How to Respond to Negativity


Published October 05, 2012

| FOXBusiness

"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."


"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.


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?

I discovered the answer when I made Dan's mistake with my wife Eleanor, when she was complaining about our kids fighting. At first I tried to convince her that all kids fight and ours weren't so bad. Then I became frustrated with her complaining and told her as much.

She got angry. Who wouldn't? But then she did something really helpful to me: She told me what she needed from me.

"I don't want to feel that I'm alone in this," she said, "I want to know you understand. I want you to tell me that we're in this together. And if you share my frustrations, I want to know that too."

In fact, I did share her frustrations, but I was trying not to be negative - which, of course, made the whole interaction more negative.

After my conversation with Eleanor, I had a surprising insight: You don't need to change your response. You just need to redirect it.

What Dan had done with his employees is respond negatively against them ("I want to shake them out of their slump") and positively against them ("I told them how much opportunity we had in front of us").


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.

Instead of telling Eleanor she shouldn't be so negative about our children, I told her that I shared her frustrations about their fighting. That I was also lost about how to deal with it much of the time and that it made me feel helpless — all of which was true. It's not enough to simply say "I understand how you feel." For this to work, you need to be specific.

3. Find out what they are positive about and reinforce it. This doesn't mean trying to convince them to be positive. It means giving attention to whatever positive feelings they do show — and chances are they will have shown some because it's unusual to find people who are purely negative. If they are purely negative, then make sure they see you supporting others who have shown positivity. The idea is to give positive attention to positive feeling. And to offer concrete hope. It's concrete because it's based on actual positive feelings people already have, rather than harping on positive feelings you think they should have.






Instead, he started to listen and validate their negative feelings. What he found underneath the complaining was fear. The company had recently experienced layoffs and the survivors were still shaken. Were their jobs at risk? (Step 1.)


Then he highlighted some positive things he noticed on his team — people taking smart risks, working together on complex sales, and partnering successfully with clients — that were helping to grow the company and secure people's jobs. In other words, he was positive with them. (Step 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.


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.

*Name changed

Peter Bregman is a strategic advisor to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done. This story originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review.