Dealing with Pessimists on your team

Dealing with a pessimist on your team can be a frustrating and time-consuming experience. Attempts to ignore or counter frequent negative comments may simply boost further negativity. This is one of the biggest challenge for a manager. This quite often kills a team's momentum and motivation. It is very disappointing when your top performers are spreading negative comments in the organization.

Here are three approaches to managing negative behavior:

1. Create awareness. This is best done by pulling the team member aside and explaining how his comments are received. Explain why the person is valued on the team and make clear the impact of his behavior. For example, you can say, "When you make negative comments, the team gets stuck and we aren't able to move forward." Once you understand the underlying reason for the pessimism, you can provide additional support or information if it's needed.

2. Reposition negative statements. Don't let negative comments linger. Ask for clarification or more information about what the speaker means. . Offer your own constructive criticism while providing an alternative solution.

3. Involve the whole team. It can be damaging to single out a team member in front of the entire team. Peer pressure is a far more effective tactic. Sometimes social sanctions work better than leader sanctions. Set team norms and ask everyone to observe them. Once you've agreed on norms, ask the team to hold each other to them.

When All Else Fails
All of the experts agree that if a team member is continually disruptive and does not respond to coaching or feedback, you may ultimately need to remove her from the team. Sometimes people are not a good fit for a team or a project and it's your job as leader to make that distinction.

Sky Walks

Today MMRDA has opened Borivali-West sky walk. There are total 67 sky walks which are being constructed @cost of 1200 Crores.

"Are people comfortable in using sky walks?". The answer is No. The first Sky walk was opened in Bandra in beginning of this year. There are hardly 10% of total commuters who are using this sky walk. There are multiple reasons for people not using Sky walks.

1. MMRDA has not yet shifted Ricksaw & Taxi stand. Hence people who travel regularly by ricksaw/taxi are not using sky walks as they do not get ricksaw or taxi at the place where sky walk ends.
2. There is no sitting place on such a long sky walk. Bandra's sky walk is 2km long.
3. There is no security gaurd hence people avoid using it in night.
4. Sky walks are very narrow.
5. More than 4-5 million people travel by train everyday. Out of these 30 to 40% of people has a habbit of buying things from shops & market near station. Hence they avoid using sky walks.
6. There is no provision for elevator for elderly or handicapped people.
7 There are no railway ticket windows.

MMRDA has to rethink their strategy of constructing so many sky walks otherwise it will be one more wastage of public money

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Bravo Team India

Today we have won second test against Srilanka. With this we have become no. 1 test cricket team in world. This is indeed a gr8 moment in history of Indian cricket team. Brilliant perfomance!!

This series against Srilanka was full of individual and team records. The greatest moment of this series was completion of 17000 runs by Sachin and 293 run knock by Viru.It's 293 knock of Viru took the match away from Srilankans. Superb comeback from Srisanth & Zaheer also contributed to this series win. Dhoni's hundred in first test saved us from defeat.

All & all it was a great team work. I hope Indian team performs the same way as now and retains no 1 title for long time.

Once again Cogratulations Indian Team! Keep up outstanding work!! We all support and pray for you.

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