Navigating Negative People
“It’s stupid that we have to be at the airport this early.”
I laughed and tried to figure out how serious she was by tossing out,
“But aren’t you glad to see me?”
Cue her eye roll.
It wasn’t playful. She was serious.
As the team leader, I filed that away, smiled, and kept moving while checking in the rest of the group.
The plane landed in Central America, and our team of twenty was buzzing. New place. New people. Big adventure ahead. Except her.
“It’s too hot.”
“I’m not eating this.”
“Why would they do it that way?”
“You guys are being too loud.”
As for her husband on the trip, misery and appeasement sat on his face during his “side huddles” with her.
NEGATIVE IMPACT
Welcome to leadership. Where five to ten percent of people are chronically negative. Sure, we’re all negative from time to time, including me. That’s not what this is about. This article is about the people for whom negativity isn’t occasional; it’s their starting point. The ones who settle into it like a recliner and refuse to get up.
What wears us down isn’t disagreements or the hard conversations. It’s the constant drip of negativity that doesn’t want to solve anything, just announce itself.
We’ve all seen what it does to a room or a team. People get quieter. Everyone waits to see what will get criticized next. Attention shifts from the team's mission and cohesion to dodging the eggshells on the floor.
WHY SO NEGATIVE
A lot of it comes from pessimistic thinking patterns rehearsed for years, worn so deep they’ve become ruts in a muddy road that won’t fix themselves.
A lot of the negativity I’ve encountered is them throwing punches to defend their insecurities. If they can get us ducking their jabs, that alone makes them feel safer.
And sometimes it’s just comparison. Your competence makes them feel small, so they go after your ideas.
Whatever the mix, the result is predictable. It does harm to team progress.
CONFRONT IT
Here’s why it has to be confronted. Unchecked negativity gets familiar. Before long, what once felt out of bounds starts feeling normal, and everyone else quietly adjusts around it. Not because they agree, but because it’s easier than dealing with it. That’s how culture drifts in the wrong direction.
Confronting it as their leader, with their best interest in mind, gives them a real chance to course-correct. Skip the sarcasm and the indirect hints. Name specific moments. Quote what they actually said. And help them see how their negativity is revealing more about them than the idea they’re punching at.
THEN…
Organizationally: I don’t put consistently negative people in rooms or on teams, where their voice carries weight. They won’t serve in leadership unless that pattern of negativity changes. And when I discover negative people have already found their way into leadership, I remove them as quickly as possible.
Personally: I reduce their access to my time. If they want to meet or talk, there’s an agenda and a time limit, and when the time’s up, it’s up. It keeps conversations focused and keeps me from carrying weight that doesn’t belong to me.
Not everyone who’s chronically negative wants to be that way. And I get that. That's why my first objective is to confront and coach them relationally. But understanding doesn’t mean their negativity has permission to take over the work or ministry culture we’re responsible for.
NOTE: This is part 1 of a two-part article. Next week, Leading Contrarians.
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