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Negativism

B. S. Raghavan

AMONG the commonly encountered traits which cause no end of irritation, if not conflict, is a negative attitude to ideas and proposals. In domestic life, a spouse who is constantly resisting even innocuous suggestions from the other spouse can be a pain in the neck, besides giving rise to situations fraught with the more ominous prospect of separation on grounds of temperamental incompatibility. In workplaces too, "abominable no-men" can cause quite a bit of disruption, and if they occupy leadership pos itions, can be stumbling blocks to any kind of innovation or experimentation.

Negativism should be distinguished from pessimism, defeatism or realism. Pessimism is when you allow your enthusiasm to be dampened by fixing your eyes on the empty half of a half-full glass of water. Defeatism stems out of diffidence in undertaking a ta sk or confronting a crisis. Realism is a frame of mind which comes to a logical conclusion of the impracticality of a proposition after rationally weighing all the pros and cons in a given set of circumstances and constraints.

But negativism is simply the ingrained habit of instantly saying, in so many words, "It will not work" or "It cannot be done". It is more a reflex than the outcome of reasoned deliberation.

People prone to this disconcerting tendency come in two categories: Passive-negative and active-negative. Passive-negative persons are those who, even though they take a negative stand against views or ideas of others, do not go so far as to undermine or sabotage their efforts when they pursue their chosen courses of action. They can be suffered, or even be regarded with a certain measure of tolerance, for once they have given vent to their spleen, as it were, they go their own way, and may also sometim es pitch in out of a sense of human fellowship.

It is the active-negative sort that is the most destructive. For, this type of personality not only is prompt in denouncing a suggestion, but when others nevertheless seek to try it out, go out of their way to make sure that its progress is blocked or st alled, just to prove that they were right.

Even one or two `negativists', whether passive or active, in a workplace are enough to vitiate the entire atmosphere by hampering performance, setting the stage for personality conflicts, stymieing creativity and innovation, standing athwart a profession al approach to problems, extinguishing the competitive spirit and generally cramping everybody's style and curbing everybody's enthusiasm.

What is the remedy? The boss can call the person concerned and have a frank conversation helping him to see himself as others see him, and encourage him to cultivate a positive attitude to life, persons and situations. His associates can supplement these efforts, or even take the initiative themselves, to smoothen out his angularity by holding the mirror to him. A third method is to depute him to corrective training with a specially designed module to enable him to overcome the defect. If all else fails , he has to be politely shown the door.

This is all right if the person is someone other than the boss. But, Sir, what if the boss himself is a negativist? Ask me another!