How to Avoid the Negativity Trap

0:03Hey, I'm Joel Miller, Chief Product Officer here at Full Focus. And this is the Business Accelerator Podcast. We help busy but growth-minded small business owners like you scale yourself and your business so you can win at work and succeed at life. It's what we call the double win. And on this episode of the Business Accelerator Podcast, I'm going to take you behind the curtain a little bit. Every week, Michael hosts a Q &A call with our clients. And at the top of that call, he shares on a topic that is coming up in the lives of our clients. These are things that we're hearing in the community, things we're hearing on coaching calls, things that are causing a challenge, things that are causing a problem for our clients.

0:43And so what Michael does in these calls is address that through 20 minutes of teaching. What Michael does on these calls is present something actionable around that topic, around that subject, a way to kind of get unstuck. And I thought we should share that today. Now, normally this call involves not only that topical presentation, but also a Q &A. I'm going to leave the Q &A off, just going to give you the topical presentation. I think you're going to find it really helpful. In this particular conversation, Michael is talking about how to avoid what he calls the negativity trap. This is a mindset that's going to keep you stuck if you stay in it.

1:20And it's the kind of thing that, honestly, it's going to turn your team off, turn clients off, turn everybody off. You want to avoid it. And he's going to help show you how. Before we do that, though, I just want to mention that, honestly, we'd love to see you on those calls. Again, they're every week, and this is a perk of belonging to the Business Accelerator program. When you sign up, one of the things you get access to are these weekly Q &A calls. If you're interested in learning more about that, go to businessaccelerator.com slash coach. All right, let's get into it.

1:58I'm going to be talking about something I'm called avoiding the negativity trap, seven steps to becoming the kind of person others want to be around. So several years ago, Gail and I were attending a party. Actually, we were hosting at our house. It was a Christmas party. And we had this one friend that came in and he grabbed me and he bent my ear and started complaining. So he was complaining. First of all, he complained about his literary agent, how he felt like his literary agent was worthless and hadn't done anything on his behalf, wasn't getting back to him in a timely manner, was frustrated with him.

2:42And then he kind of careened from that into an assault on his publisher and started complaining about his publisher, this good-for-nothing publisher that wouldn't promote his books, that wasn't doing anything to help him, and was basically worthless. And it kind of went on from one thing to the next. And man, I mean, after a while, I had to excuse myself. I just couldn't take it anymore. The negative energy was just too much. And the thing about it was, as I thought about it, it didn't make me think less of the people that he was complaining about. It made me think less of him. And so as I began to think about this, I thought, you know, there's a real impact when as leaders, we're negative.

3:31There's a real impact. And it's not good. You know, first of all, just for ourselves, when we're negative, when we're complaining, it trains our brain. It does. I mean, you've heard me say this before, but, you know, like I own a BMW. I bought my first BMW probably seven years ago. Never owned a BMW before, never noticed them before. But once I bought a BMW, then I noticed them everywhere because now I was a BMW owner. And so I think the same thing is true about training our brain. And we certainly learned this, Megan and I, as we did the research for Mind Your Mindset, is that what you focus on, what you give attention to, what you give your energy to is eventually going to multiply.

4:17It's going to increase. So if you start noticing negative things, you'll notice even more negative things. I'm not talking about, you know, I mean, all of us have negative things we have to deal with and all of that. But I'm talking about when your focus becomes negative and that's all you see, it trains your brain in a way that's not helpful. If you focus on people's faults, you're going to find even more faults. But here's another consequence. It makes you miserable. My friend was clearly miserable. Now, some people are happy being miserable. And apparently he was, at least at that point in his life.

4:54And he's substantially improved since that encounter. In fact, funny story, I actually told this story on a podcast. And I had sufficiently masked the details, I thought, so that he wouldn't recognize it. And this is a very close friend. But he heard that podcast. And he said, were you talking about me in that podcast? And I said, actually, I was. And he just laughed and he said, well, you weren't wrong. And I thought that was awesome to hear that. But it can make you miserable. When you focus on other people's faults, when you're always looking at the negative side of everything, you know, it just creates an energy that makes you miserable.

5:32And the thing about it was when my friend was in that state, I felt it kind of the contagion, you know, leaking or blowing onto me. and I just wanted to get away from it. Another negative benefit is that it pushes people away. And that's exactly what I experienced. Now, here's the thing I'm pretty sure you have to have for success. If you want to be successful in business and life, you can't push people away because you need people's help. And if people just want to avoid you because you're negative, if they don't want anything to do with you because you're negative, then that's not going to help you.

