Overcome negative attitudes

There are a lot of staff members who are outspoken at every staff meeting but who will never support nor appreciate any decision made by the management.

How does one help these extroverts that are always negative in nature?

Answer

I get the feeling that these people do not share your opinions about how things should be done; that you side with management, and they don’t. It seems that they are vociferous in staff meetings but their ideas are not accepted by management.


It does not necessarily make them negative, just because they disagree with you!!

However, I can see that constantly putting forward ideas that are not taken up could start to make them feel negative.

Are their ideas so fundamentally opposed to the status quo? In which case why are they in the organisation at all?

Or is it that no -one spares the time to explain to them why their ideas won’t work, leaving them frustrated and thinking no one is interested in what they have to say?

Or maybe their ideas would work but nobody listens to them enough to appreciate the ideas that might be useful.

Maybe there is a kernel of an idea that needs some work on it, but no -one bothers to do that.

I don’t know, I am not privy to the meetings. You are.

Maybe next time you could give a little thought to my suggestions and try to identify which is correct.

And then take the appropriate action; explain why their ideas won’t work, or put some thought into the ideas proposed and see if there is anything useful there that could be developed.

You could try a brainstorming approach, this might help to develop the ideas of the people you are concerned about.

Decision making

As you observe, it would be a pity not to at least “try to help these extroverts that are always negative in nature”

Hope this helps