I truly believe I am a naturally positive person, but, even so, as hard as I try, it’s difficult not to complain from time to time about something.
I found out just how hard it is a few years ago when I read the book The No-Complaining Rule by Jon Gordon. It was a good, short read about how much it costs us to complain and how easily it can become a habit (at best) and a way of life and personal identity (at worst).
The book came with a purple rubber bracelet and this challenge: Put the bracelet on your wrist and stop complaining… at all… about anything… ever—not the traffic, not the weather, not your head cold. Nothing. Nada. The goal is to make it 21 days without a single complaint. If you break that promise to yourself, you have to switch the bracelet to your other wrist and start the challenge over.
Spoiler alert! I never made it. I didn’t even make one week.
My takeaway? We have no idea how much we complain. It’s woven into our society, family relationships, work culture, and day-to-day life as a natural way of expressing ourselves. Some of us don’t know who we are without constant complaining.
At work, it can ruin a good culture and suck the positive energy right out of a meeting, client interaction, or an entire day.
So what do we do about it?
I believe that changing what we’re listening for can help because behind almost every complaint is a longing, a longing for something different. And, that desire is where the gold is. As leaders, we should be always be digging for that gold.
Here’s an example:
Complaint: “I’m so sick of our meetings. All we do is drone on and on about the same old things and nothing ever actually changes.”
Gold (longing, desire): “We should restructure the way we organize and facilitate our meetings to make them more productive. I want to transform them into something we love, value, and would never want to miss.”
Good leaders and communicators know how to mine a complaint for the gold within it. They listen to the complaints of others by asking, “Where’s the gold beneath this complaint?”
And how do they do that? They dig and dig and dig for that gold by getting curious and asking leading questions. “What would you like to see?” “What would make it different, better, or greater for you?” “What ideas could you or I come up with so we can really love these meetings and get a lot of value from them?”
High-level professionals know that simply participating in, ignoring, or tolerating complaint sessions only serves to bring both parties down, drain positive energy, stunt growth, and obscure solutions.
Great leaders also know how to do this for themselves when they are the ones doing the complaining.
This week, notice and catch yourself when you are complaining about something. Notice when others complain to you expecting you to join in. Experiment with questions that can help mine the gold within these complaints to draw out what we are really longing for, what we truly want to happen, and what could turn the useless complaint into a useful idea or solution.
“The measure of our success will not be determined by how we act during great times in our life but rather how we think and respond to the challenges of our most difficult moments.”
~ Jon Gordon
