Motivational Management: Inspiring Your People for Maximum Performance

Chapter 9. Transforming Negative Attitudes

1. Recognize negative talk and identify ways in which it can damage employee motivation and performance.

2. Notice when employees are blindly accepting limits and boundaries so you can encourage them to consider ways around barriers.

3. Notice when employees are portraying themselves or others as helpless victims so you can encourage them to take charge of solving their problems.

4. Notice when employees are playing blame games and transform their negative talk into a discussion of how to learn from mistakes.

5. Protect yourself against anger and frustration by recognizing that the most common form of negative talk is to ''trash the boss''—and that it can be transformed into positive talk using the techniques in this chapter. ...