Don’t Let One Bad Attitude Bring Down Your Whole Team

Have you ever been in a fantastic mood, but then one person turned you sour in an instant? It’s not a great feeling. Unfortunately, it can happen to your employees, too, if you have even just one employee with a bad attitude.

A bad attitude could be laziness, tardiness, rudeness, or gossiping and can unconsciously affect your entire team and bring down their morale.

One Bad Attitude Can Cause Big Problems

It might not seem like a big deal if one person on your team has a bad attitude, but that attitude could easily creep into different aspects of your business.

Decreased Performance

Bad attitudes spread like wildfire. If everyone has a bad attitude, their engagement, performance, and morale will all decrease.

High Turnover Rates and Absenteeism

If one person has a bad attitude, other employees might stop showing up if they’re scheduled to work with a Negative Nancy or Negative Nick. They could even go so far as to start looking for a new job. All the sudden, because of one attitude, you might have to hire and onboard multiple new employees.

Unhappy Customers

Your customers don’t want to deal with an employee with a bad attitude. If they interact with an employee who was rude, gossiping about other customers, or late to an appointment, the customer might stop doing business with you.

5 Tips for Creating a Positive Atmosphere

If you have an employee with a bad attitude, it’s not the end of the world. There are steps you can take to bring positivity back to your workplace.

1. Identify the Problem

The first thing to do is identify the problem.

If just one person has a bad attitude, it’s easy to identify the problem. You’ll just have to sit down with the employee to find out why they have a bad attitude. Maybe they have problems at home or don’t like their job.

If multiple people in the office have a bad attitude, it could take a little more work to find the root cause. Maybe you’re assigning unrealistic deadlines to projects or expecting your employees to work too much. If you don’t find and fix the problem, your employees will start to resent you.

If the issue is with your management style or the workplace, work on correcting the problem and send out regular employee surveys to determine if you’re on the right track.

2. Hire Positive People

When you’re hiring a new employee, hire for more than just their skills or experience. Hire for their attitude, too. If a new employee fits your culture and has a positive attitude, they can help bring up morale and productivity. Plus, positive people are just more fun to be around.

3. Praise in Public

When an employee does something well, share it with the whole team and praise them in public. They’ll feel good about themselves, which will improve morale. It will also boost that employee’s confidence, so they’ll continue to turn in excellent work.

4. Criticize in Private

On the other hand, never criticize an employee in public. Instead, criticize them in private so they won’t feel as embarrassed.

If the issue you’re criticizing involves an employee’s bad attitude, frame it as a performance issue. Let them know that they’re disrupting the team, affecting productivity, and not contributing as much as they should. Remember, however, that their bad attitude might stem from problems at home. If that’s the case, be sympathetic and ask if there’s anything you can do to help – like changing their schedule so they can bring their kids to school.

5. Celebrate the Small Wins

Celebrate small wins as a team – no matter how trivial they might seem at the time. Celebrating small wins will improve morale so your team works harder to achieve big goals.