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Examples Of Recreational Negativism

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This is what I refer to as “recreational negativism.” What is “recreational negativism”? This is the em-ployee who doesn’t just have a bad attitude, but enjoys complaining about everything because it provides them with attention. Hopefully, a supervi-sor can work with this employee to improve em-ployee performance, not only from a mechanical or logistical standpoint, but also from the attitude standpoint. The employee must understand there is no advantage to acting in this manner. The bottom line is, employees who embrace and practice “recreational negativism” may very well be employees that have given up on themselves. When I say “given up on themselves,” I mean the employee in question probably has determined that he or she may never be promoted or be seen as a team player. Therefore, they see their only course of action to gain some degree of notoriety, is to act in this manner. It is important to state that each employee …show more content…

These are not easy discussions. Some employees will utilize a variety of techniques to avoid corrective action or performance review documentation. They will utilize all of the approaches you would expect as defense me-chanisms. This will include indicating they are being reprimanded because they are not “a team player,” or because they think different than everyone else, or even because they are more forward thinking than everyone else. Supervisors should not be taken in by these defense mechanism approaches, which no doubt will surface (and probably not in the friendliest manner) during a performance review with the employee. These are simply attempts to avoid the real issue(s), which is that the employee needs to “straighten up and fly right” and present a good, or at the least acceptable, attitude each

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