Effects of negative attitude and measures to overcome them

Bad attitudes in the workplace whether yours, your employees, your coworkers or your boss might include laziness, tardiness, rudeness, rumor mongering or any other attitude or activity that lowers overall morale. Someone’s negative attitude could be due to personal problems. An employee might be having romantic problems, financial difficulties or a medical situation that influences behavior at work.

Sometimes just the news of the day is enough to bring you down. Bad attitudes also can result from workplace events, such as a firing, pay decreases or other small-business problems. Whatever the underlying cause, your or someone else’s bad attitudes in the workplace can have serious negative consequences.

Decreased Productivity and Performance

Bad attitudes spread, which is why you must address the issue quickly. A single person’s bad attitude can have a huge effect on the operation of your business. For example, if one employee begins complaining, his discontent might spread to other workers. Bad attitudes also can trickle downward.

A cranky manager can ruin the workplace atmosphere for everyone he supervises. Pervasively negative attitudes can have a detrimental effect on performance, causing employees to become apathetic and despondent. Mistakes might occur more often, and output will likely slow.

Bad Attitudes Make for Unhappy Customers

If your customers encounter bad attitudes from your employees, they won’t come back. Customers don’t want to deal with snippy or rude representatives, and employee apathy leads to blown project deadlines and incomplete fulfillment of orders. Monitoring the performance of employees who deal directly with customers might head off some trouble, but a more effective approach is to deal with the underlying causes of the discontent to raise the morale of the entire workplace.

Identification of Problem Situations

Sometimes, one person is the clear cause of an organization’s problem. Other times, you must identify underlying causes for general discontent. For example, if you enforce unreasonable deadlines for projects, meaning employees must work overtime to meet your expectations, you can expect resentment to build.

Though you should expect the best from your employees, pushing them too hard will test their loyalty and might be bad for morale and employee retention. Other possible causes of bad attitudes include employee perceptions concerning the financial health of your business, insufficient support from management or a feeling that hard work goes unappreciated.

Look for Resolution

Ask for regular employee feedback so you can stay ahead of the curve. Act quickly and decisively to nip negative attitudes in the bud. For example, if an employee consistently voices unreasonable complaints, take that person aside for a private discussion. Try to come to an equitable resolution but warn the employee you won’t tolerate negative influences in your business.

Dealing with systemic problems is more difficult but well worth it in the long run if it improves employee morale. High morale has been shown to lead to better performance and happier customers. For example, invite employee feedback concerning workloads when determining project deadlines.

Types of Negative Attitude:

There are certain types of people that indulge in negative states of mind. They are all different in some ways of thinking and acting, but the unifying feature of all of them is their constant negativity.

Here are several types of such personalities:

1. Miserable Type.
2. Silent Killer.
3. Drama Queen.
4. Paranoid Type.

1. Miserable Type:

Such people are grumpy from the start of the day. They meet with failures as soon as they wake up, which sets their day to be full of anger and hopelessness. Usually this type of people keeps to themselves and their presence makes others moody.

People instantly feel their bad energy and try to stay away from them. The most interesting distinction of this type is that they are mainly unaware of their mental state. They don’t realize that they are negative.

2. Silent killer:

Such people usually understand psychology quite well. They use this knowledge to gradually introduce hatred, anger and low self-esteem in others. They do this by making remarks about how others behave or look. They know that their remarks are destructive, but others may not realize that.

3. Drama Queen:

This is the most common type. Their emotions range from anger to self-pity and every small incident can be turned into the storm. They seem to like the fact that they can change how others feel and be the centers of attention.

Such people are needy and insecure, they crave for constant reassurance. They strive for attention and approval. If they don’t receive what they want, they begin acting in childish ways. They may start crying, throwing things around or trying to get on others’ nerves.

4. Paranoid Type:

They perceive others to be constantly trying to worsen their lives. If they go shopping, they think that shopkeepers are trying to rip them off. If someone wants to befriend them, they think that he/she wants something in return for the friendship.

Consequences of Negative Attitude:

The negative attitude can cause a lot of problems for the individuals with the negative attitude. It can also cause problems to the family members and also the people who are around the person with the negative attitude.

Some of the consequences of negative attitude are:

1. It shortens life.
2. It creates unpleasant future.
3. It harms others.
4. It produces negative effects.

1. It Shortens Life:

The more often one becomes angry, upset or frustrated, the less days one will have left to live.

2. It Creates Unpleasant Future:

If one constantly moans and is dissatisfied with circumstances, in the future one is sure to meet with more of the things he/ she is unhappy about. The more people complain, the more things they will find to complain about.

3. It harms others:

The negative mood affects people around you. One should never make others feel bad because by doing so one is contributing not only to his/her own misery, but to the unhappiness of others also.

4. It Produces Negative Effects:

Every cause has an effect and so one’s negative attitude (cause) produces negative circumstances. Mostly people think it’s the other way round, but that’s not the case. A person thinking causes their circumstances.