Don't listen to negative, "energy vampires" in the workplace

Leadership is an open-book exam. Both you and the President can get information and advice from many sources.  The benefits of asking are obvious.  But when facing a shrinking economy, cutthroat competition or terrorists, it’s crucial to know who not to ask or even listen to.

To read the rest of this article from the Denver Business Journal, see: Don’t listen to negative, “energy vampires” in the workplace http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2001/10/15/smallb5.html

Don’t listen to people who are:

• Scared, overwhelmed, discouraged or continually negative and critical; "energy vampires."
• Angry, hostile, manipulative and blaming narcissists; looking for someone to make their lives work the way they want.
• Exhausted or complacent lovers of comfort, convenience, ease and appeasement, too soft to fight.
• Sure that fairness and justice are the best ways to win or are more important than winning.  Disillusioned because their hope for friendly, win-win solutions has been challenged by a reality of cutthroat competition and win-lose fights to the death.
• Stuck in “analysis paralysis.”

Some keys to success in changing times - see original article for details:

• Talk to people who have the determination and energy to try to mold the future to your liking.  Listen to people who know what it takes to thrive in hard times and to defeat determined enemies.  Don’t listen to “energy vampires” who sap your will.
• Become low maintenance.  Whether you’re a manager or an employee, an official or a citizen, be a person who can pitch in and help out.
• Promote people who take charge and succeed - don’t keep employees who fall apart in a crisis.  In a world wallowing in recession and terrorism, your company and your country can’t afford to carry wimps, whiners and weaklings, panicked or immobilized by fear.  If you keep them, they’ll drag you under.
• Leaders stick together.  Tell people what you expect them to accomplish and how you expect them to act.  Talk longest and deepest with leaders at all levels in your organization.  Your job is to support hope, calmness and productivity under pressure.  You have a business to run.
• Take intelligent risks; don’t be too prudent.  Remember F.D.R. saying, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  Buy and build.
• Tell hero stories.  You’ll hear friends, family, children or coworkers upset because they just figured out that we can never really be safe or secure.  We don’t know what might happen.  Tell them about people with courage and skill in the face of danger.
• Success must be fought for and won; it won’t be given.  The British didn’t leave America in 1776 because they were politely asked to.  Hitler didn’t stop because he was appeased.

Hard times and war are great opportunities to be great.  Prepare yourself to be brave and skillful.  Losing is a much worse example for our children than is war and victory.

You might even read, “Masters of Change,” by William Boast and Benjamin Martin.

Often, individuals need coaching and organizations need consulting to help them design and implement a plan that fits the situation.  To get the help you need, call Ben at 1-877-828-5543.

Members of Whiners' Club definitely bad for business

With one exception, workplace cliques are bad for business.  If you allow them to operate behind the scenes, they’ll destroy morale, teamwork and productivity.  Yet, as the economy continues in a recession, people’s fear and stress will lead them to band together to find comfort and scapegoats. We usually recognize cliques that use bullying tactics to preserve their turf and to get ahead.  Let’s focus on one particular type of clique that will become more prevalent and more destructive as the recession deepens – the Whiners’ Club.

To read the rest of this article from the Portland Business Journal, see: Members of Whiners’ Club definitely bad for business http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2009/04/13/story9.html

Members of the Whiners’ Club, whether they’re managers or staff, waste time and spread a cloud of negativity and apathy throughout the office.  They’re toxic.  They complain about everything: the global economy; the country’s education, health care, bureaucracy and legal systems; the company’s leadership and management; their immediate bosses and coworkers; increased workloads imposed because coworkers were laid off; the insecurity of their jobs and retirement funds.  You’ll never satisfy them.

The accuracy of the whiners’ observations isn’t the issue.  The issue is their attitude towards what they think are facts.  These people are professional victims.  They’ve decided that since the world is so rotten and the future appears so bleak, they’ll stop trying to succeed.  Instead, they give themselves permission to wallow in victimhood.  They use their negativity to bully and abuse other staff, to sabotage meetings and to control the workplace.

Does that sound like teenagers who feel entitled to be taken care of?

