I have been labeled by my manager and employer. That label is "Negative Attitude". Let me explain how that happens.

Managers play psychologists all the time. They figure out what the top boss wants, how the game is played, and then play the game to the hilt in order to survive themselves. They learn how to "read" whether their boss likes to be flattered, golfed with, or likes to have his very bad jokes laughed at. Most managers are employees as well.

If you honestly think managers don't play psychologists you are sadly mistaken. Ultimately the middle manager is doing the work of the chief who doesn't like certain individuals on a personal level. Talk about negativity.

Walk into more and more places today and everyone is trained to be upbeat, cheery, and "positive." And yet our society suffers from more and more crankiness, rage, and negativity when those same people are "off-work." I believe the two go hand-in-hand. "Negativity" is another way to say, "Don’t rock the boat." It's psycho-babble that is being promoted by today's management in order to stop workers from making legitimate complaints, because with it comes the threat of unemployment.

One of the problems in dealing with this type of situation is that we all dance around it; our culture has developed too many buffers between employees and managers that can paralyze common sense and prevent solutions.

Seems to me it's a big waste of training, talent, potential, and humanness to just write off someone as negative and worthless without first making some kind of worth while effort to understand what else may be going on. Offering unlimited, ongoing counseling sessions in the boss's office, based solely on his perception, is no way to run a business.

Very often it is the Employer and Management that create an unpleasant work environment. When Employees start voicing their concerns, they become labeled difficult, hard to please, pessimistic, and/or have a bad attitude. Instead of placing the blame on Employees, Management should look at what causes this perception. Could it be micro-management, dead-end jobs, no opportunities for advancement, or a host of other factors that lead to low morale?

It is funny that in today's work environment, where you may be let go at any moment, that management has the nerve to demand and expect a level of dedication from you that the corporation is not willing to give. It is the responsibility of management to set the tone of the department. Weak leaders are the biggest cause of negativity. Managers that won't lookout for their staff are doomed to deal with all forms of hostility.

I say keep it simple. The fairy tale days are long gone. It should be a clear understanding between all involved that this is "work" plain and simple. Come in and do your eight hours to the best of your ability and then at the close of business go on with the rest of your life. Corporations and their managers should not be so selfish to ask from you what they will not in turn grant to you.

In your perfect business world, one would have to assume that all involved are fair-minded people. In this world, everyone gets equal treatment and bias of any kind has been medically cured through genetic engineering. Like I said before, keep it simple. Realize that not everyone will view the world through rose-colored lenses. Its just work!

A chemistry professor once said, "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate." [For my non-chemist readers, "precipitate" is what falls to the bottom of the container and is often discarded.] Too often organizations leave their employees feeling powerless and unable to have any real effect on what happens. When dead ends are hit and all the employees have left is complaining about things, it is management who should look in the mirror before starting to list the negative people.

In my opinion, Western Society is a breeding ground for these so-called "negative personalities". Everywhere you look you find some person or some group complaining about the most trivial of things.

Negativity is the one problem mentioned most often. It is important to be clear about what type of negativity you are dealing with, as it is a broad and subjective topic.

Most cynics and pessimists are disappointed optimists. For some of us, negativity is a pattern of thinking and speaking - most negative people are trying to help. Really.

Some time ago, I made a personal discovery that my best gifts are also my worst character defects. I stopped labeling them one way or the other, and just call them characteristics or attributes now. The pessimist's gift is to see potholes down the road that the rest of you don't have the eyesight to see. Negative people are often great problem-solvers, because they have already thought about all the things that can go wrong. (If an airplane or some other crisis hits the building, follow the pessimist. They planned the escape route long ago.)

American culture is anti-negativity, and we have a tendency to stick our fingers in our ears and say "la-la-la" very loudly when we hear it. It particularly disrupts cowboy mentality - those who want to ride in on a white steed, deal with crises unplanned and ride off into the sunset, leaving everyone behind saying, "who was that masked person?" That's great in the movies, but leads to disaster at work. Cowboys are lousy role models - they are the homeless people of the west. You know these types - they work extra hours on a brilliant fix, put it in untested, collect for their brilliance and dedication, and leave the steady, quality-minded folks cleaning up for months.

Anyway, negative people are often truth-tellers, and may be the saving grace of a corporation. There's a good article about corporate truth telling in the July 2003 Harvard Business Review entitled "Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives' Decisions". Here's an interesting quote: "When pessimistic opinions are suppressed, while optimistic ones are rewarded, an organization's ability to think critically is undermined."

I spend well over 1/3 of my life at work. My work is part of my life and my life does not begin when I get off of work. It begins when I get up to get ready for work. If my work eats away at my happiness then my outside life suffers. If my work does not get me outside enjoyment that takes away from that stress then it not only hurts my outside life it comes back to work eventually. This is the "negativity." When your work environment is no longer enjoyable, when the pay doesn’t allow you to actually do anything, you are under constant threat of losing your job, you don’t get rewarded/recognized, you are expected to know all about new products and new technology quickly and with the most basic of training, you are consistently set up to fail, you are told to be a team player but are lied to by management over and over again.

Well I think I have painted enough of a portrait of why there is negativity in our work place. Leadership training seems to be seriously lacking. Am I Negative? No, I'm just bitterly frustrated.