Coping with malcontents: you can deal with negative staff and prevent yourself from becoming negative

School Administrator, Feb, 2003 by Michael R. Weber

The idea in reframing is to look for neutral agreement, and then redirect the negative in a positive direction. Many of us do refraining as a habit in our day-to-day conversations with people. When you are dealing with a negative person, refraining becomes critical, and you should make a conscious ongoing effort to reframe negative conversations.

* Use your emotional bank.

Another good way to break the negative reinforcement cycle is to use a concept called an emotional bank. In any relationship, an emotional connection develops, and the strength and enduring qualities of the relationship depend on the strength of the emotional bank between people.

An emotional bank is similar to a savings account in that you put money aside so that when you meet difficult times, you have something to draw on. If you have built up a strong emotional bank within a relationship, you will have something to fall back on when the relationship hits rocky times. For example, if one of your trusted central-office support staffers makes a mistake, you are able to support that employee and provide him with direction to learn from the mistake because you may have built up a strong emotional bank with that person.

Emotional banks are developed and strengthened in two ways. Any time honest positive feedback is provided to someone, the emotional bank with him or her increases. Also, any time someone else's needs are put first, the emotional bank is strengthened. For example, if a husband and wife come home from work and one says, "Boy, did I have a rough day today," and the partner responds, "You think your day was bad, let me tell you about mine," one of them will need to set aside his or her needs to compassionately and empathetically listen to and support the other. When this occurs, an emotional bank is strengthened.

Another example: If you and a principal are frustrated with each other, you might schedule a time to discuss the issues. If you allow the principal to speak first by asking questions and listening empathetically and carefully, you strengthen the emotional connection. In addition, the principal will be more receptive to your thoughts and ideas, and you may even change your views based on what you have heard.

Most negative people rarely have anyone strengthening their emotional bank. They are lonely, have poor self-esteem and have not received much positive feedback. Therefore leaders need to look for ways to provide honest positive feedback to negative people to assist them in building up their emotional bank and their relationships with you and others. Each time you can provide positive feedback to negative people, they begin to change. They start to look at the world differently, and they change in the manner in which they interact with you.

By building these relationships with negative people and by refraining to interrupt negative people's patterns, you become more effective in dealing with them and assisting them in wanting to make changes. This leads into the need for you to change your attitude toward negative people.