Turn Around Your Team's 'Debbie Downer'

Debbie Downer was a Saturday Night Live character that saw the worst in everything. A cure for cancer would just increase world overcorwding.

The-glass-is-half-empty people are in every workplace. They are poison to morale, momentum and productivity. So how should managers deal with dourness?

Amy Gallo, writing on Harvard Business Publishing, says the first step is to determine the root cause of this person's pessimism. There could be a logical reason for the behavior, such as a promotion passover. Other people might just have a natural disposition toward the negative, just as others are always cheery.

Here's what you can do to turn them around:

Create Awareness of the Problem After explaing why this person is a valued team member make clear the impact of his behavior, Gallo writes.

Don't Let Negative Statements Slide Ask the person to further clarify the negative comment and also ask how they would solve the problem.

Involve the Whole Team Example: Create team norms that encourage positive, solutions-driven thinking and let team members enforce them.

Disciplinary action should be a last resort.

Look, pessimism has its place -- warnings and cautions are valuable information for managers to recognize. But too much of a bad thing is, well, a bad thing.

Read the entire post, How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team, then return here with your own experiences with Debbie Downer and how you turned things around.

(Unhappy image by Robbie Howell, CC 2.0)