Ep 117 - Why Your Best Employees Are Often the Biggest Complainers

Reason number one: they're actually right.

[laughs] You are screwed up.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Usually there's a rub, right? You're busy.

You're running an organization.

You got a million things going on, and somebody's wearing you out about something that's wrong.

Well, there's more to it than that.

Yeah.

So, uh, the people who are most likely to be complaining or complaining first, your canaries in the coal mine as such, these are the people who, uh, really, really love the organization, are committed to it, and because they feel so connected to the organization, that anything that's wrong feels like it's so- it's- feels like it's, like, they're per- either they're taking it very personally, like there's something wrong with them, it's kind of a transference that way, or they just, they want the best of the organization and s- and they're more in tune with that, and so they'll fight very hard.

So in a weird way, we have this problem with management in that we wanna up engagement and we wanna up commitment because these things lead to very stable labor forces and people who do extra role behaviors, but the downside of that is within the extra role behaviors, you have people who are highly, highly sensitive to any flaw of the organization, and take it personally, like a punch in the gut, if somebody else points out the flaw.

And as such, they don't want to hurt, and so they will drive their managers crazy informing them and reporting on all the problems.

And the managers hate it because it's basically employees lopping turds onto their plate, that you're not gonna get to everything fixed, and so, and it's coming at them as very negative, which makes them, in turn, to the degree that they're committed, the manager is committed to the organization, makes them feel bad and makes them feel like it's a personal failure, and creates personal shame for them.

And so you've got potentially two people, who for the best reasons are very sensitive to the organization, responding to problems, but because one is inflicting pain on the other, they're having a negative reaction, and that's kind of like the kill the messenger thing that happens.

Yeah, I remember, it's been a, a few years ago, but we were doing a, uh, just a group session of a group of employees at a organization, and the CEO was there.

And they, they were complaining, and they were talking about this could be better, and this could be better, this, that, and the other.

And at the break, the CEO, everybody cleared out, and the CEO was like, "Am I toast?" And I'm like, "What?" And she says, like, "Did you hear all their complaints? Like, they literally...

We went long.

We went, like, 15 minutes long on this block.

Like, am I in trouble?" And I'm like, "Are you kidding me? This is an amazing sign of health."

Yeah.

That people are-

Engaged and trying to fix

... still care.

The hardest work we've ever done, ever, is been in organizations where people had already quit.