By Elizabeth Rozell, Ph.D.

How do you respond when your job becomes extremely discouraging and you just want to give up? Do you stop trying and become depressed? Or do you push on despite obstacles? From a managerial perspective, what can you do with pessimistic subordinates?

The central characteristic of a pessimist is that they believe unfortunate circumstances will endure, undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. Optimists, on the other hand, perceive setbacks as temporary, specifically confined to one occurrence, and are not their fault. The resulting behavior from these very different thought processes is compelling: The pessimist gives up and the optimist keeps trying.

Martin Seligman, author of “Learned Optimism,” contends that this mindset can affect everything a person does. In fact, Seligman has spent 25 years researching people’s attributional styles and how optimism or the lack thereof can impact performance at work and even relationships at home. One of his major findings is that individuals with “pessimistic” attributional styles (i.e., those who attribute negative events to personal causes) are much more likely to give up when they encounter obstacles and become depressed. A pessimistic employee in the workplace is likely to experience motivational problems quite easily.

There are real costs to motivational problems in the workplace. A lack of motivation can lead to performance issues that can cost a business thousands of dollars in losses each year.

As a manager, how can you make your organization more optimistic?

Provide a mentor. As a supervisor, it can be helpful to note those workers with tendencies for negative thoughts. One way to work with these types of workers is to use a modeling approach. That is, the worker should be given a model or a mentor to watch and observe. In this way, the employee may gain confidence and knowledge that he, too, may perform at the expected level.

Offer attributional training. Another technique that can be used to help the pessimistic worker is called attributional training. This strategy is used to change an individual’s negative thought processes and encourages the worker to look at all possibilities for inadequate performance. The strategy attempts to train the individual to stop negative thoughts and to look at possible environmental causes. In essence, individuals must learn to dispute their own reasoning and adopt more objective, accurate and optimistic explanations. Workers should imagine themselves as their own defense attorney and re-examine evidence, challenge assumptions, consider other possibilities and offer alternative explanations.

Strategic selection and placement. Your company can select optimistic people to fill vacant positions. Many organizations test for optimism in the selection process so that modeling and training are not needed. Selecting for optimism reduces manpower waste, improves productivity and increases job satisfaction. Certainly, some jobs call for a dose of pessimism. Research provides evidence that pessimists can also be realists. In high-risk industries (safety and health, for example), moderate pessimists can be desirable.

Overall, the benefits of being an optimist outweigh those of being a pessimist. Optimists experience more success in life and better overall health. Your organization can benefit from positive thinking, and you can be the person to advocate for flexible optimism — optimism with eyes wide open. Flexible optimism ensures that personal responsibility is taken for mistakes when warranted. Bottom line: use a dose of realism when necessary, but focus on the sunny side when at all possible.

This article appeared in the May 15, 2015 issue of the Springfield News-Leader.  It is available online here.

Elizabeth Rozell, Ph.D., is a professor of management and associate dean of the College of Business at Missouri State University. Rozell also holds the Kenneth E. Meyer Professorship and is director of the MBA program. Her specialties include organizational behavior, leadership and emotional intelligence. Email: erozell@missouristate.edu.