The Complaining Team Member

Do your employees complain but don’t want to help find a solution?

Do you have members of your team who frequently complain about others on the team, but seem to not want to do anything to resolve the situation? Or, to leave it entirely up to you to resolve, therefore absolving themselves of all responsibility?

When we allow a member of our team to come into our office, complain about a situation, commiserate with him/her and then allow ourselves to be saddled with fixing the problem, we are not doing any favors for the employee!

Let’s consider this scenario, Agatha walks into your office and asks if you have a few minutes to talk. You tell her you do and invite her to sit down. Agatha begins to complain about one of her co-workers. This is not the first time Agatha has walked into your office to complain about one of her co-workers. It seems she has complained about every team member in the department at one time or another. You ask Agatha if she has spoken to her co-worker and she tells you she has not. She answers the same way each time. You ask Agatha if she would like you to meet with her and the co-worker together, and she tells you no. The same answer she gives every time. When you ask her if she would like you to talk with the co-worker and share with him the story from Agatha, she tells you no. Agatha wants either just to complain because she likes to do so, or expects you to handle the situation yourself and leave her out of it. Agatha does not want to take any responsibility for resolving the problem. Don’t let Agatha do this to you.

When we enable employees to pass their problems with co-workers on to us to manage, we end up spending much of our time resolving problems that really should be resolved between the co-workers and we take away responsibility and ownership they should have over getting along with, and working effectively with, their co-workers.
Be sure that all of your employees know that you expect them to resolve problems themselves or to take part in a resolution if the problem is bigger than they are able to manage. When employees come to your office with a complaint, ask them to also bring along a few potential solutions to consider, or, to expect to take that time in your office developing solutions together.

As another best practice, you might spend some time with your employees – maybe as part of a team training session – helping them to develop a process and procedures around solving problems that arise on the team. While some employees are just complainers and want others to solve all their problems for them, others may simply not know how to approach the problem and a resolution to it. Enable your employees to take ownership and manage their own problems by working with them to outline processes and procedures to take to solve problems and make decisions.