4 Tips for Dealing with Mr. Naysayer

The other day a colleague shared this Dilbert cartoon with me:

My initial reaction was that the message of this cartoon sums up the way the two parties in Washington, D.C. approach one another. ” Everything you said is right, but I have a reflexive urge to disagree with you.” Sounds very much like something a Republican might say to a Democrat or vice versa.

But what do you do when this person works for you? We’ve all met this guy. Let’s call him Mr. Naysayer. No matter what the idea is or who came up with it, Mr. Naysayer is going to disagree. In fact, he can find fault in just about everything that is said in a meeting. The only good ideas are his ideas. (Mr. Naysayer, not surprisingly, almost always likes his own ideas.) If only he would embrace an idea from a colleague, even occasionally.

You leave a meeting he attended and you think to yourself, “I have to do something about this guy. He’s a one-man wrecking crew. He kills collaboration and causes those around him to clam up.”

It’s no wonder people close down when he’s around. It gets tough defending every single idea you put forward to someone who can find fault in everything — especially someone who is determined to disagree and argue with everything!

So what do you do as Mr. Naysayer’s manager?

Talk to him. You need to make sure that Mr. Naysayer understands how he’s acting and its effect on those around him. Don’t be surprised if he’s surprised when you tell him how he’s acting and how it affects others.

Often people like this are unaware of just how disagreeable or argumentative they are. They don’t recognize others slowly becoming unwilling to argue and defend their ideas. When Mr. Naysayer receives less push back when he disagrees, he believes it is because his superior ideas are winning others over.

So you need to dissuade him from this false notion. Tell him that his disagreeable nature is taking its toll on his teammates and it must stop. You need to coach him on engaging in good, productive debate about ideas and recognizing when he crosses the line, becoming disruptive to the collaboration process.

Keep track. When you’re in meetings, note the number of times he disagrees or challenges ideas put forward by others. If you’re going to help him change his behavior you first need to be able to demonstrate to him how he’s acting.

Also, keep track of the number of times he agrees or supports the ideas of others. If he’s truly a naysayer, there should be a significant discrepancy between the number of times he agrees and disagrees with the ideas put forward by his colleagues.

This data will help you convince him that he truly is having a negative effect on team dynamics.

Use techniques to encourage positive interaction with the team. When you’re in a meeting with Mr. Naysayer and a colleague offers an idea or suggestion, engage him in a positive way. For instance, ask him to share what he likes best about the idea or why he believes it could work. By asking him specifically for positive feedback, you can help him overcome his negativity and begin to build a positive rapport with colleagues.

Of course, these types of questions can backfire on you. If his response is that he doesn’t like anything about the idea or that it could never work, then you’ve got a real problem that is going to be more difficult to fix.

Remove him from the team. If all else fails, you need to get Mr. Naysayer off the team. He’s killing morale and preventing others from freely contributing their ideas. If you can’t get him to change his behavior, he needs to go. If not, you’ll slowly watch as your team shuts down because they’ve grown weary of fighting Mr. Naysayer. New ideas and fresh perspectives will have been met with resistance so often that the team will give up fighting for what they believe. And that you can’t have.

You don’t want your team to come to resemble Congress, where we have almost complete and utter gridlock. If you have a Mr. Naysayer on your team, allowing him to continue unchecked is going to destroy the team dynamic. Make sure you take the proper steps to ensure that doesn’t happen. Address his constant disagreement with others before it kills creativity in your business.