How a negative colleague creates a negative team (part 1)

Do you have a negative colleague? A negative colleague doesn’t just drain our energy — they wreck the whole team’s ability to perform.

The consequences of a negative colleague.

We’ve probably all had to work with a negative colleague on a team. If not, you most likely have a colleague, a friend or a family member who has shared their stories about a negative colleague with you. A negative colleague doesn’t just drain our energy — they wreck the whole team’s ability to perform. What I see is that these direct or indirect experiences make teams hesitate to commit fully to the teamwork. It’s an invisible barrier that has to be overcome before everyone really hits the accelerator. In this article you’ll find out why a negative colleague is allowed to stay, why it has such a strong negative effect on the team, and how the team reacts.

This is the first part of an article series on how, when and why a negative colleague wrecks the teamwork and the team’s performance.

In part 1/3 you’ll find out:

1. What is a negative colleague?

2. Why is a negative colleague allowed to stay?

3. What effect does a negative colleague have on the team?

4. How does the team react to a negative colleague?

1. What is a negative colleague?

What defines a negative colleague depends on what is being asked of our work. For us to function as a team, everyone has to take an active part rather than coast along (Mitchell, 1997). Working on a team doesn’t only require us to work physically. We also have emotional work to do in regulating how we express our feelings. That’s necessary in order to work in an environment where it’s comfortable to talk together. Teamwork doesn’t function in an environment of constant negativity, emotional instability and big mood swings (Morris, 1996).

On top of working physically and emotionally, we also have to work in context with the rest of the organisation (Borman, 1997). Where job performance in, say, a sales role is about product knowledge and closing the sale, our performance in context with the rest of the organisation is about everything that isn’t in the job description. To perform in context with the rest of the organisation can, in other words, be about our enthusiasm for the task, about voluntarily helping others, and about being loyal to processes.

Interest in our contextual performance is rising, because the tasks are becoming more and more complex (see my article What do you do when paper meets reality). These tasks require us to reach beyond our specific job description. Working in context with the rest of the organisation requires us to show collegial respect — among other things by sticking to the team’s norms.

Based on these ways we have to work, there are three types of negative colleague (Felps, 2006):

The colleague with a constantly negative attitude (the emotional part of the work)
Researchers have found that negative people often express pessimism, anxiety, insecurity and irritation (Furr, 1998). Even though it’s also important for the team to have a critical voice, a constantly negative attitude is never constructive for the teamwork. A colleague doesn’t have to be negative just because they have these feelings. It isn’t the feelings themselves that affect the team, but how they’re expressed to the team.
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The colleague who coasts along (the physical part of the work)
A colleague who coasts along deliberately tries to avoid their responsibilities. It might be that the colleague is more taken up with personal tasks, or doesn’t finish their work. It might also be that the colleague doesn’t take ownership in the work, or avoids saying what he or she is capable of. Typically a negative colleague holds back, hoping the others will do the work.
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The colleague who shows no respect (the contextual part of the work)
What counts as a lack of respect can vary from team to team. Generally it happens when a colleague breaks the team’s norms — for example by being a know-it-all about what’s best for the team. In the vast majority of workplaces, a lack of collegial respect is seen as (Bennett, 2000): making fun of a colleague; saying something hurtful, or making an inappropriate ethnic or religious remark. It’s also frowned upon to swear at a colleague; to make a crude joke; to behave rudely or to make a colleague lose face in front of others.

2. Why is a negative colleague allowed to stay?

A negative colleague is usually only allowed to stay on the team if the person has some form of power. Power can be that the colleague is high-ranking or has good political contacts in the organisation. The negative colleague can also have power by being a specialist and therefore hard to replace. It might also be that the negative colleague has none of these things, but that the manager’s way of solving the problem simply doesn’t work.

The manager’s power over the negative colleague also plays an important role. A student assistant will usually not reject a negative colleague with long seniority. That’s because rejecting a negative colleague takes power. A negative colleague can hold informal power by sitting on unique knowledge, having unique skills or being indispensable to a particular process. Finally, the negative colleague can also hold formal power. That happens when the manager is the negative colleague.

So there can be several reasons why a negative colleague is allowed to stay on the team.

