There could be various reasons for negative talk in interpersonal conversations in an organization. While a large part of it is attributed to grievance behavior and grievance expressions, it cannot always be categorized as a grievance as such.

There are different categories in negative talk. For example, there is loose talk in which people generally indulge just to kill time. As a matter of fact, it is observed that in most cases the employees who indulge in loose talk and speak ill of the organization to others may not be the ones who are really aggrieved or demoralized. They do their work well, meet their deadlines, obey their bosses and at heart are okay with working in the organization. They indulge in loose talk, sometimes, just to put others off guard and to test their reactions. They use this tactic to try and demoralize those who are sincere in their work. The innocent onlooker or observer may believe whatever is heard and actually believe all the loose talk and probably join in the talk. Or inadvertently make a loose and dangerous comment and then actually be quoted on it. In such a case the ones who instigate the comments are the dangerous people and one has to employ tact in dealing with them and warding off such negative talk.

The rest are the employees who are really unhappy either with their job profile, the pay-packets or have been rubbed wrong by either their bosses or the system. This category includes those who have been bypassed or overlooked for promotions, additional responsibilities and awards, and acknowledgements. As long as the wound is fresh, they lash out, whine and complain to every person they come across. Such people have very little self-awareness, or they feel they have been in better places earlier. These people display what can typically be termed as loser-behavior. They speak in riddles, make scathing indirect remarks, use the choicest words to describe the organization and more so to speak about other employees. They boast of strong personal values and blame the world for not allowing them to stick to these, they also attribute their failure to rise up the career ladder to strong value systems and say that those who rose, did so by taking shortcuts and breaking value systems. Such people sigh, fret, fume and sulk. They create an environment around them of ill-will, gloom, unpleasantness and general disharmony. Going a little further, their disgruntled behavior makes them behave destructively, malign reputations, make allegations against people and organizations behind their backs, go from one workstation to another passing rumors and gossip and generally hinder work.

MBA Review Magazine, Negative Talk, Workplace Management, Interpersonal Conversations, Self-Awareness, Breaking Value Systems, Negative Aspects, Passive Listeners, Negative Environment, Motivational Workshops, Negative Culturism.