How To Manage Negative Talk From Negative People?

Rupesh N. Bhambwani

Published in

Any Given Sunday

9 min readOct 29, 2020

Three effective military strategies to neutralize and eliminate negative people.

What should I do about the negative person talking behind my back who is trying to bring me down?

It's a classic question that has bothered many from the dawn of civilization. It has increased even more so as we navigate the complexity of the 21st century. With more and more people moving into professional office careers and the fight for attention only increasing, the practice of negative talk has also grown exponentially.

The ever-increasing competitive nature of professional careers has led to people indulging in trash talk to get ahead in line. It may not necessarily be to get a promotion or a salary hike (the usual suspects), but sometimes it is just to win a psychological edge over you. Sometimes, it may be done to take over your beloved project. Sometimes, it may be done to just de-stabilize your career.

Sometimes it may be done for something as trivial as getting access to a larger work desk or a cabin. And sometimes, some people just do it for fun, because that’s just how they are.

When you hear (if you are lucky) negative talk about yourself circulating in an office, the first reaction is obviously to feel angry. You then start wondering who is spreading the negative talk about you. And how many people have already heard about it? And what might they be thinking about you now? How will you neutralize the negative talk? What if the negative talk reaches your manager?

You see your mind is already racing ahead to figure out answers and solutions to this endless stream of questions. You may even get nervous just thinking about it. Some people get into a shell, some get into depression. Some don’t know where to begin, so they don’t even do anything.

But there are some structured military based strategies to get out of this jam. Over the years in my professional career (and even in my personal life), I have also come across many such instances of negative talk. Some were quite straight forward to handle, some were absolutely brutal and required some sophisticated moves to turn the tables.

Below are the three most effective strategies that I have used to neutralize and eliminate negative talk from negative people.

Strategy 1 — Confront & Diffuse

Sure you can confront that person and diffuse his/her little game. In this case, you can give that person the satisfaction of knowing that he/she got in your head.

Of course, there are times, unfortunately, that you have to engage with people like this. You may have to set the record straight on a serious allegation. You may have to challenge statements that might be damaging to the team or the project that you are working on.

So when you do have to engage, do it very professionally. Say something like this, “I heard you had some pointers for me about how I am doing my job. I would love to get your feedback so I can tighten up my game.”

A statement like that will mostly diffuse the situation. The person will realize that there are informants who will tell you what is going on. And that will likely stifle the situation and ensure it does not get repeated again by the same person.

This is similar to a situation wherein, after knowing who your enemy is and what damage it is about to inflict on you; you decide to walk up to the enemy and confront him/her. Sometimes just by confronting the enemy, it demonstrates that you are not afraid and that you are coming from a position of strength.

In this case, the opponent may just back off for good.

Image Credit — Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Strategy 2 — Load Up & Fire

If the negative talk puts your entire existence into question and if responding to it, is the only way to reclaim your position and respect, then you need to load up and fire.

This is not the most preferred method, but sometimes if the war comes to your table, and if you don’t fire back — you are dead.

There are certain risks in this approach, so let's take a look at those to ensure you don’t get riddled with bullets yourself.

For a moment let us imagine that you do possess the arsenal of negative talk to shake the other person up, but you may not know how to fire the ammo, or in which direction to fire, or how much to fire to make the necessary impact.

If you are just going to spray the bullets in all directions, you run the risk of some bullets ricocheting and hitting you from a different direction. Eg — say you decide to go around talking negatively about this person, but if you have not done your homework right, or you don’t know who his/her cronies are in the office, you will end up digging a bigger hole for yourself.

Remember if you are going to fire any bullets, it has to be with pin-point precision, just like a sniper taking a very tactical position and hitting the target with one bullet.

The key to firing like a sniper is to use your position in the best possible manner so that even if you miss the target it will confuse the enemy (or his cronies) on where the bullet came from.

If you randomly spray your ammo, your position is easily revealed, and you will in turn become the target of the enemy’s infantry. Remember your enemy will always have some friends in the office.

So, let's say you have absolutely decided to fire from your end to demonstrate that you are not going to take it lying down and you won’t go down without a fight. In that case, choose a weapon that is different from your opponent. And you should be an expert in using that weapon.

By firing from a different weapon, you will achieve two things —

You will demonstrate to your opponent that you are not going to get sucked in the same game that he/she is playing. And that you have your own nasty plan up your sleeve.
The opponent does not know about your weapon of choice or how it works, or the impact it will make. And he/she will not know how to defend himself.

Strategy 3— Ignore & Outperform

My most preferred strategy which has always worked in these kinds of situations is simple — Ignore and outperform.

Rather than focusing upon what the other person did or how many people he/she spread it to, or why that person did it, and what should be my counter-strategy, etc; I focus on myself.

I take the following approach in my head and through my actions, without approaching that person —

While you are over there watching me and talking about me — I am working. I am taking things to the next level.
You keep gossiping — I will keep working.
You keep talking trash — I will keep working.
You keep chattering about things — I will keep working.
You keep focusing on what everyone else is doing wrong — I will keep focusing on what I can do RIGHT.
And when you finally look around at where you are and where I am — you will realize that you have nothing to talk trash about. Because you will lose. And I will Win.

And this applies to when people are playing office politics or forming their cliques or working their personal agendas. Of course — sometimes you have to play those games too (application of Strategy 1) and sometimes you have to load up and fire back (application of Strategy 2).

The choice of your strategy should depend upon the type of situation you are involved in, who your opponent is, how strong is your opponent, how long are you willing to drag the battle, who is on your side, what is at stake, and importantly how well are you prepared with your chosen strategy.

Final Thoughts

Irrespective of how heavy the trash talk gets thrown at you, try best as possible to never indulge yourself in negative talk. And even if you forced into the battle, it is absolutely crucial that you don’t use the same weapon that the other person is using, until and unless you absolutely know how to use that same weapon.

If you are not one of those people who indulge in negative talk and have never done it before; then that means you are not an expert in negative talk. And you don’t possess any arsenal on how to go about talking negative.

But when dealing with people like this, let your first course of action and the fundamental core of how you handle it be very clear and very direct — Outwork and outperform every last one of them.

Image Credit — Dewald Van Rensburg from Pixabay

Also, remember sometimes just ducking an oncoming bullet could be a good strategy as well. There are many people who will fire only once just to see if it hits you or any target at all.

These are the proverbial idiots who may have just got a new weapon in their hand and are playing with it to figure out how it works, and they fire a shot just to see how good it fires. If the bullet hits someone, great. If it doesn’t they will just go back to their work.

So the final word on this is, you don’t need to respond to every negative talk that you hear about yourself. There are many such people who will indulge in trash talk for no damn reason, which means you should also learn how to duck once in a while.

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In my publication Any Given Sunday, I mostly write stories about parenting, being a dad, motivation, fitness, and some off-beat controversial topics.

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I am also very passionate about F1, and run a publication — Formula One Forever where writers from across the globe contribute to this publication