3. What effect does a negative colleague have on the team?

It’s well documented that a negative colleague has a strongly damaging effect on a team’s overall performance. A group of researchers proved this in a study of 51 teams (M. Barrick, 1998). The more negative the colleague was, the worse the rest of the team performed — no matter how positive the other colleagues were. Positive colleagues were not able to make up for the negative one.

The researchers also found that it was the negative colleague who became the lowest common denominator and ended up setting the standard for the rest of the team.

The study also evaluated the negative colleague’s level of conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability. Here the conclusion was that the colleague had a negative effect on the team’s social cohesion, communication and conflicts. Finally, the negative colleague also affected the team’s sense of a fair share of the work. Several other studies have shown the same results (Camacho, 1995).

So the negative colleague’s effect on the team’s performance is like the bad apple that spoils the rest of the basket.

4. How does the team react to a negative colleague?

Teams faced with a negative colleague tend to react in fairly similar ways. To change the negative colleague’s behaviour, the team will first try what’s known as negative motivation. After that, the team will reject the negative colleague. If that doesn’t work either, the team will move into a defensive position (Costa, 2017).

Negative motivation. When a team tries to motivate a negative colleague to change behaviour, it usually happens through negative motivation. It’s a kind of punishment, where the team stops giving recognition, shows no respect and no longer assigns extra resources to the negative colleague. If negative motivation doesn’t get the colleague to change behaviour, the team will turn rejecting.
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Rejection. Rejecting a negative colleague usually happens by the team trying to minimise or completely avoid contact with the negative colleague. People talk at the colleague and not with the colleague. The team doesn’t involve the colleague in decisions and takes away the colleague’s responsibilities, which lets the team minimise or completely avoid contact with the negative colleague. Rejection is also a signal from the team that it wants the negative colleague to leave the team unless the behaviour changes. If rejection doesn’t work, the team moves into a defensive position.
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Defensive position. When the team moves into a defensive position, it’s a sign that it’s trying to protect itself from the negative colleague. Typically people lash out verbally. Some have emotional outbursts, while others try to get even. Getting even happens when the team wants to restore the balance of fairness. Fairness is about the team feeling that the negative colleague isn’t doing their share of the work. Some colleagues use humour to soften the situation, while others withdraw completely. As a defence, it’s also not unusual for some team members to flatly deny that there’s a problem on the team at all.

Where negative motivation and rejection can change a negative colleague’s behaviour, a defensive position changes nothing. Defending yourself only digs the trenches deeper.

A huge source of stress

There are, of course, degrees of negative colleagues. There are the ones we never forget, and then there are the ones we forgive. The challenge is that it’s a huge source of stress to have to work with someone who is constantly negative, who coasts along or shows no respect for you or your work. Especially if the negative colleague is your manager.

I don’t have figures on the share of negative colleagues who are managers, but over the years I’ve heard enough stories to know they exist. The challenge is that it’s hard to reject a powerful negative colleague such as a manager. You’re left powerless, which creates even more frustration and stress.

To put an end to the frustration and stress as fast as possible, it’s important that the team doesn’t get as far as a defensive position before it gets help. My experience is that if both sides have dug into the trenches, it can be a longer process to breathe new life into the teamwork. It can be compared to the married couple who have argued for so long that they’ve actually given up. They still go to couples therapy, trusting neither each other, nor that they each have the strength to make it work. In the same way, what I see is that a team that has been stuck for too long first has to rediscover trust in itself: “Do I have the strength to go through this process?” After that, the team has to rediscover trust in the negative colleague: “Can I forgive my colleague?”

In part 2/3 you’ll find out:

5. How much does a negative colleague affect the team?

6. How does a negative colleague rub off on the rest of the team?

7. What are the marks of a negative team?

Sources

Matching Motivational Strategies with Organizational Contexts

T.R. Mitchell, 1997, Research in Organizational Behavior

The Dimensions, Antecedents, and Consequences of Emotional Labor

J.A. Morris, 1996, The Academy of Management Review

Task performance and contextual performance: The meaning for personnel selection research

W.C. Borman, 1997, Human Performance

How, When, and Why Bad Apples Spoil the Barrel