Make negative conversation positive

After the work meeting, some of the employees were packing their things and chatting. You overhear their conversations and start to ponder the emotions expressed in their words.

One of the employees said, "You can't beat the HR department. They'll always find some reason why you can't claim your medical bills." Another said, "Really? I don't know about it, I haven't. Have you reported medical bills."

You shook your head and walked away. You are sorry to hear that the old employees of the company passed on a negative attitude to the new employees. According to your experience, reimbursement of medical expenses is a very complicated matter, and the personnel department did not deliberately find faults to make things difficult. In fact, it's often the employees themselves that didn't provide enough information, or didn't turn in the reimbursement slips in time to make things difficult, and the employees blamed the HR department for their own mistakes. So, what should you do? It's just a small talk, it's none of your business, is it?

Negative conversations from employees can affect morale and work attitudes, and once the negativity spreads, it can undo your efforts to motivate employees, so every manager should take this issue seriously.

The complaining employee in the above example felt like a "victim" and passed on that "victim" feeling to others. You don't want that, because it discourages other employees.

To counter the potential dangers of negative talk, it is helpful to identify four related "emotional talk". If you can recognize these negative ways and turn them into positive ways, you will boost your own and your colleagues' work energy.

Turning Negative into Positive

This type of negativity mainly makes us subconsciously restrained and restrained, and the solution to this problem is to think about circumventing the restraints or getting rid of them altogether.

When you hit an obstacle, do you try to get around it, or give up? The key is how you think and express this obstacle, for example: You ask employees to make many copies of a long report and send it to the relevant people early tomorrow morning. At this time, there is only half an hour left to pick up the parcel, but the copier is broken again, and other copiers in the office building are not working properly. What should I do?

You don't want employees and others to treat the difficulty negatively by saying, "It's a little difficult to get this report out, and I'd like to know how I can get over it?"

To ensure that employees respond positively, what do you do? Every word that is said should work towards a positive direction. When you hear someone say "can't do it," you should steer them in the positive direction of "can do it." For example, you can suggest to print out the report after scanning, or to send the report to the recipient via E-mail. That said, the key to actively looking for alternatives is positive thinking, and positive thinking often leads to new ideas that don’t encourage employees to give up, but instead allow them to figure out what to do with existing conditions.

Change from narrow to open

Narrow refers to when you encounter a problem, thinking that there are only one or a few ways to solve it. Like "Fred is very forgetful, I don't think I should give him important work anymore." is a narrow way of saying that you don't want to do anything to change Fred's forgetfulness. A narrow statement makes you preconceived, thereby imprisoning your thoughts.

To avoid negative conversations, you often need to turn the conversation toward positive, innovative discussions. This helps employees to be open-minded and not over-the-top.

Suppose you hear a manager complaining about his employee and dissatisfaction with the employee's performance. Frustrated that the employee didn't want to work on his own, the manager said, "I don't know what to do, I could fire him or let him go, but I really don't want to."

If you let him only Choosing between the first two options, the manager cannot effectively solve the problem. You can say something very simple: "Since you don't want to use the above two methods, you can think of other methods. For example, let him give you a work report every day, or assign him a mentor, with He gets the job done together." Your suggestion may not be the right one, but it reminds the manager that there are many options.

Change blame to understanding

This negative conversation style manifests itself as "accountability" in the enterprise. Whenever you hear people commenting, blaming themselves or others, you should immediately turn that negative conversation into a positive one. You can do this by urging people to understand the ins and outs of things more broadly.

For example, when a product line is behind schedule, a manager might say, "Whose responsibility is this? I want to know the names of the workers on the production floor who are holding us back." This It is an example of "accountability", which cannot change the current production situation, nor avoid similar situations in the future. Managers should ask another angle: "Why did this happen? What part of our production process went wrong that caused production to drop? What should we do to improve the process to prevent the same problem from happening again?" Questions like this will encourage employees to think and make suggestions rather than excuse themselves.

Of course, the benefits of changing the way you are "held accountable" extend far beyond the realm of quality management. When someone does something "wrong" or "bad," or makes a mistake, if you really want to learn from it, you should ask why it happened, not hold it accountable. When you find out which "why" instead of "who" did it, you will understand why it happened and make adjustments to avoid future mistakes.

Turning Confrontation into Cooperation

Confrontation hurts morale, causing people to blame each other and spend their energy widening differences rather than pooling their efforts to achieve a common cause. Moreover, emotional hurt can also hinder cooperation at work.

How should you handle this kind of confrontational negativity? The answer is to encourage people to ask the other person why they are doing it, rather than telling them how to do it.

For example, Ray complains to you that Lyn is lazy and takes long coffee breaks; Lyn complains that it is almost impossible to work with Ray because he is rude and inconsiderate. What can you do to get them back together?

First, you need to find out the truth, preferably by letting them find out for themselves. Why does Ray care about how long Lyn drinks coffee? Why does Lyn find Ray rude and inconsiderate? If you ask these questions, you will find out: Ray's seat is next to Lyn, and if Lyn leaves her seat, Ray will answer the phone for her. Lyn recalls that after she came back from a long absence a few days ago, Ray said she was lazy, which made her sad, so she stopped talking to Ray.

In order to get them back together, you should use your understanding. Once you understand why the other person is doing it, instead of reacting angrily, you can communicate constructively to resolve the conflict.

Avoid negative talk and advocate positive talk, which is more motivating than material stimulation. It's a high-return investment that delivers great returns at no cost: high enthusiasm, motivated employees and high performance.

The original text is excerpted with permission from the book Motivational Management: Inspiring Your People for Maximum Performance by Alexander Hiam, published by AMACOM, a division of the American International Management Association, copyrighted in 2003 by the author, English version by McGraw-Hill Education (Asia), Singapore provided. Translated by Xiao Dongyan.

Alexander Hiam's other books are Making Horses Drink, Marketing Kit for Dummies and Streetwise Motivating & Rewarding Employees. He will implement incentive management training at companies such as Ford Motor and AT&T.