????天知道，如今許許多多的員工都有理由抱怨。而且，幾乎每間辦公室里都會有一兩個人抱怨起來過了頭——滿腹怨氣，忿忿不平。

????這些人就是管理專家羅伯?克羅斯所謂的“消極激勵者”。“這些人的互動方式或語氣，讓整個工作環(huán)境變得窒息。”

????“讓人窒息”無疑不利于形成良性的工作環(huán)境，很多員工可能都不想受這些消極激勵者的影響。為此，他們首先要了解領(lǐng)導(dǎo)力專家稱之為“非正式網(wǎng)絡(luò)”的一個體系。這種網(wǎng)絡(luò)存在于正式的企業(yè)生態(tài)鏈之外，建立在人與人之間的聯(lián)系之上，從主要激勵者到能量破壞者以及介于兩者之間的人，無論職位高低，克羅斯聲稱，組織內(nèi)非正式網(wǎng)絡(luò)的能量流動圖是可以繪制出來的。

????如果你覺得這聽起來有點不靠譜，你并不是唯一一個這么想的人。克羅斯和博斯公司（Booz & Company）高級合伙人喬恩?卡岑巴赫都曾和這樣的高級經(jīng)理合作過，他們拒絕接受這種觀念，拒絕相信在他們所知和控制的工作場所架構(gòu)之外還存在另外一個架構(gòu)。卡岑巴赫說：“如果你讓一家機構(gòu)的高層來找出最佳激勵者，他們肯定選不對人。”

????但是，稍作挖掘，你就能發(fā)現(xiàn)這些網(wǎng)絡(luò)。”我們可以制作簡圖和其他圖例來顯示人們之間的聯(lián)系，”弗吉尼亞大學(xué)（University of Virginia）麥金泰爾商學(xué)院（McIntire School of Commerce）教授克羅斯表示。這些簡圖可以顯示出誰與誰之間在進行互動，互動的頻率有多頻繁。“然后，我們在上面疊加企業(yè)歸屬感和職業(yè)滿意度得分，”克羅斯繼續(xù)說。最后就可以找出員工中的積極推動者和消極激勵者。

????為什么要這么做？有證據(jù)表明，消極激勵者的確會對公司造成傷害。《職業(yè)行為雜志》(The Journal of Vocational Behavior)1994年刊登了一篇論文。文中，研究人員勞倫斯?尼科維茲和瑪麗?羅斯諾維斯基發(fā)現(xiàn)，對工作前景悲觀者的生產(chǎn)率往往不如他人，無論他們目前對工作有多滿意。這篇報告稱：“即便是在狀況不錯時，這些個體可能也會關(guān)注工作中不好的一面”。

????他們還會把同事也拖下水。在一份尚未發(fā)布、正在接受同行審查的研究報告中，克羅斯還發(fā)現(xiàn)：“消極的相互影響造成壓力，對衡量工作環(huán)境身心健康的一系列指標有顯著影響。”換句話說，應(yīng)對過多的消極因素會讓人受不了。

????這些消極的相互影響效應(yīng)遠超正面影響。盡管積極激勵者在組織機構(gòu)中的數(shù)量遠超消極激勵者，“消極激勵者對工作表現(xiàn)和員工感受產(chǎn)生的消極影響是積極激勵者產(chǎn)生積極影響的兩倍還多，”克羅斯說。具體而言，克羅斯認為，約5%的員工帶來了員工90%的與工作相關(guān)的苦惱。

????那么，如何才能躲開他們的負能量圈之外呢？卡岑巴赫和克羅斯兩人都認為，你不應(yīng)試圖改變他們的態(tài)度。從根本上怨恨工作的人會抵制任何試圖改變他們的努力——他們的終極目標不一定是要感覺好一些。

????Goodness knows, plenty workers have reason to complain these days. And yet, most every office has a couple people who take that right a little too liberally -- they are, as a rule obtrusively upset.

????They are what management expert Rob Cross calls "de-energizers:" "The people who just suck the life out of the room with the way they interact or tones they take."

????Life-sucking is, without doubt, counter-productive to a healthy workplace, and many a worker would probably prefer to avoid the negative effects of de-energizers. To do so, they might first have to buy into a system that leadership experts call the "informal network." This network exists outside of the official corporate food chain. Instead, it is built on connections between people who, regardless of rank, are either key motivators, energy drainers, or somewhere in between. Cross claims it's possible to actually map the energy flow through the informal network at an organization.

????If all this seems a little floofy to you, you're not alone. Both Cross and Booz & Company senior partner Jon Katzenbach have worked with high-level managers who resist the concept that there is a workplace structure outside of the one they know and control. "If you ask people in the upper levels of an organization to identify the best motivators, they won't pick them right," Katzenbach says.

????And yet, with a little digging, you can unearth these networks. "We can create diagrams and other visuals that show the connections amongst the people," says Cross, who is a professor at University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce. Those diagrams map who interacts with whom and how often. "Then we overlay the engagement scores and career satisfaction scores," Cross continues, and you can pinpoint your motivating and de-energizing employees.

????Why do this? There's evidence that de-energizers truly hurt a company. In a 1994 paper published in The Journal of Vocational Behavior, researchers Lawrence Necowitz and Mary Roznowski found that people who have a baseline negative outlook about work tend to withdraw more from productive work behavior than their colleagues, regardless of how satisfied they feel about their jobs. "It may be that these individuals focus on the negative aspects of their jobs even under otherwise pleasant conditions," the paper suggests.

????They also tend to drag their colleagues down with them. In unpublished research that's currently under peer review, Cross has found that "negative interactions that create stress have a significant effect on a range of measures of physical health in the workplace." In other words, dealing with too much negativity can make people sick.

????Those negative interactions are also significantly more potent than positive ones. While there are far more energizers than de-energizers in organizations, "the de-energizers have more than twice the negative impact on measures of performance and employee well-being as the energizers have positively," Cross says. Indeed, roughly 5% of employees account for 90% of people's work-related misery, Cross argues.

????So how do you stay out of their circle of negative energy? You shouldn't try to fix their attitude, both Katzenbach and Cross agree. People who fundamentally resent their jobs will resist any effort to pull them up -- their end goal isn't necessarily to feel better.