Stay Positive When Dealing With Negative People

2 Ways to Stay Positive When Dealing With Negative People

By Tony Robinson 

We all have to deal with negative people at some point in lives, we just do. Sometimes we can avoid them, other times we can’t. Sometimes these negative people stay for a little while, other times they stay long enough to make us want to jump off a bridge.

But since we know it’s a fact of life that negative people exist, what can we do deal with Negative Nancy and Pessimistic Peter?

Understand They Have Different Values

There are times when the negative people we have to deal with aren’t always negative, they just happen to be really negative in certain situations.

When I started college, I was an engineering major. I did really well in school and got accepted into a summer internship program with one of the biggest oil companies in the world. It was awesome. I performed so well in the internship program that they brought me back the following summer. After the second summer I was told I had a full time job waiting for me once I graduated.

But unfortunately, not only did I turn down that high paying job offer, I left the engineering major entirely! I realized that engineering wasn’t my passion and I began studying small business management instead.

My family wasn’t so thrilled about the idea. I was going to be the first one in my family to get a college degree, and the fact that it was going to be an engineering degree made my family ecstatic because they knew that a degree in engineering meant financial security. That’s what was important to them, a nice steady paycheck with great benefits.

So when news broke that I was changing my major, my family voiced a lot of concerns and brought a pretty negative attitude to the situation. They kept reminding me of the time that would be wasted and the big payday that would never come. It was tough to hear, and it even made me second-guess my decision.

But I had to go back and remind myself of what my values were. What was important to me? Delivering something of significance to world the world, and I felt that a degree in engineering wouldn’t allow me to really reach my potential.

I valued significance, my family valued security. We couldn’t have been further apart from each other.

Once I realized that we had such a big difference in values on the topic, it made it a lot easier for me to tune out the negative comments and energy they were sending my way.

Take Responsibility for Your Own Happiness

Negativity is contagious. It’s easy for someone else’s negative thoughts to slowly creep over and start affecting you in a negative way.

But positivity is also contagious, so when someone is giving you a lot of negative energy, you have to fight back with positive energy. You can’t allow someone else’s negativity to become yours. Just because Negative Nick doesn’t think it’s a good idea for you to go after your dreams, that doesn’t mean you have to think it’s a bad idea too.

You have to be responsible for you own happiness and positivity. If we break down the word responsibility we get “response – ability”. Responsibility is simply your ability to respond.

You don’t have the power to choose what life throws at you, or what these negative people do and say to you, but, you do have the ability to choose how you respond and that’s what’s most important.

You can choose to respond in way that lets the negativity drains your positivity and makes you feel hopeless and frustrated, or you can choose to respond in way that makes you work even harder and focus even more on the positive aspects of the situation.

The dictionary defines responsibility as “the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization”. That means you don’t need an ok from anyone else to act on something that you’re responsible for. So even when the negative people disagree with you, who cares?

It helps if you ask yourself,

• “What can I do to reinforce my positive attitude?”
• “What can I do to discredit their negative attitude and opinion?”

Your happiness depends more on your own attitude than any external factors. So don’t let the negative people of the world get you down.

Five Ways to Build Amazing Team Culture!

5 Ways to Build an Extraordinary Team Culture

When your employees work together to achieve common goals, everyone wins--you, your business and your customers.

Employee teams are one of the best ways to get things done in any business. When you take a group of independently talented people and create a team in which they can merge their talents, not only will a remarkable amount of energy and creativity be released, but their performance, loyalty and engagement will be greatly improved.

Here are five steps for building an extraordinary team culture:

1. Create a Team-Oriented Organization

Make teamwork one of your core company values, and put a clear emphasis on self-managing teams that are empowered to make their own decisions. Don't just talk about teamwork. Show your employees the seriousness of your commitment by giving teams the authority to get their jobs done on their own terms, while ensuring they accept responsibility for the results.

2. Assign Serious Team Goals

Give your teams really important assignments and projects, not just planning for next summer's annual company picnic. Bring teams in when you're looking at new trends in the market, or need to see things through new eyes. It's important to mix it up and not have the same people making the same decisions all the time. Ask them to challenge the status quo and the conventional wisdom. This will help to keep your company fresh and ahead of the game.

3. Encourage Informal Teams

More work in organizations is accomplished through informal teams than formal ones. It's therefore in your interest to encourage the proliferation of informal teams throughout your company, addressing any and all issues and opportunities that capture their interest. When your employees are able to tackle concerns themselves, without elevating every little decision to top management, you'll have a much more efficient organization.

4. Cross-Train Employees

When employees understand how different areas of the company work, they are more apt to make decisions that benefit the company as a whole, rather than solely their own department or group. Give your employees the opportunity to learn other people's jobs. Some organizations go as far as switching employee roles on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. And don't forget your managers. Have top executives spend a few days working on the front lines with customers or directly with your product. They'll have a new appreciation for what your regular employees go through on the job.

5. Provide Team Resources

No matter how talented a company's individuals might be, teams cannot be successful without the proper resources. Teams need a designated and available place where they can regularly meet. Nothing much can be achieved in an over-crowded lunch room. All employees need to be given adequate time to devote to their team meetings, with no grief from supervisors. And make sure to supply your teams with an appropriate budget if required, and the permission--with guidance--to spend it as they see best for the company.

BY PETER ECONOMY

Would You Like to Increase Your Influence at Work?

Alignment

This is one of the great buzzwords of our time. When used consciously, it's also the key to building solid relationships as well as the foundation for being influential. When you are able to show how someone else's needs can be met through your idea or process, you both stand a chance of walking away satisfied. 

The question: How do you do it?

Five Styles to Help You Influence

1. Demonstrate. Give a successful example of your idea. 

How? Highlight related examples of the same idea already taking place in your organization or in another business. 

2. Cost-Focus. Show how problems and costs can be minimized. 

How?  Run through the numbers to reveal, factually, the cost benefits of your approach. Do this on paper and hand the other person(s) a copy to hold in their grubby little paws. This makes it real. Don't just say it; print out the math.

3. Values-based consistency. Show that your solution is consistent with, and strongly supports, the other person's values. 

How? Do your homework and find out the non negotiables in the business lives of those listening. Then, clearly point out the values-alignment that your solution brings.

4. Time Awareness. Demonstrate how the plan will unfold over a specific period of time.

How? My favorite--because it is low risk and high payoff--is to do a trial project implemented in stages with "client" review at designated points. It is very powerful because the other person is actively involved, shares likes and dislikes at each step, and is part of the successes and problem-solving. Ownership emerges rather quickly.

5. Testimonials. Show that your idea already has the support of other respected people. 

How? Ask others who have used the idea to give you a blurb or, internally, to come to the meeting. Nothing succeeds like someone else showing how successful you have been with them. You hardly have to say a word except "thank you" to those who have helped.

Some Other Thoughts

• Listen to what sound like objections and acknowledge them. You'll gain respect. You'll lose respect if you don't treat feedback to your ideas as being legitimate. 

• Stay focused on your theme and not everything you know about the idea or proposal. Too many details will distract your listeners. However, if they ask for details, be prepared to respond. It means they are interested. 

• Consistent with #4 above: People are more likely to accept a smaller proposal if they've just rejected a larger one. Keep the pilot program in your back pocket as a reasonable alternative to implementing the entire idea. It will seem sensible to the individual or group.

I found this great Blog posted by Steve Roesler! Thanks for the info!