6:13You're going to miss out on tons of opportunities. You're going to miss out on opportunities to just for social interaction, for the opportunities that come from that, but also business opportunities. If people don't like being around you, if they don't enjoy you, if they think you're negative, they're not going to introduce you to their friends. They're not going to introduce you to people that could be actually helpful to you. they're going to avoid you. And then finally, when we're negative, it really erodes trust. And here's why. When my friend was talking about his literary agent, when he was talking about his publisher, I didn't mention he also talked about his publicist.

6:51When he talked about them in a negative light, you know what I thought? What's he saying about me when I'm not present?

7:02What's it made me not trust him. Now, in leading your organization, you can't afford this. You can't afford to have any of these effects because you want to influence people, and that's based on trust. You don't want to push people away. You want to draw people to you. You don't want to be miserable, obviously, because that being miserable is going to act as a contagion in your team. And the worst part is it trains your brain. It becomes a practice that is not helpful to your leadership. I wanted to share with you guys seven steps to becoming the kind of person that other people are attracted to.

7:48Okay. And by the way, these are things I'm still working on. Like I don't have all this nailed, but I'm still working on it. But it starts like so many things. step number one, we got to become self-aware. So let me ask you a question. This is an opportunity for honest self-assessment. And by the way, self-assessment is essential to becoming a more effective leader. If you're not aware of what you're doing, you can't correct it. So are you a negative person? Are you a negative person? Do you see the glass half empty or half full? And if you're in doubt, let me encourage you to ask your spouse, ask a close friend if you're really brave, ask your leadership team, and really give them permission to be honest with you.

8:39Negativity is costing you more than you know. And to be honest, it's a little bit like bad breath or BO. So I can remember back when I was in the publishing world, we had one of our executives wore too much cologne. And I mean, all the time. So much so that I had other executives complaining to me about him. And we talked to him a couple different times about this. Now, what I didn't learn for several years after this, because the problem would just not go away, is that he was a smoker and he was trying to mask the fact that he was a smoker and he was putting on an excessive amount of cologne to do that.

9:24But he wasn't self-aware. So every time we talked to him, he was like, well, but I dialed it down. You know, nobody cares what you think about you. The only issue is how are you perceived by other people? And you've got to get that self-awareness, that perspective that comes from putting yourself in other people's shoes and honestly answer the question, am I a negative person? Am I grumpy? Do I complain? Do I just have a negative energy about me? And again, it's costing you more than you know if you are.

10:02Step two, assess your needs. Usually behaviors driven by some deep-seated need. What need are you attempting to meet by being negative or being a complainer? You know, is it a need for connection? A lot of times people gossip in the workplace or they're complaining to the workplace because it's a cheap, easy way to build connection with other people. But it's kind of a faux connection. It's not durable. It's not helpful. In fact, it's damaging. So, what's the need that you're trying to get by complaining or being negative? Maybe it's the need for significance. I remember there was this lady that we knew from church, and she was always dramatic and negative and complaining about all the ills that had befallen her.

10:59Now, obviously, there's got to be a place to express that, right? Maybe a therapist would be a good place, or maybe your spouse if you don't overdo it. But what needs is getting met? And maybe it's significance. Maybe you feel more important when you're complaining, like these things are happening to you and that kind of puts you at the center of the conversation and the center of attention. But again, negativity is costing you more than you know. So assess your needs and ask yourself, are there better, more healthy ways to meet this need, this need for significance, this need for connection. This is the importance, I think, as a leader, why it's really important, not only to be in coaching, and I know that all of you are in coaching, but for some of you, you need to seriously consider therapy.

11:50Yes, I've done years of therapy. Working on yourself is critically important because how you are, the energy that you give off is going to ripple through the organization. And your culture will acquire the attributes of your personality. And that's why it's so important that we do our own work and make sure that if there are rough edges, if there are things that need to be attended to, if there's deep trauma, that we work all that out so that we can be more effective as leaders and less destructive as leaders. You know, leaders have enormous power for construction or destruction, and it's up to us, but we got to assess our needs.

12:37Okay, step three, decide to change. Decide to change. I really believe that complaining and negativity, both of those are a habit. They're a habit. And like all bad habits, change begins when we own our behavior and make a decision to change it. And it's going to take work. It's not easy. You may have to give your team permission to call you out when you're being negative. I think there was a book years ago. I love this book. I think it was called The No complaining or the no complaint rule. Remember Oprah had the author on her show and you wore this little band around your wrist. And so every time you would complain, you'd snap that just to kind of remind you that, oh, that's a behavior that I don't want to do.