Often, the strong and clear voice of an outside consultant and coach can empower managers and also make changes compelling.  You’ll probably need to train conflict-avoidant managers how to evaluate and remove members of the Whiners’ Club.  Once you remove a few of the most negative people, most of the rest can be rehabilitated with the right approaches.

Learn what you can do to eliminate the high cost of whiner’s low attitudes.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Stop Workplace Moaning, Groaning, Whining and Negativity

In this recession, lots of specific problems crop up that we moan and groan about.  But habitual whiners and complainers want us to wallow in their negativity even in the best of times.  In her article in the Financial Times, “Office moaners are something to groan about,” Emma Jacobs points out that habitual complainers can demoralize and depress any office. The skill to critically foresee potential problems and try to solve them is totally different from an endless stream of hostility, negativity and victim-talk.  Of course, good managers pay attention to comments from productive staff.

While occasional griping is a natural part of our lives, a Grump’s steady stream of bad attitudes coupled with attempts to prove that we should all feel as bad as he does, rapidly convert our sympathy into anger.

Negativity also promotes workplace divisiveness.  Moaners ostracize anyone who won’t join in and their continued focus on what’s unfair or wrong leads co-workers to focus also on what’s wrong at work instead of finding solutions or staying productive.

Although most people moan and groan for a while in response to specific situations, typically, you’ll encounter three types of habitual moaners:

1. People who routinely feel discouraged, depressed and victimized, and just want to whine endlessly about how hard life is.
2. Co-workers who batter you with their views about how bad the world or the company is.  You have to agree or you just don’t understand (“you fool”) or you’re one of the “oppressors.”
3. Bullies who use moaning to take control and power.

The last category is sometimes surprising.  How can someone so victimized, negative and wimpy be a successful bully?

Moaning, complaining stealth bullies gain power and control when:

• Well meaning people sympathize, agree and join their crusades.
• Co-workers spend hours giving them sympathy instead of working.
• Managers and co-workers start walking on egg shells around complaining bullies in order to make them feel good or from fear that their supporters will gang up on you because you hurt their feelings.

Behind this stealth bullying is the moaning bullies’ desire to control what correct behavior should be (“Those rotten people should do …) and their rules for how we should respond to what they see as major injustices.

So what can you do?

1. Don’t hang out with negative people.  Leave the break room or sweetly remove them from your cubicle or office while saying, “I have too much to do right now” and turn to do it, or “I have so many deadlines, would you do this for me” and give them a simple task.
2. Don’t debate with them.  They don’t want to change their minds.  Notice that if you win one debate, they rapidly come up with something else to moan about.  Their goal is to moan, not solve problems.
3. Individually stand on your own ground.  You might say, “You’re right but that’s not important enough to waste much time on,” or “you’re right but that’s part of life so I don’t get upset about it,” or “you’re right but that’s too big for me to do anything about at this moment so I’d rather focus on the things that lift my spirit and energy.”
4. At a workshop someone suggested what’s become my favorite.  With a straight face say, “My therapist says I can’t have any discouraging talk for seven days straight, so do you have any happy or uplifting things to tell me?”  This has worked every time.
5. On your team, make team agreements or “Behavioral Ground Rules” against moaning, groaning, negativity or gossip.  Call it like it is.  Some teams even have “No Moaning” signs at their meetings.

Of course, we sympathize and support someone who is in a painful situation and needs a pick-me-up.  But don’t throw your sympathy into a bottomless bucket.  You’re not being paid to be anyone’s therapist and your organization is probably not a therapeutic environment for employees.

Of course the same could be said about whiners, moaners and complainers at home.  They’ll drag your energy down if you let them.  As Henry Adams said, “Even the gayest of tempers succumbs at last to constant friction.”  In your personal life, give whining complainers a chance to change or vote them off your island.

