How To Adjust Negative Attitudes Through Employee Coaching

(Published October 23, 2007)

Some negative employees constantly complain, criticize, judge, and never seem to be happy. Their behavior is not directly harmful to anyone, but their bad mood is generally demoralizing. Disciplining those employees is not the answer, though, because their behavior doesn't really break any workplace rules.

For example, an employee whose negativity manifests in undermining her supervisor and refusing work orders is deserving of discipline for insubordination. However, an employee whose negativity shows in his habitual whining about work, yet he still listens to his supervisor and completes work assignments, is not insubordinate.

So, if discipline won't help to change some employees' negativity, what will?

Those employees need to motivate themselves to change their attitude. They don't have to make a complete turnaround and become positive. The idea is to not be negative. But they might not know how. That's where you can help. It's good for the morale of the department and company to have a heart-to-heart talk with those employees. With a helping spirit, use the following advice to coach the employees in order to get them on the road to a better attitude.

1. Get employees to evaluate their way of thinking. Their normal behavior is to automatically complain, criticize, and make judgments. Let them continue that behavior on one condition — they conduct a self-audit before saying anything. They should ask themselves:

• Did anyone ask what I thought about the situation or person?
  
  
• Am I helping the company by complaining/criticizing/judging?
  
  
• Does the complaint/criticism/judgment help my department, co-workers, or manager?
  
  
• Will the complaining/criticizing/judging help the person I'm speaking to?
  
  
• Will the complaint/criticism/judgment help the person it is about?

If they find that their complaints, criticism, and judgment serve no purpose to anyone, even themselves, then that's exactly where they should keep all of that — to themselves. Explain to the employees that it's okay to not agree with a project deadline, managerial move, co-worker's personality, etc., but complaining, criticizing, or judging won't change anything.

2. Give employees advice on how to change their tendency to complain, criticize, and judge. If they can't do any of that unless it helps someone, then what can they do? They can't keep their feelings pent up, either, because that will lead to a host of other problems, such as stress and high blood pressure.

To change their negative feelings and attitude toward others, they need to change or distance themselves from the information or people contributing to their negativity.

Information may influence employees to be negative, so they need to change their daily intake of information or balance it with an equal amount of positive information and activities.

Example: An employee reads the newspaper in the morning and gets a daily dose of bad news about the war in Iraq. It's easy to tell him to stop reading the paper, but that might be part of a morning routine and a hard habit to break. So he should counter that intake of negative information with a positive activity, such as sitting down for breakfast with his children before they go off to school or going out for a quick jog to boost his energy.

Rather than, or in addition to, information, a person might be contributing to employees' negativity. That person could be anyone from an unfriendly coffee shop clerk to a temperamental co-worker. They should limit their interaction with that person or avoid them all together, if possible.

3. Teach employees to focus on the "bright side," rather than what's wrong with a person or situation. Right now, it's easy for them to focus on the negative, so focusing on the positive will be tough in the beginning. But with practice and over time, they will naturally see the bright side.

Give the employees examples to highlight how you want them to cast complaints in a more positive light.

Complaint: "I hate waking up early in the morning to come to work."

The bright side: "At least you're physically able to get out bed and you have a job to go to."

Complaint: "I can't stand getting stuck in traffic every morning."

The bright side: "You have your own car to drive and are in control of your commute, unlike those who have to take public transportation."

Complaint: "My supervisor always holds meetings at 4:30 on Wednesdays, when we're supposed to leave at 5."

The bright side: "Would you rather she schedule the meeting at the same time on Friday?"

Related Topic(s): Discipline-Performance Issues/Bad Attitudes & Complaints