13:27Actually, I think that's kind of a positive reinforcement of a negative behavior. So I don't particularly like that, but I think letting people call you out, you know, whether it's your spouse or whether it's friends or whether it's the leaders, the other leaders or the people in your company, give them permission to call you out. And the conversation might look like this. You might just say, hey, look, I've realized that I'm more negative than I want to be. I'm not proud of it. I don't like that fact. I complain too much. And I really want to change that behavior. And honestly, I need your help.

13:58And so I just want to give you permission that when you hear me doing that, that you just stop me. You know, maybe it's a hand signal, maybe it's the tugging of the earlobe or something that you let me know that I'm being negative in that moment. And again, I'm not saying that there's not an opportunity or there shouldn't be an opportunity for you to share, you know, about negative things that are happening in your business and life. There's an appropriate place to do that. I'm talking about a way of being. So if it's an occasional behavior and really the whole focus is to be solution oriented, that's fine.

14:32But you don't want that to be a way of behavior. And so you've got to decide you're going to change. Nobody can decide that for you. Only you can decide that for yourself. And if we'll make that effort, and again, I've still got a long ways to go, but if we'll make that effort, if we'll be vulnerable with the team, we'll find that it gives them permission to be vulnerable and to self-assess on their own. So this could literally change the culture of your organization by you going first. And that's what leaders do. We take initiative. That means we go first, and it means we go first in the hard things like vulnerability.

15:13Okay, step four, shift your identity. Look, the most powerful change happens when we modify our identity. And there's been a ton of research done about this. So if you want to change your behavior, change your identity. And I've told this story and some of you've heard it 12 times, but just nod and smile as I tell it again. But I could remember when I decided or how difficult it was for me to exercise daily, for me to run daily back when I was running all the time. And soon after I started that practice, man, it was just seemed so hard, but I shifted my identity. I started self-identifying as a runner.

15:57I would tell people, oh, yeah, I'm a runner. And I enrolled in different races, you know, 10Ks, half marathons, and so forth. And so once I shifted my identity to where I was a runner, what do runners do? Well, they run. And so if your self-identity is that you're a runner, you're going to run. And so the behavior is easier to change if you've shifted the identity. So what if you shifted your identity and started to repeat to yourself, started to manage your own self-talk and say to yourself something like, I'm a positive person. I'm a positive encouraging person. Well, what do positive encouraging people do?

16:38Well, they're positive and they encourage others. So shift your identity on that. I think it can make a world of difference.

16:57Step five. This one sounds silly, maybe, but it's really important. Greet others with a smile. This is really hard to be self-aware of. I want to quote from a health expert, Ron Gutman, who said, quote, quote, smiling can help reduce the level of stress-enhancing hormones like cortisol, adrenaline, and dopamine, and increase the level of mood-enhancing hormones like endorphins. Smiling has a huge impact, not only on others, but on you. This is one of the biggest things I struggled with in my career, is smiling. Sounds stupid, but other people perceive me as being serious. I perceive myself as, well, I'm just thinking, but I did it with a frown on my face.

17:48But I kind of had this resting face that was negative and was intimidating to other people. And it wasn't until an executive coach called me out and said to me after she observed my behavior in a meeting, are you angry? And I said, no, I was actually shocked. She asked the question. She said, well, you need to tell your face because your face is communicating that you're angry and it's very intimidating to the people you're trying to lead. And they're not going to perform at their best if they think you're angry with them. I thought, wow. And then as a public speaker, I would never smile. And it was just too serious.

18:27And it was my booking agent who was traveling with me on a few gigs who said to me, you need to smile more. And so I literally would put him at the back of the room and have him do this when I wouldn't smile just as a prompt to get me to smile. And it took a lot of effort. And so I thought I got pretty good at it. And then I would ask him and say, how am I doing? I feel like I was like smiling my face off. And he said, well, it's better. It's not a long way to go. So you can't smile too much. I mean, I guess you could look like an idiot, you know, the town idiot. You don't want to do that. But I'm just saying smile more than you think to because it communicates warmth, it communicates acceptance, and it will help create the kind of culture that you want that's positive and encouraging and will draw people to you.

19:20Step number six, catch others doing things right. This is built on the principle of you're going to get more of what you notice. And so catching other people doing things right, I feel like is counterintuitive as leaders, because the reason we're in the position that we're in is because we quickly see things that are wrong and we fix them, right? And so that can become our whole orientation, that the first thing we do when somebody presents a project to us or presents could be a new website design, it could be a new ad, it could be some proposal, the first thing our eye goes to is the thing that's wrong.

