A friend was telling me the other day about a conversation he had recently overheard in a company.

One of the individuals, an over-aggressive, hard-driving, take-no-prisoners type of manager, had a company-wide reputation as a bully. He was told by his V.P. after increasing feedback not only from the direct reports of this bully, but also from others with whom he had to work, that he had to go around and apologize to those whom he had offended. Read the rest of this entry »

Before the age of technology which has made this type of action possible (before, you were reduced to clipping letters out of a newspaper and gluing them to a piece of paper), you either put up with the obnoxious behaviour, talked to the person directly (which was always risky because the offender could, and often did, tell you get over it, suck it up, princess, or, if more scholarly, suggest that those who were without sin could cast the first stone.), or you complained to the person’s boss but insisted that your name be kept out of it.  Read the rest of this entry »

At Pitsel & Associates, Ltd. we’re very excited to showcase a new initiative in our Corporate Citizenship portfolio.

Many professionally and technically trained adults, newly arrived in Canada, may be extremely able and well-qualified in their professions, and yet find themselves side-lined in the business world by their limited English language skills. This is a terrible waste of their skills and our resources! On the road to learning English as a Second Language (ESL) many lack the contacts for a safe and informed opportunity to practice their conversation skills.  Read the rest of this entry »

Expectations that are unreasonable, unspoken and/or unmet create an unusually large numbers of problems for managers and organizations.

Unreasonable Expectations. Of course, what is unreasonable insofar as we are concerned may be perfectly reasonable to an employee. I often hear complaints about an attitude of “entitlement” supposedly held by many of our younger workforce. For many of them, having been brought up by parents who seek to give them everything (especially “stuff”), having gone through a school system where competition is downplayed in favour of cooperation, having played sports where everyone was a winner and got a medal, and where narcissism seems to be the prevalent personality disorder, the idea that they are not immediately granted the best of everything – office, work assignments, computers and other business tools, is shocking and unbelievable.  Read the rest of this entry »

It is easy to be cynical about the value of making resolutions for the coming year. Mark Twain wrote: “Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” And Oscar Wilde, my other favorite cynic, wrote: “Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.“

We’ve probably all experienced the exhilaration of making a resolution that was finally going to transform us into the person we knew we should be, only to realize that making resolutions is significantly easier than keeping them.

There are many reasons why this is so:

• we have a goal but no plan for how to reach it;
• we think we can do it all by ourselves without any outside assistance;
• we think that one relapse or one bit of imperfection means that we have failed and so we give it up;
• the goal is too ambiguous, or ambitious– the “I am going to be completely successful” type of resolution;
• it’s a resolution based on what other people want or think we should do rather than on what we want to do for ourselves;
• or finally, the pain in the present is more real than the possible pleasure in the future.

So does this mean that we should not make any resolutions for 2009? Not necessarily. The renowned 21st Century American philosopher, Oprah Winfrey, has said: “Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right:”. And Edith Lovejoy Pierce (whomever she might be) has said, “We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

Taking off my business chapeau for a moment and donning my psychologist’s cap, I will now give you the only resolution you need to make for the New Year.

And I promise you (in my most convincing manner) that if you make and keep it, it will change your life in ways that no amount of dieting, smoking cessation, or exercising will be able to do.

It is this: Stop Complaining (or whatever name you use to describe what you do – venting, sharing, whining, criticizing, nitpicking or finding fault). Why?

First, complaining never makes you feel better. As a matter of fact, it does the opposite. The more you complain the more justification you have to add to the complaint in order to validate your feelings, and the more time you spend looking for things that make you unhappy. You mine your memory for all the awful things you can be unhappy about. To change the metaphor, complainers begin with some small issue, and then add to it until, like a 7 layer cake, they have a grand concoction for everyone to admire.

People who are the most psychologically healthy are remarkable for their lack of complaining.

Second, complaining doesn’t solve problems. Problem solving solves problems. Complaining about the heavy snowfall does not clear your front walk (unless, of course, the person to whom you are complaining has a snow blower). People who complain to others frequently do so in the hope that someone else will rescue them, rush in and take the awful situation off their hands.

Third, other people grow very tired very quickly of those who complain. Most people (except for enablers and those who are professional foul weather friends who live only to help others remain victims) have sufficient problems of their own to worry about, and resent the airtime that the complainer demands. We are attracted to those who give off positive energy – not those who act as emotional vacuum cleaners and suck all the energy right out of us.

Fourth, complaining makes it appear that you are doing something. It gives you an excuse for not changing the situation – after all, you did your job, didn’t you – you complained to somebody who has the power to make things better. But, and this is important, nothing changes!

“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”

~  Bill Vaughan

Fifth, complaining puts you into the role of a victim. Others who see you as a victim will continue to victimize you (if that is their pattern), because there are no negative consequences for their behaviour toward you. You never say anything to them – instead you complain to others who did not cause and cannot resolve the problem.

It is not easy to modify this habit, so I would suggest an incremental approach.

First, post, somewhere where only you can see it, a note to yourself that “Today I am not going to complain”. (or, as I have elsewhere suggested, a sign that simply says “NO BMWC” – bitch, moan, whine and complain) will do the trick.

To begin with, in the first couple of weeks, stop complaining about trivial things that are totally out of your control, like the weather, for example. “It’s so cold.” Yes, you’re right, it is cold. Dress for it. Be grateful that your job is not that of the outside man on a garbage truck, or firefighters who have to fight blazes in minus 30 degree temperatures.

In the second stage, when you are tempted to complain about someone, ask yourself (before you voice your opinion), “Why would a rational, reasonable person do that?” ( an excellent suggestion from the book Crucial Conversations) Try to figure out why the behaviour would make sense from the other person’s point of view. This will at least slow down what has probably become an automatic response for you – experience something you don’t like, and complain about it with no intervening thoughts going through the frontal lobe.

In stage three, identify one positive thing that occurs because of the event you are complaining about. I call this the “Farmers’ Benefit.” You know, every time we got rain in the spring and it wiped out some outdoor activity that we had planned, we always said, “Oh well, the farmers probably can use the rain.” This helps us to realize that events are seldom structured solely for the purpose of inconveniencing us. Things happen. Offal occurs. Crap cascades.

Stage four should see you adopting an approach that offers a positive face to the world. When people ask how you are, understand that this is a greeting ritual and not a medical enquiry. “Great” is a good answer. So is, “Pretty darn good, or Couldn’t be better”; “Improving as we speak,” or “Fantastic” are all acceptable responses.

Stage five will take you over the hump – don’t complain about any other person unless it is to that person him/herself. There may be some exceptions of course – reporting crime is the duty of a citizen, not a complaint; and sometimes it is not safe, personally, to complain to someone else about some types of behaviour. In those situations it is important to speak with a person who has the authority to rectify the situation.

In practical terms, this means not complaining to others at work about how hard you have to work while Suzy doesn’t have to do anything; not complaining to your partner about your mean and cranky boss; or writing letters to the editor about the inconsiderate and rude motorists you encounter on your drive to work.

By the time you are fully immersed in Stage five, you and others will begin to notice a remarkable difference. People will want to spend time with you because you are fun rather than whiney. You will have more time to do all that extra work you are required to do because you’re not wasting time complaining about those who don’t shoulder the load. And finally, you’ll feel better at the end of the day because you haven’t spent time dwelling on those things which make you annoyed and angry.

“Ah yes,” you respond, “very good advice for all those complainers out there. Good thing that’s not me”.

Are you sure?

© 2009, Pitsel and Associates Ltd.

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