Managing Someone With A Negative Mindset.
Are you ever on the end of unusual, critical, or negative comments from your team or colleagues?
Instead of feeling irked, try seeing it as a bid. A bid is a craving to be validated and seen. By validating the person, even if you disagree with them, you are increasing psychological safety in your group.
Critical comments have nothing to do with you, your ideas, or worth.
They are ‘bids’. Bids to connect, be validated and appreciated.
What’s a bid?
A bid is an emotional (verbal or nonverbal) cue, asking to connect.
A bid is any way someone communicates, hoping for a response. It can be as small as saying ‘hey, I’m here’, or as big as inviting someone to collaborate.
It could be as considered as asking your boss for feedback, or as casual as asking your colleague how their weekend was.
What all bids share is a craving for connection. To be heard and validated.
Whenever you make a bid with someone, you’re asking for a connection. You want someone else to validate it.
No one said bids would be charming.
People have bad days, bad moods, short circuits, no time, etcetera. People also communicate differently. What is straightforward to one person is rude to another.
Yet, unaddressed Computer-Says-No-type comments (argumentative, defensive, unimpressed) can change the vibe of a group.
Negative comments affect everyone in a group.
If you’re responsible for a team or a group meeting, it’s your responsibility to manage it productively. By doing so, you’ll be increasing the psychological safety of your group.
When someone with a negative mindset derails your conversation, try validating. When you do, psychological safety for everyone in the group will increase.
Why does validating someone you disagree with promote psychological safety?
When everyone's perspective, even ones that you disagree with, is validated, psychological safety increases. Multiple studies provide us with evidence:
In one Australian study, when a ‘bad apple’ was validated, and the conversation constructively redirected, performance improved by 40%.
In another, participants would rather scrap food, intimacy and money in order to be heard. The part of the brain correlated with their 'rewards’ function experienced heightened activity when they felt listened to.
Leaders who demonstrate they can understand others have been found to be more influential.
In a study of 87,000 leaders, it was found those deemed more trustworthy had the foundation of a positive relationship.
These studies show us it’s a human need to want to be treated with positive regard and validated for your perspective, regardless of what you say.
Why you instinctively want to avoid addressing negative people.
Disagreeable people take positive conversations to a negative place. That can feel deflating.
They’re not always on the same page as the group. You have to work harder to get them to consider your idea or what the group is discussing.
Their disagreeableness might feel personal. It isn't. What’s more realistic is their perspective hasn’t been validated in the past.
They’re used to people ignoring them. They’ve learned to adapt; to behave differently to get different attention.
The sum of all of the above = it feels like work interacting with them.
It can feel easier to just zone out as it happens. There is another option. Give them what they want (validation), deserve (positive attention) and keep your group on track. All it takes is a little reframing and 5 seconds of air time.
Judging how someone communicates doesn’t help get your meeting back on track.
What’s more useful is zooming in to make sure you validate their contribution. Even if you disagree with the actual content.
Examples of ways to do that:
‘I see it differently, but I appreciate your perspective.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that, but that's another angle, thank you.
‘That’s something I wasn’t aware of. Thank you.’
‘That’s a new one. I’ll add that to the parking lot to look into later’.
You’re not necessarily agreeing with their point.
You’re not taking on more work. You’re just validating their contribution, and then … moving on.
All people are worthy of respect. Showing positive regard, regardless of what ‘package’ a query comes in, is one way you can role model it.
Seven techniques for engaging people with a negative mindset.
In our training, we step through five archetypes that derail the psychological safety of a group and provide tips on how to work with them.
Let’s step through the toolkit for a very negative person. We’ll often refer to this person as a ‘Computer Says No’. Someone who is highly sceptical and hard to win over.
Be literal.
A Computer Says No is a literal and analytical thinker. As a result, they need specific examples to consider your point of view. If you tell a story, don’t forget to also share specific examples.
Acknowledge suspicions early.
A Computer Says No has a negativity bias. They’re waiting to tell you everything that is wrong with your idea.
Capture their attention by sharing the pros and cons of it as you share it. By presenting a fuller picture, they’ll be more likely to consider it. By addressing the ‘elephant’ early on, you’re linking what you’re saying to the conversation they’re already having in their head.
When you validate fears/concerns/suspicions early on, cynics are more likely to listen. As a bonus, it helps you be more prepared to respond to questions on the spot thoughtfully, as you’ve already done the thinking.
Don’t say it, show it.
A Computer Says No expects you to let them down.
The best way to build trust is to only say what you know you will deliver. If you promise to review their work once a month, move mountains to make that happen. It takes work building trust, and extra effort is required for people who don’t easily trust others.
Minimise social rejection by being specific with exercises.
A Computer Says No is quick to isolate other members of the group. If you need them to participate constructively in a group:
Pair analytical thinkers with a Computer Says No so they can intellectually have a riff off. They argue with each other and find it quite fun (e.g. technicians, governance types, number folks, all like finding errors in things as that’s their KPI).
Tell them how to use their skills (critical thinking, analytical thinking, lived experience) when assigning a group task e.g. instead of ‘what feedback do you have’, try ‘I’d like to hear a way this would work vs where it’d fail. How would you manage it?’
Give them a chance to intellectually flex.
Computer Says No’s are smart.
By giving them advanced or complex problems that they can solve with their experience, they’ll have something tangible to contribute that others will also value. This helps them be seen more positively by peers.
Acknowledge their specific context.
A Computer Says No is wary of ‘generalised’ advice.
Instead of asking ‘what is everyone’s opinion?’, try, ‘how can we apply this idea to your scenario? Where would this work? Where would this require a different approach?’
You don’t need to be an expert on their subject matter. Your job is to ask them how they might apply what you’re presenting to their area of expertise.
You're responsible for contributing to safety in any group you’re in.
If you are participating in any group you are responsible for positively contributing to the safety of that group.
It’s little moments like these (an undermining comment unaddressed in a meeting, a rambling complaint from someone interrupting) that undermine safety in less than 10 seconds.
The alternative is to diffuse it by validating, then redistributing attention, in the moment.
By validating, and then redistributing the attention to somewhere more constructive, you increase the safety of the group. It’s a great tool for every employee, including leaders.
Every employee needs a plan for disruptive colleagues.
Having practical skills to manage people who communicate differently or abruptly is a non-negotiable for a psychologically safe workplace culture.
If every employee had the tools to notice and validate bids, they could positively influence the psychological safety of teams every day.
If every leader had these tools, they could alter the safety of their team.
What could it do for your workplace culture? How about your safety, too?
Do your leaders need the tools to work with disagreeable team members?
Do their engagement scores rely on it? Bring this training to your workplace.
Creating Psychological Safety Programme.
For leaders and individual contributors.