace and fellow staff as well.
Human Resources Practitioner and Corporate Administrator.
6 年Thanks for this piece, it's quite insightful. I would like to add that an employee who feel he/she is a victim of organisational politics become toxic to the system and would rather not make any positive input.
Deputy Director of Public Works and Transportation
6 年I have to agree that human nature is very complex. Dealing with negative people in the workplace can be difficult and cause issues to those employees trying to get by and be happy. I am sure it is not always easy to understand why some individuals are always negative but figuring out the root cause could be especially helpful to those in the work place. Thanks for the information!