Recession-induced fear and stress stimulate self-bullying

Mostpeople are afraid of the economic forecast.  Some have lost jobs; more will.  Some have lost retirement funds; more will.  Some have lost hope; more will.  Fear and stress stimulate mostpeople to huddle around the campfire, worrying, whining and complaining about their uncertain future.  They convince themselves that they’re too weak and helpless to succeed.  They’re victims together. A long, cold recession or depression is the consensus prediction.  But that’s not the prediction for my life and it doesn’t have to be for yours either.  And that’s not because I have guaranteed money flowing in or I’m sure my business will be immune to the next little ice age.  There’s a different reason.

We each have self bullies.

The little, self-bullying voices:

• Know our every fear and weakness, our every mistake and sin.
• Demean and ridicule us, discourage and depress us.
• Predict failure, as if they want to make us lose hope and give up.
• Don’t like us even though they pretend to be trying to help us.
• That are so persuasive.

We know where we heard those voices that told us they knew better – our parents, relatives, siblings, teachers, ministers, schoolmates, peers.  We know how we made their voices into our self-bullying voices.

I refuse to listen to self bullying.  I refuse to be a victim of my times and circumstances.  You also can rise above mostpeople.

Don’t be a victim of your past.  History is not destiny.  Command yourself.  Ignore self-bullies.  Our self-bullying voices do not know what’s best for us, do not know the future and can’t accurately predict that we’ll fail.

Of course, the economy is lousy and times will be hard.  Most of us won’t be able to maintain our previous standard of living.  Mostpeople are angry because they thought they were guaranteed increasing wealth and security if they did things right.

We haven’t been trained to survive a depression.  So what?  We can survive and even thrive.

Think about what our ancestors survived.  There has always been rotten weather like recessions and depressions, poverty and war.  They’re part of the natural weather cycles – hurricanes, tornadoes, snow and ice storms, avalanches, droughts or floods, earthquakes and tsunamis.  There have also been plagues, famine, pestilence and war.

If we let recession-induced fear and self bullying sap our strength and will, we won’t have the right stuff, we won’t act skillfully and the economic tide will pull us under.  We have within us the inheritance of an unbroken line of people who thrived.  We have within us the seeds of strength, courage and joy.

These economic ice ages have happened in America before.  For example, economic crashes occurred in about 1787, 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1897, 1907 and the great depression from 1929-1941.  The rest of the world had similar experiences.

What can we do when we get down on ourselves?  We need WILL and SKILL.

• In order to succeed, we must choose to ignore self bullying, choose to command ourselves, choose to create the futures we want, no matter what the circumstances.  As individuals, we must have the WILL to persevere, with grit, determination and resilience.

Call that hyper-critical, fear-mongering side of us a “self-bully” so we’ll react with passion and power against it.  So we’ll rally ourselves against its words.  We wouldn’t lie down in front of those old bullies and we wouldn’t let ourselves be abused by bullies now.

• We need SKILL to ignore our self-bullying voices – turn off the discouraging TV; stop listening to people moaning, whining and complaining; stop listening to victim stories.  Walk away politely from mostpeople who wallow in the dumps of fear and panic.  If you’ve kept your job, don’t wallow in survivor’s guilt.  Get off the emotional roller coaster.

Find friends who don’t waste their time worrying about the economy, but instead handle things in as little time and with as little wasted energy as possible.  Find friends with inner lights that give them joy even when they don’t have all the comforts and toys they once did.  Become such a friend.

When the self bullying voices start again, tell them we’ve heard all that before and if they want to help us, they can use a different voice and become encouraging coaches that strengthen our spirits.  Fill the IMAX screen of our minds with the future we hope we’ll have and the friends we want in our lives.  Throw ourselves into activities like physical exercise.  Don’t feed our addictions; eat well.  Feed our spirits with movies, music and books that lift up our spirits and renew our energy.

• We need SKILL to make plans to keep our jobs or find others, to spend less while still treating our spirits better.  We need skill to get over our feelings, plans and expectations.  Loss of riches, comforts and dreams is not really the end of the world.  Get going again.

Find a coach to keep your spirits up and organize your efforts.  Read the self-bullying section in "How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks."

While the growing recession is the world in which I function, it’s not the world in which I live.  I invite you wonderful people to enter the world that is waiting for you, if you but have the courage to take the first steps.

"What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."    Ralph Waldo Emerson