G. Balasubramanian,
G. Balasubramanian is a doyen of school education in India. He has held several positions of leadership at CBSE, including Director Academics. He was the brain behind the introduction of several innovations at CBSE, which included frontline curriculum, communicative approach to language teaching, Information Technology, alternatives to homework, etc. He is also an author, poet and a sought-after speaker at educational conferences world over. This article has been taken from G. Balasubramanian’s official website balaspeaks.in
Mitra was sitting in a melancholic mood. Rekha, his colleague, who just stepped in, asked “Hey, aren’t you coming for the meeting?” Mitra responded, “Sure, we have no option.”
She laughed. “Why do you say so?” she looked at him.
“Honestly, tell me, does anyone enjoy going for this meeting?” Mitra was referring to their meeting with their boss Mr. Biswas. “He is a negative person. By the time you return from the meeting you lose all your energy.”
“True, he does not have a mindset to see anything positive. He always looks at the small black spot in the entire bright universe.”
I am sure many of us would have faced similar situations. I recall a boss I had fifty years ago, in the seventies. Many of my colleagues used to remark while entering his room, “It is like entering a lion’s den. No one knows when he would pounce and for what reason.” He used to radiate negativity.
Explaining negativity Dr. Carrie Barron, writes in ‘The Psychology Today’ – “Negativity is a tendency to be downbeat, disagreeable, and sceptical. It is a pessimistic attitude that always expects the worst.”
Say Psychologists “Negative thought patterns are repetitive, unhelpful thoughts. They directly cause what we could describe as ‘negative’ (unwanted or unpleasant) emotions. And can contribute to anxiety, depression, stress, fear, unworthiness, loss of confidence.”
Negative environments in professional organizations cause irreparable damage to the organization and to its vibrant and active human resources. One single negative person could be the source of impacting a huge circle of negative operations.
Dealing with negative mindsets in any environment is indeed a challenge. “Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution,” says Albert Einstein.
Studies indicate that people with such negative mindsets have undergone a troublesome early life wherein they had suffered limitless control, criticism, gloom, and pessimism. This results in some hardwiring of their attitudes to life and gets patterned. It is difficult to change these patterns, though not impossible. However, over a period this pattern becomes stable and is seen causing extensive damage to their inter-personal relationships and growth process. In his book “The Alchemist,” Paul Coelho writes “The less negativity you allow in your life, the happier you will be.”
People who tend to have a negative mindset are usually characterized by risk aversion, judgmentalism, pessimism, urge for extreme control, lack of interest in whatever they do and inability to stay in a team. There could be other reasons also.
In a professional environment, persons with such a mindset enjoy creating distress and worry for others, demotivating others, creating roadblocks to innovation and creativity, diverting the attention of others from their passion, defeating the goodwill and loyalty of individuals to organizations and systems and creating fear psychosis in the minds of vulnerable so that they defeat themselves. They discredit loyalty and belongingness to a system or an organization. In his book ‘The Art of Taking Action,’ Thibaut Meurisse says, “Don’t let the negativity of others drain your positive energy.” In olden times, Indian mythology used to advocate for ‘Satsang’ – the need for a good company, because the kind of people who associate impact our own mindset and energy.
I recall in early seventies, my visiting to see a film just a day before I was to take my first visit abroad, that was my first flight also in the year 1977. During the two and half hours of the film, I saw three air tragedies as a part of the story. You could very well imagine how it could have impacted my mind. Dr. Soroka, writes based on psychological research “The study concluded that globally, humans are more physiologically activated by negative news stories than positive ones.”
Stories, events, anecdotes, meetings, conversations, and all relationships have the power to impact our mind and cause short term or long-term impacts. Unfortunately, the mind has a bias towards negative things rather than positive things. Psychologists call it ‘the negative bias of the human mind.’ Say psychologists “The evolutionary perspective suggests that this tendency to dwell on the negative more than the positive is simply one way the brain tries to keep us safe.”
In a professional environment, the following references are quite routine.
“Sir, the market is very dry. The growth you are indicating is impossible.”
“We may love to change and innovate. But there is no guarantee that innovation will bring results and success.”
And for a teacher “Madam, this class is useless; they have no interest in learning. I have already told them that they will never achieve anything.”
Negativity has the unique capacity of predicting a doom. It fails to see the ray of light even at the nearest spot.
Resistance to change is often a preview to a negative mindset, driven by fear of the unknown, the sense of insecurity and the pain of moving out of the comfort zone. “People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?” asks Thich Nhat Hahn, the Buddhist monk.
Psychologists have done extensive work in this field and have identified ‘the negativity bias as a trait of some people. Though the human brain has both the positive bias and negative bias with equal opportunities, the power of choice tends to tilt towards the negative bias, as it appears more interesting, more challenging, more engaging. The question arises why people tend to be more sensitive to negative people and love ‘to talk’ about them and are more interested in what they do.
Again, this appears to be an outcome of the brain behaviour of most common people. The research says “Neuroscientific evidence has shown that there is greater neural processing in the brain in response to negative stimuli. Studies that involve measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs), which show the brain's response to specific sensory, cognitive, or motor stimuli, have shown that negative stimuli elicit a larger brain response than positive ones.”
Do we therefore walk away from those people? We need to understand that ‘negative people’ need not be ‘toxic people.’ All that we could do to deal with them:
· Extend a better understanding.
· Listen to their perspective.
· Appreciate their thoughts.
· Express gratitude
· Cultivate compassion.
· Empower their self-esteem.
· Initiate a dialogue for other perspectives.
· Respond than react.
· Help in developing a shared vision.
· Facilitate decision making.
It is a much harder job to do than walk away. But if we start walking away from all negative people, we may not find a convenient and peaceful place to work.
“The genius of evolution lies in the dynamic tension between optimism and pessimism continually correcting each other.” Says Martin Seligman, psychologist, in his book “Learned Optimism.”