How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team

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If a fellow team member is regularly negative, you can appeal to what Kramer calls "the collective wisdom" of the team by modeling positive behavior and using peer pressure to show the pessimist a more productive way of contributing. Of course as a peer, your influence is limited and you may need to talk with the team leader if your attempts to redirect the pessimist don't work.

When All Else Fails
All of the experts agree that if a team member is continually disruptive and does not respond to coaching or feedback, you may ultimately need to remove her from the team. Sometimes people are not a good fit for a team or a project and it's your job as leader to make that distinction.

Negativity Can be Useful
It's important to remember that the goal here is not to rid the team of any skeptical sentiment. Not all negativity is bad, despite how it sounds or feels. According to Kramer, habitual pessimists' concerns may in some cases be well informed and rational and "based on an intuition or insight that could be extremely helpful to the group." For example, there were pessimists at NASA who didn't feel the Space Shuttle Columbia was ready, especially after the Challenger disaster seven years earlier. We need dissenting voices to check our assumptions and push our ideas. Katzenbach says, "An irritating member adds a dimension to teaming. As long as he or she is not strong enough to derail progress, he or she may offer thoughts that otherwise wouldn't come in."

Principles to Remember

Do:
• Find the source of the pessimism
• Differentiate between the person and the behavior
• Involve the whole team in setting norms for team behavior

Don't:
• Single someone out in front of the whole group
• Allow negative comments to go unaddressed
• Assume all pessimism is unproductive

Case Study #1: Turning Negative Comments into Constructive Ones
Lisa Schneider, a sales director at an online media company, was leading a team to organize the company's sales inventory and identify operational efficiencies in the way they leveraged the inventory in new sales. Many of the team members were not Lisa's direct reports but people from other departments. Fred worked for Operations and from the beginning of the team's work together was skeptical of the project. He said over and over, "This isn't going to work." Lisa could see that Fred's attitude was having an effect on the other team members and was concerned he would ultimately impede the team's progress. She pulled Fred aside and explained that whenever he made negative comments, the team looked deflated and the conversation stopped. Fred was receptive to what she had to say, but he believed that Operations would not be able to execute on the ideas they were putting forth. Lisa told Fred that his boss, the head of Operations, believed in this project and had asked him to join the team for a reason. She asked him to offer alternatives to the ideas being proposed in addition to raising concerns. "I explained to Fred that what he was doing felt like continually putting up roadblocks, without providing a detour sign. I asked that he propose additional solutions to overcome the obstacles he was raising," Lisa said. He took Lisa's advice to heart and began engaging with the team on new solutions. Team members were relieved to see Fred contributing in a positive way and openly debated the merits of the solutions he proposed.

Ultimately, the team's recommendations were implemented with many of Fred's alternative solutions incorporated. Lisa believes the end results were more rigorous because of Fred's contributions. The project was considered a success and the new system has saved Operations 100 hours of work each quarter.

Case Study #2: Pessimism as Cover
Rutger von Post, a Principal at Booz & Company, recently led a team with a difficult team member. Joe was a junior consultant reporting into Rutger on this particular client project. Joe continually expressed skepticism about how the team was sizing the market for a new healthcare product. The team met several times to go over the project, clearly divide up the work, and set goals and milestones. Joe did not productively contribute to any of these discussions. In fact, he would cross his arms and say things such as, "I don't see how this is useful for the client." Rutger pulled him aside in an attempt to understand what was causing Joe's negativity. Only after Rutger gave him direct and stark feedback about his behavior and the impact on his performance, did Joe make clear that he was acting skeptical because he didn't know how to do what was asked of him. Rutger spent a half day with Joe going over what he needed to do and practicing the work with him. Together they sized 5 of 30 sub-segments of the market so Joe would then be comfortable doing the rest of the work on his own. Rutger said, "Once he was shown how to do it his skepticism evaporated." Joe eventually became a productive member of the team once Rutger understood and addressed the real source of his pessimism.

Provided by Harvard Business—Where Leaders Get Their Edge

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