I'm seeing a lot of people writing on LinkedIn, saying that they need to distance themselves from the negative individuals around them. Or maybe they're saying how some people have a toxic negative mentality. I'd like to share this story about another negative thinker, as food for thought:
When RMS Titanic hit the iceberg, engineers on the ship quickly went to inspect the damage. After examining its extent, they rushed up the to captain and gave him the bad news. "Captain", they said, "the damage to the hull is significant and we estimate that the ship will have sunk in two hours. We suggest manning the lifeboats immediately." To this the captain replied, "I will not have negative thinkers on my bridge!"
I felt compelled to add my own commentary to this statement.
Are the negative people around us actually addressing real problems, and we are being ostriches and putting our head in the sand? Or do people's over-negative mentalities rub off on us, debilitating us in our ability achieve things and painting a gloomy picture? Well, it's both.
The Titanic Story muddied the water a little bit. When people talk about negative thinkers, they're talking about Negative Nellies. Naysayers. People who's cup is always 'glass half empty' (GHE). This a whole different type of messenger relative to that found in the Titanic Story, where it was necessary to address negative issues so that a solution can be found.
But on top of that, there are those who receive this news as well (the captain of the story). And in this situation, there are two ways to respond. There are those who are receptive to the news, and there are those who aren't.
Ultimately, we were comparing apples with oranges, yet the paraphrased quote was still a good insight that illuminated a larger picture.
There are the two forms of messenger:
1. The GHE's.
2. the people who address real negative issues so that a solution can be found.
Then there is the recipient:
1. Those who are receptive.
2. Those who are unreceptive.
The act of giving and receiving negative issues can all be described by a matrix (and there would be a mirrored version of this for receiving positive issues):
But this then begs the question... what are the defining attributes that separate the 'cup half empty' group from those who address real negatives problems? If we knew this, we would know how to refrain from being a GHE, as well as know when to reject the messengers who are GHE. For this, I can turn to to Aristole's three "ingredients of persuasion" (with a bit more development within Pathos to account for recent ideas in psychology):
1. Logos (Reasoning):
How big of an issue is this problem, within the context of a larger perspective? Is it urgent and needs to be addressed straight away, with grave implications if it is not addressed? Is it minor and is a benign imperfection, which won't have any negative implication if not addressed?
In business, the reverse of this (weighing up and prioritizing positive development activities) is done through the use of a "cost-benefit analysis". This is where all possibilities are sketched out, then the finite labour force is assigned work which that has the most benefit at the least cost... it is also the domain where management terms like "low hanging fruit" are thrown around. In reality, a 'cost-benefit analysis' and a 'cost-detriment analysis' ('business continuity plan') should work hand in hand, so that the worst case scenarios are mitigated in parallel with the most efficient development tasks being carried out.
What does this means in terms of the messenger/recipient matrix? The messenger needs to be logical in analyzing the implications of each problem, and then relay the problem to the recipient. The recipient then needs to weigh it up again, within the context of their own information. What this means for the captain in the Titanic Story (where the recipient is an authority that should hopefully have greater context than the messenger) is that he needs to weigh it up relative to all other problems in different areas (such as services to the customer, etc) and do his own cost-detriment analysis.
2. Pathos (Emotions: emotional receptiveness & fears):
Ultimately, the captain seemed to reject the engineer's message due two potential reasons. The first potential reason is the message's negative emotional associations. A message highlighting problems potentially makes us feel bad. 'Potentially' - because this is based on how emotionally receptive or resilient we are. By rejecting a bad message because we don't like it's emotional associations, we're allowing ourselves to be scared of the emotions we'll feel and ignoring the message: being an ostrich and putting our heads in the sand. For success in this domain - which is addressing the problem while still remaining upbeat - we need to have some emotional resilience or be emotionally unreceptive, to some degree. This could be simply to acknowledge that a message has negative emotional associations and consciously making a decision to be unreceptive and not to let that get us down emotionally, while still addressing the problem.
How does this information help us correctly address the real issues, both as messengers and recipients? By being aware that this fear of bad messages occurs, we can then first address our bias to ignore bad messages based on their emotional association, so that we can consequently analyse the message in a more level-headed way.
3. Ethos (Reliability of the source of the message: Mindset)
The second potential reason that the captain rejects the engineer's message is that the captain doesn't respect the source of the message (the engineer). If the captain feels like the engineer is overly negative and only focuses on the worst case scenario - or worse yet - blows all bad scenarios up to a point where he paints an unrealistically negative picture of the situation, then the captain would be inclined to reject the message.
Ultimately, though, this would be very poor behaviour from the captain. If the captain had a bit of engineering knowledge, why didn't he employ his own logic from the information the engineer gave to come to his own conclusions of the implications? If the captain needed make a decision based completely on the judgement of the engineer, why did he employ someone to make these decisions, only to not trust the conclusion they came to? These are the two things we can bear in mind if we find ourselves being a recipient of these messages. As Reagan said during the Cold War negotiations: Trust But Verify.
So, we've gone from two individual scenarios and then related them together using context from a bigger picture. From there, we've addressed some causes for the behaviour in each scenario. I understand that some of you will now be reading this and thinking, "so how does this impact me again?" I believe that by understanding the cause of events happening around us we can make better decisions on how to deal with the situation. So if you agree (or not!) with my analysis of the situation, feel free comment below. And if you feel like you learnt anything... or if you just enjoyed reading this, you can find more articles like this one at www.solidifyingnebulousideas.com