How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
andiroberts.com
How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
1–10 of 69 posts
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#2[deleted]
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#3[flagged]
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#4Depends on what they are complaining about and how they are doing it. In general, I would ask them how they would fix the problems they're complaining about. The first two steps to fixing any problem are to identify any analyze it. This might be their (unideal) way of doing that.
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#5> Complaints slow execution.
Not everything needs to be done yesterday. I've "executed" plans where leadership basically flips flops on their position. The team started putting all these hare brained ideas behind feature flags.
Wish we had this complaining guy.
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#6Depends on what they are complaining about and how they are doing it. In general, I would ask them how they would fix the problems they're complaining about. The first two steps to fixing any problem are to identify any analyze it. This might be their (unideal) way of doing that.
For most practical problems, the answer is usually, "well, it depends. There are no clear solutions, only tradeoffs"
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#7That font!
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#8[flagged]
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#9That font!
I guess that the person who complained that it is hard to read was treated as an issue and told they are slowing the execution.
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#10Depends on what they are complaining about and how they are doing it. In general, I would ask them how they would fix the problems they're complaining about. The first two steps to fixing any problem are to identify any analyze it. This might be their (unideal) way of doing that.
Many years ago in my software engineering course, my professor said that he would add to Fred Brooks' concept of a "surgical team" and said that he found that many successful engineering teams had a "team mother": the person that helped quell disagreements, remembered birthdays, cheered the successes no matter how small, kept tabs on how folks were doing emotionally, etc. Years later in my professional career, I found this to be true and met a few people like this on my teams -- not the best engineers, but additive to a great team.
I think that successful teams may have a place for a "team canary" (?): someone that is going to speak up about points of friction where most others might just end up with apathy and learn to deal with the inefficiency or friction (a "that's just how it is" attitude). Sometimes, complaints are a sign of genuine friction. Complainer may not feel like they have the authority/allotted bandwidth to remove the point of friction. When this happens, give this person some ownership of the friction points and see what happens.