20:02And that is incredibly discouraging to people. And guess what? You're going to get more of it. Now, I'm not saying, hear me, I'm not saying you can't point out what needs to be fixed. And I like to do that in the form of what is missing, because I think it causes people to be less defensive than if I make them wrong. But the thing I would say is notice what's right about it first. You know, I like the way that you did this or, wow, this is amazing or whatever. That's going to cause people to rise to the challenge and give you more of what you're noticing. And at least if you're going to correct them or point out what's missing, if you do it in the context of a positive, encouraging, overall kind of, you know, catching people doing things right, it goes down much easier.

20:52That's the kind of, that's a helpful way to help other people process change because they understand that you're for them. I remember I had a friend of mine who was like the best golf coach I ever had. He wasn't officially a golf coach. I didn't pay him. He was this guy I played with occasionally, but he was about probably 15 years older than I was and a great golfer. And he would tell me when I was golfing with him, he would always reinforce when I had a good stroke. You know, good drive, good putt, good chip, whatever. He would just say, man, that was really good. And then he would gently, occasionally give me some instruction.

21:33You know, one way to correct that would be if you just, you know, dial your right hand a little bit more to the left or whatever. But I could accept it because I knew he was forming. So catch people doing things right.

21:53All right. Step number seven. Speak well of others. So the one friend that I mentioned when I first started talking about this who was negative and complaining and contagious, I had another friend that was equally contagious but positive. And this friend would always be talking other people up. If you ask him about somebody, he would rave about them. Now, there may have been people that he didn't like so much or didn't have such a positive experience with. He just didn't say much. But he always tried to be generous in his praise and was constantly bragging on his people. It's kind of like your mama said, you don't have something positive to say, don't say anything at all.

22:44But here's the problem. Speaking well of others, particularly others that are absent, creates trust. Do you see the connection? Because if people are speaking ill of others when they're not present, it makes you begin to wonder, what are they saying about me when I'm not present? I had another executive back in the publishing world that would constantly complain about other people who weren't there. And I finally had to talk to him. I said, this makes me wonder what you're saying about me. And I just don't trust you. This is hurting your trust with the team. It's not serving what you're trying to do.

23:25And he saw it. And he tried to correct his behavior. And so I think it's important to speak well of others. And that's almost like a discipline, a principle, something that we have to live by. You know, that I'm just not going to speak ill of those who are not present. Now, does that mean you can't speak to those people in private? Absolutely not. If you've got a concern, if you've got something you need to say, say it to them in their presence. Don't talk about them, talk to them. That's the difference between candor, which is legit, and gossip, which is not helpful.

24:05So let me just walk back through that, give you these seven items in case you missed these. Avoiding the negativity trap, seven steps to becoming the kind of person others want to be around. And this is essential for your success as a business leader. You cannot be successful if other people are repelled by you. If they don't want to be around you, you're going to miss out on too many opportunities. So step one, become self-aware. Just ask some folks. Step number two, assess your needs. What's driving this behavior? You know, is there something below the surface that is driving this? Step number three, decide to change.

24:45Only you can do that. If you don't decide to change, that behavior is going to persist. It's not going to just magically disappear. Step four, shift your identity. Start seeing yourself as a positive, encouraging person. And if you keep reinforcing that to yourself, particularly in your self-talk, you can use affirmations if you want to, your behavior will begin to shift. Start with your identity. Step number five, greet others with a smile. And you might just ask, I mean, some of you are better at it than others, but ask people around you, do you think I smile enough? Be conscious of that. People interpret that as meaning something.

25:24Every behavior you have as a leader, somebody's going to interpret it as meaning something because people are constantly looking for meaning. Step number six, catch others doing things right. And I think this is very difficult for leaders. Now, we may think that person did that amazing right thing, but unless it's expressed, it's worthless. So people, you know, we may have the intent, but unless the intent is expressed, you might as well not have the intent. So catch others doing things right. Step seven, speak well of others. Find something good to talk about them. And I worked for a really negative boss in a past life who, it would have been so easy.

26:11And a lot of people did. My peers all found reasons to complain about the boss. And I just decided I wasn't going to be a hypocrite and take the man's money if I was going to speak ill of him behind his back. To me, it was just a principle. I didn't get all self-righteous about it. I didn't announce it to my peers. I just purposed that I wasn't going to speak ill of him. And if other people started to speak ill of him, that I was going to either shift the conversation or I was going to excuse myself. And I tried to find positive things to say about him. And honestly, there weren't that many, but you can always find something.

26:46And there were times I spoke to him in person about negative things I observed and how it was hurting his leadership. And he was very respected because he knew I was loyal and he knew that he could trust me because I didn't gossip about it. And by the way, you guys know this from being a leader, that always gets back to the leader, right?