Bad attitudes will ruin your team.
Negative team members will poison those around them, and ultimately your champions will leave because of it.
Listen leaders, you’ve got to take action. You have to do something about it, because I can promise you this…allowing one negative team member to chase off two champions is going to implode your team. If you don’t stop that right now, then you are allowing the negativity to shape and mold your culture.
These team members are literally forcing culture on you, and the company and/or team.
If you are a team leader, it is absolutely shaping your team’s culture. DO NOT allow it. It is dangerous!
Here are 7 things that will help you lead a negative team member:
1. You Must Desire To Help The Team Member
Most people just want to shut the negativity down, shut the person down, and stop the junk. Listen, there’s a reason why this person is being this way.
You have to start off by caring more about them than yourself.
2. Take Them Out Of The Office
Don’t do it where you know it’s going to get people talking. You know that people are going to see that there is this conversation going on, and by the way, it could get heated, they might blow up a little bit.
Take them out of the office.
3. Explain Why You Are Meeting
You have to make a judgement on how important this meeting is. Is this a discussion or is this an emergency meeting. Set the tone. In other words, if it is an emergency…”Hey listen, I wanted to talk to you, but before we get into everything, I need you to understand this is a nine-one-one meeting.
This is something that you have to understand, if we don’t fix this today, if we don’t solve this in this meeting, there’s going to be repercussions, there’s going to be consequences, so I need you to understand what this meeting is all about.”
You have to say up front, so that they have an expectation of what’s going on.
4. Set The Ground Rules
Set the ground rules. Listen, no being mad, no yelling, no being personally offended if something does come up, then I need you to say something.
5. Gain Perspective
It’s all about perspective. You’ve got to ask tons and tons of questions and plan on following up every question with a why. Ask them questions. Find out what’s going on.
Find out why they felt that way. Find out how they feel about the leadership, and the company.
6. Focus On Understanding
Focus on understanding why they believe the company wouldn’t want them to succeed. Why do you feel that way?Ask them to help you understand why they believe that. Then fill in the information.
The communication will help to remove the fear. It will help to get them feeling good about their position and it will help to have them not have the broken belief system.
7. After All Things…
After you help them to gain perspective, shown them that you care, set their expectations, and after you have helped them to see that the company does want them to succeed or at the very least the leadership over them wants them to succeed…after all of that explain that the negativity has to GO!
If it has been done well and they are on board, then they will go back and bust it.
Thanks for listening folks!
Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes so you don’t miss out any of our episodes.
We want to hear from you!
Reviews are insanely helpful. I read each and every one of them! Please leave an honest review for us here.
And if you want to ask questions or know more about what we do, just email me at [email protected].
Terrible advice.
Haha! Let me guess, you’re the negative team member. ????