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How to Minimize the Damage of a Negative Person

3. Monitor their influence.

Negative people usually have a sphere of influence.

In a healthy organization, that sphere is usually very, very small. They have the same five friends they complain to every time they see them.

While that’s not admirable, it’s tolerable as long as their influence isn’t growing.

Because we have a philosophy of “anyone can attend, but not everyone should lead,” we try to make sure negative people have a home. Our desire is for them to grow in the love and hope of Christ.

(Please note this does not apply to staff, elders or leaders. See #2 above. I only apply this to people who “attend.”)

4. Help them see themselves accurately.

While this is difficult, it’s important to tell negative people who want more influence why you won’t give it to them.

Explain there’s lots of room for leaders in your organization but not for leaders with a negative agenda. You might even offer them ideas, books and mentors to help them work on it.

People who want to change will grab onto this gladly. Perpetually negative people who wear their negativity as a badge of honor will run from it.

5. Ask the destructive ones to leave.

I have only done this on a few, rare occasions.

Usually these are for people who are not negative but who are evangelistically negative. They’re not content to keeping their negativity to themselves; they insist others share it.

Their negativity becomes divisive, and, in that case, they need to go. Whether they hold leadership positions or not, destructively negative people can’t stick around.

In case you’re wondering, that’s also what they did in the early church.

This isn’t easy, naturally, but it has been very helpful in our context. Try it for a while and you’ll have a team that has fewer politics, a real joy and a positive outlook. Those teams are teams most of us can’t wait to join.

What have you learned about minimizing the impact of negative people?