Maybe whiner isn’t the best description. More like a an eye-rolling cynical snarker.
Anyhoo, I’m heading up a project at work and the cynical snarker has been asked to serve on the committee associated with said project. I have no objection to her serving on the committee – with her interests and expertise, her input will be valuable.
But she is just so freakin’ negative. She’s one of those people I just want to shake and say, “If you’re so damned unhappy here, LEAVE, why dontcha?!?”
I don’t think I’ll have trouble getting the group to stick to an agenda, but I anticipate that even if she doesn’t derail the conversation, she’ll clothe her on-topic remarks in snark.
Any advice on how to keep her from poisoning the atmosphere of every meeting?
If you are the leader of the meeting: lead it. Don’t let her derail it. If she veers off topic, steer it back. “Thank you Susan, and I’m sorry to interrupt, but we need to be respectful of everyone’s time let’s please stick to the agenda”.
As far as snark goes, the only thing to do is rise above it. If she says something snarky, do your best to ignore the tone, if what she said is useful. If its something like “well not that anything will get done around here anyway, but we should do x”. Repeat the part of “we should do x” and ignore the rest, until after the meeting, then call her on it. Calling her on it in the meeting will not go over well, and it will make things worse.
"Not that the budget will be approved, but . . . . " - rejoinder: “We don’t know that the budget will be approved or not, so rather than debate what we don’t have control over, let’s keep our focus on being constructive”.
It really depends on what is being said. But if you aren’t quick on your feet with a (good) rejoinder, ignore the snark.
I’ve had to pull company presidents back on track when they try to derail meetings. If the problem is you, you will look like a jerk. If the problem is truly them, you co-workers will be thanking you deep down inside. I have not dealt with the snark problem before though. Sounds like a real winner.
I’ve had issues like this before with engineers here at work, who complain about any sort of new process being implemented as a ‘waste of time’ if it doesn’t make their particular area better and they love to voice it loudly in meetings. This has been particularly the case when we were preparing for orals exams by the Government regarding solutions we were providing them on a contract.
In my case, we ignored the snark and restated the positive side, and after the first time it occurred, I pulled the individual aside alone and simply asked nicely for them to keep the negativity to a minimum. It took me doing that twice, the second time being a little less nice before the problem solved itself. For what it’s worth, this person felt that the whole meeting was beneath them and a waste of their time, to which I responded that their snarky remarks actually made the meetings last LONGER and gave them specific examples from the meeting we had just had where it occurred. That solved my problem…
I have the same trouble with a coworker. We have regular conference calls that are for an hour and she can drag this conference on and on up to TWO hours. What I found helpful is to say, “Boss - I’m sorry to interrupt (so and so), but I have an eleven o’clock hard stop for another meeting - will you be availble this afternoon if I miss anything?” That usually gets my boss to tell the whiner (and seriously - she DOES whine) that they’ll take it off line after the call so the rest of us can get on with our lives.
It’s gotten to the point that the rest of us takes turns with that kline one she starts.
Give her more responsibility. Nothing shuts up a cynical snarker faster than being made personally on the hook for the success of failure of a project.
Thanks for the suggestions so far! I do think it’s very important for me to be prepared with a tight agenda for every meeting. I love the idea of giving her responsibility (which she will whine about…).
The good thing is that the face-to-face meeting part of the project should be short-lived. Once things get rolling, we’ll be able to do a lot of stuff via e-mail.
She’s been asked to serve, but I haven’t seen an acceptance from her yet. Maybe she’ll whine her way out of the assignment. (She’s a tenured faculty member. She can do that.)
Tell her it is called WORK for a reason. It is not called play, it is not called socializing, it is not called empathy sessions. It is called WORK. Activity does not matter, results matter. She can meet about it, discuss it, opine about it–but all that matters is her results. Anything else is outside the scope of the meeting. Get it? Got it? Good!
This works…and the meetings will be shorter, for which all will thank you.
