Starting anything new begets plenty of naysayers. It’s like when you plant a new crop of broccoli. You know for sure that at some point the bloody white cabbage moths are going to appear from nowhere. The naysayers are like this when you start an enterprise that proposes significant changes to the way things are.
In 2 years of trying something different, for this part of the world anyway, I have come across plenty of naysayers. Naysayers can easily kill a weak willed idea. However, it’s important not to confuse a naysayer with positive criticism, which is vital to your idea's success.
The fearful naysayer: Probably a well paid person in a position of some status or power usually in an area that could be perceived by them as being in direct competition to you. Their position is really important to how they feel about themselves. These naysayers are likely to dismiss your idea because it threatens their own total lack of success. Their authority has been unquestioned and until you arrived, no proposed alternative but to accept accept what they were offering. However, like most organisms that don’t move or adapt, fearful naysayers usually end up extinct.
The negative naysayer: This type of naysayer was probably an optimist once but was either destroyed by other naysayers or took a failure or a series of failures badly and used it as a reason to give up and complain about how most things are actually impossible to achieve and therefore logically, even though they like your idea it must be impossible too.
The cynical naysayer: These people have lost the ability to trust others motives. They are usually the worst of the naysayers because they have become totally scornful of hope, passion and positivity in others. They won’t trust your idea because you’ve got to be in it for the money…how can you possibly be wanting to change things for the better? They can expect this from you simply because they wouldn’t contemplate doing it themselves.
Watch Jamie Oliver here take on a shock jock in the US. What type of naysayer is he?
Like the cabbage moths on my broccoli, I have come up with some ways of dealing with these naysayers.
The fearful naysayer is best ignored. Their
decreasing relevancy will soon lead to their disappearance and, their fears
realised, its probably you, getting on with your business, that will speed this
process up! So be kind to these folk and put them out of their naysaying misery
by discarding your own fear and not even getting involved in theirs.
The negative naysayer is actually curable. Underneath their grumbly negative exterior lurks a real optimist. Lead the way, prove your case and they will be your keenest supporters.
Sadly, the cynical naysayer can’t be cured.
Like the fearful naysayer they are best avoided completely. You may need to
ensure that the rest of your crop isn’t infected with their disease however, by
giving cynics enough rope to hang themselves with. For instance, their cynical
whingeing is usually fairly predictable. Watch these obvious attacks simply
bounce off just by being honest, authentic, open and transparent in all your
dealings with people.
I must also be clear here. Don’t confuse genuine due diligence with cynical naysaying. Expect people to question your motives at first and check you out. It’s what they should do. However, if after you have clearly demonstrated your authenticity by your actions, they still can’t allow themselves to be genuinely trusting or worse still, they create cynical rumours around your motives then they surely must be considered a naysaying cynic and exposed as such.
Naysayers can be a real threat to your fledgling social enterprise if you let them. Equally, confusing a naysayer with a positive critic can also be detrimental. If you know what is motivating the criticism you should be able to deal with it quite well.
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