This is a question I get asked a lot.  My answer is always the same, “Only if they want to.”

When I am hired for staff training sessions, the notice will go out to the staff and they are “strongly encouraged to attend”. The negative people don’t attend.  They don’t want to come. They don’t want to hear that they are part of the problem. 

The positive staff show up and everyone is looking around the room for the negative people.  You can hear them saying, “Where’s Betty? Get her in here! Text her and tell her to get in this room.”

We all have negative people in our lives, people who just don’t want to change.  I have taught my children that people who bully in school, become bullies in the work place, they don’t change – they just get taller. Negative, unhappy children grow up to become negative, unhappy grown-ups.  I teach them to be kind to others but to build their armor to protect themselves from the negative ones. If they upset about how they were treated, I always ask them, “Did you give them any reason to be unkind to you?” If the answer is no, I talk to them a lot about not owning people's negativity.

At work, we need to eat lunch and go for coffee with the ones who want to be there.  Don’t buy into the negativity as it will wear you down.  Try to distance yourself. Go for a walk at lunch, eat at your desk, go to another office and eat with them. Make choices to kindly walk away.

Organizations hire me and tell me they have “morale issues”. When I arrive at the company, the “morale issues” always sit together at one table. One table. There are 20 other tables of happy people. One table of unhappy people is not morale issues. It is one small group of unhappy people who don’t want to look after their personal problems.

I have a quote in my book from a Positive Thoughts post that reads: "Protect your spirit and potential from contamination by limiting your time with negative people."