Nedra "the Negativist"

Read the following statement from Fred Roberts, the operations supervisor at Barry Automotive's Dublin plant:

The most challenging person I work with is Nedra. She has so many redeeming features. For one, she is a workaholic and passionate about quality work. But she is a pessimist and sees only the worst in every situation. Recently, there was a quality discrepancy reported by a customer, and we were asked to solve the problem. As a member of the quality-improvement team, instead of working with us to figure out ways to improve the production process, Nedra claimed the production operators do not know how to use their brains to do the work right. In a whining and complaining tone, I can still hear her say, "It's such a simple procedure, and we have to deal with their inability to read the spec sheets. It's just not right! Those people in person can never find us any good employees".

Everyone is fair game for Nedra's complaints. About a month ago, the company experienced a significant machine downtime due to a mechanical failure. I can hear Nedra now: "It's either the lousy people, the old equipment, or the incompetent maintenance supervisor." She stores mistakes from the past and can't let go of them. For example, two years ago, Lee Kim, a good employee in the maintenance department, made a severe setup error that resulted in over $50,000 of the product being run with the wrong specs. We ended up with two bins of scrap. Lots of people could have caught the mistake in a timely fashion, but no one did. Kim was suspended without pay for two weeks, and we used the error to illustrate why we need to follow our in-process controls. But Nedra won't let up. It's been over two years, and she is still obsessed with "Kim's mistake."

I've tried to deal with Nedra by developing a positive attitude and smiling. But that doesn't seem to work. Nedra's negativity is destroying the team's spirit.

Yesterday was the last straw. Three months ago, I was chosen to head a project team to develop a new database to improve our customer tracking. Initially, Nedra suggested striving for the "optimal" solution rather than a "satisficing" one.

The team worked diligently despite Nedra's negativity. I did everything I knew to get her off the bench and into the game. However, she was not open to our ideas and unwilling to make any suggestions. Her only contribution was to develop the worst-case scenarios of every request we came up with. I noted Nedra's words during the past week in the team meeting: "We can't do it!" Our people aren't intelligent enough to do anything that sophisticated." The machines will break down." "It's not possible." "We don't have enough money to do the job right." I came very close to losing it.

I've never known anyone with such a bad outlook on life. I had nothing to prepare me for this in my college or professional training. What should I do?

1. Using the Internet, find at least three sources for how to work with negative people. Review each site for suggestions on coping with this behavior, and write about research findings.
2. Based on the findings, do the case analysis, and list the three best options for Fred Roberts.