As a PM you will encounter many haters out in the wild. Some are clients, some are team members and sometimes you can even wind up a hater yourself! But as T-swizzle so rightfully says, the haters gonna hate and you’ve just gotta learn to shake it off!
Haters come in all shapes and sizes. Each type of hater has their own triggers or habits, but they all have one thing in common – the uncanny ability to bring others down. To be fair, most haters are unaware of how negative they really are and how their behaviour is affecting their outlook and the outlook of others.
To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of tell-tale hater signs so you can spot them, deal with them, and prevent them from pulling you and your team down into a black hole of negativity. So, without further ado, I give you a PM’s guide to the five most common haters!
The worrywart
These people live on a diet of worry and fear (which is super unhealthy). They are always on edge and feel the need to be protected at all times. These people prefer to stay in their comfort zone rather than pushing boundaries and reaching new limits and are constantly worrying about the future, rather than staying in the present.
While caution and forethought are great characteristics for a team member, someone that’s a chronic worrier can start to unsettle or frustrate the rest of your team. Sometimes projects take us into the unknown and that can be scary, but it’s not something to shy away from.
Dealing with a worrywart
As PM, you need to help your worrywarts develop mindfulness so they can stay in the moment and quash their fears. Make opportunities for them to voice their worries at the beginning of a project and then workshop solutions for their concerns. If they continue to revisit these worries later down the track, gently remind them that you have planned everything you can, you are all working as a team and whatever is going to happen will happen, whether they worry or not.
The pessimist
You can think of these people as worrywarts gone wild. Anxiety in overdrive which has led to doom and gloom. These people have completely given into their fears and negativity and can no longer see a happy outcome or successful result. They are always convinced that everything will go wrong, and the project will be a disaster.
If left unchecked, these people can plant seeds of doubt and really bring your team down. While everyone has doubts from time to time, constant pessimism isn’t going to get your team anywhere helpful. Even if things aren’t going smoothly, it doesn’t necessarily mean things won’t work out in the end.
Dealing with a pessimist
These people need help gaining perspective. Try to fill your interactions and meetings with these people with as much positivity as possible to counteract their mindset. Make sure you and your team focus on possibilities and solutions rather than dwelling on problems (otherwise you will just feed their negativity). If they continue to be pessimistic, use evidence of past successes to disprove their gloomy outlook and encourage them to get out of their head.
The but-ers
These people can seem constructive at first, giving compliments or highlighting positives… but! There’s always a ‘but’ at the end of their comments or remarks, turning these positives into negatives. They may say things like, ‘the website looks great, but I’m not sure why you didn’t use a simpler hero image’ or ‘the colour scheme is nice, but it’s not as nice as the one I proposed’.
While there is always a place for constructive criticism in creative project, if sentences always end in a ‘but’, other team members will get fed-up with these backhanded complements and disguised digs. Afterall, it’s a form of passive aggression and it will quickly create tension in the team (and a lot of resentment).
Dealing with but-ers
With these people you’ve gotta accentuate the positive. Listen to what they are saying, but focus on anything helpful or affirmative they say, rather than the negative. You can rephrase their initial comment back, affirming the positive and eliminating the negative e.g. ‘I’m so glad you like the final colour scheme’. This gives you back control while banishing the negative. If you think there’s merit to their criticism, you can always take it onboard, but if it seems like criticism for criticism’s sake, don’t be afraid to defend your creative choices.
The dictator
These people constantly tell you what you should do. How to run meetings, which projects to prioritise and what the final design should look like. While fresh perspectives are valuable in creative teams, when the same person constantly dictates what should and shouldn’t be done, it can be exhausting and shake your team’s faith in your management.
This kind of behaviour usually indicates that they lack confidence in themselves and their own design decisions. After all, it’s much easier to tell everyone else how to deal with issues, than dealing with your own.
Dealing with dictators
Depending on the circumstance or comment, you can deal with dictators in one of two ways. If they are directly undermining your management style, you should take the time to politely remind them that you are the project manager and that your practices are tried and true and that you have final say.
If they are becoming the dominant voice in the group, you should remind them that the team is a democracy and while that may be their opinion, you also need to consider the opinions of the rest of the team. You can even offer them a one-on-one meeting to voice their concerns privately and prevent them from disrupting your team.
The complainer
These are the people that love a whinge and are convinced that the whole world is against them. They will blame anything and everything on their circumstances and the people around them. They rarely step back to look at other influencing factors, like their own lack of motivation, creativity or foresight.
Complainers are all about talk and rarely take action. They prefer to point out the negatives without offering and constructive solutions. These people are very vocal and can be a serious drag on team morale, bringing productivity way down!
Dealing with complainers
The best way to deal with complainers is to hold them accountable for what they’re complaining about. Start by listening to them for an appropriate amount of time. In most cases it won’t be the first time you’ve heard their complaint, so you don’t need to listen for more than a few minutes. Then simply ask them, ‘what are you going to do to improve the situation/ make this better for yourself?’.
This flips the focus back to them and forces them to take action. After this they will likely do their best to avoid personal responsibility and accountability, blaming others or saying there’s nothing to be done. At this point you jump back in and ask again what they’re going to do to make things better (the same statement as before but in a slightly different way). There will be a bit of back-and-forthing, but eventually you will break their pattern and put the onus back on them.
Haters gonna hate, but haters need help!
While every type of hater is different, they all have one thing in common…insecurity.
Most people become haters because they are voicing or reflecting something negative within themselves. It’s your job as PM to figure out what that insecurity is and how to best manage it, so you can ward off negativity and keep team morale high. In the face of enduring negativity, it’s important to rise above it, be the better person and see all haters as an opportunity for growth!