How do we convince a coworker to adopt a more positive attitude?

[RUDisney]

There is a supervisor that my boss and 3 of his managers (myself included) are trying to mentor. She is a very negative person and we didn't put her in the position she is in now, she was already in her job when my boss gained control of her area.

She is the classic case of letting the tail wag the dog.

She has 3 people who report to her that she gave everything to. She could only trust these people to do things right. She refused, upon our constant encouragement, to cross-train her other people. Her answer to any problems in her department is that they are too busy and she needs to hire more people. That was ok with her former bosses, but not with us. The people she has aren't fully utilized, and they spend a good portion of the day talking about what they did last night.

Here's the problem. Of these 3 good people she has, one had a baby and decided to be a SAHM. One quit when she found out that the new mom wasn't coming back. She was a part time employee. Her second in command is trying to post out of the department.

Of her other staff members, alot of them, all of a sudden, have medical problems, or family with medical problems. One needs foot surgery and will be out for several weeks.

She thinks that this is the end of the world even though we've told her we'll find people to get her through the rough patch. I have already transferred, for the better part of the day, one of my best people to help her, and we're transferring my part time employee to her department permanently to help her.

What she can't see is that she's getting rid of the riff-raff in her department and we're replacing them with better qualified, higher work-ethic people who will be easily trained to do these "very difficult" tasks.

I speak from experience in rebuilding a department. I lost most of my staff due to transfer promotions and resignations at the beginning of this year. Not once did I worry that things would never be good again. I am better off today with that department than I ever was before. She will have the same results, I'm sure, in a few months.

How do we help her to see the forest through the trees? How do we get her to start being part of the solution instead of part of the problem? I will appreciate your suggestions.

BTW, my boss, myself and the other 2 managers are very positive people.

 

[Disney Doll]

I think I would be very upfront with her, in a professional manner, and have some concrete documentation to back yourself up.

For example, you could say soemthing like "well, from my observations, many of your previous employees spent a lot of "downtime" talking about their personal lives. Now, I know we aren't running a slave ship here, and personal interaction is to be encouraged, but there does have to be some limitss set as to how much of the work day is consumed with peersonal interaction." If you have productivity reports from the previous "era" it might help if you had those o hand to compare the producitvity of her unit to the productivity of comparable units in your company. I'd also be very frank in telling her that her negativity isn't helping the situation,a nd that her people will take their cues from her, so she must be the example. Set up some concrete goals for her, things for her unit to accomplish, and also concrete ways that you will help her, for example, by providing her with one part-time and 1 full-time person, x amount of hours of additional support if needed etc.

I think the key is to be very professional, direct, don't beat around the bush, don't try to soften it, and have concrete plans, and concrete documentation for any negative things you are going to tell her.

 

[Tinkbell]

The old crew were probably her friends. It will be hard to convince her that new people will be better. She probably just needs to get to know these new people better. I wouldn't push the issue unless it is effecting her job performance. Some people are just negative--period. I know this because I also work with one. Good luck!

 

[apnic]

I know it's kind of cheesy, but it really helped to turn around the great group of girls I used to work with... it's a book entitled "Fish." And I cannot remember the name of the author, but it's a very thin book and easy to read. It's motivational without being "cheesy motivational" and it has a lot of great points.
Basically, the group I used to work with got along great as friends, but we would get negative about customers/problems in tasks/general work frustrations. So we decided that book was the kick in the pants we needed. We each read it - had a meeting where we talked about the major points and then discussed the negative aspects that each of us is guilty of having (sort of like a light-hearted "confessional") and set goals. We got cheesy and hung paper mache' fish everywhere and each of us had a "menu" with positive attributes on one side and negative attributes on the other side and a caption that read "What attitude will I have today?".
I don't know if it will help your group as a whole, but it may be worth trying.
-AP