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How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
61–69 of 69 posts
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#62Slightly OT but the font on that site is terrific. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something cursive (ish) that’s so legible.
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#63> Why people complain: Psychological lenses
They left off one critical reason:
The person is a problem solver and is correct
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#64For wathever reason, some people are just better at analysing complex situations, systems and outcomes.
So when a proposal is tabled, they will point out non obvious shortcomings and unintended concequences.
This is not 'complaining'.
Neither does this mean you immediatly have to keel over and ditch the plan. Plenty of times something can succeed against all odds.
But smart management will take into account the information provided, rather tjan labeling it as something to ignore without furter thought.
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#65[flagged]
From the article: > Complaining is not a character flaw; it is a response shaped by context, past experiences, and unmet needs such as recognition, belonging, or agency. When leaders interpret complaint only as negativity, they risk silencing the very signals that reveal what people care about. By seeing complaints as expressions of care in disguise, leaders can move beyond irritation and instead use inquiry to uncov…
> Complaining is not a character flaw
Sometimes it is. I was complaining a lot, but then someone had enough and explained to me that it isn't productive (complaining about every minor annoyance) and makes people not like me. Now I'm not complaining so much, only when I know how to change something or that it really needs to be changed. My life got a little better.
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#66I once worked for a small consultancy which did business by fishing for contracts, then doing the absolute to-the-letter minimum to fulfill them, irrespective of damage to the customer’s business or the company reputation. We would deliver working software that was absolutely awful to actually use for anything.
Often, clients would literally tell us to f*ck off when they realized we would not do anything that wasn’t in the contract verbatim, no matter how trivial.
To me, it was insanity. I would have preferred actually solving customer issues in a partnership fashion, and day-to-day work was nightmarish due to the constant conflict of values. Raising an issue about this got me branded a complainer.
The company slowly gathered enough references to attract some bigger clients (realistically: via backroom deals and kickbacks) and was eventually acquired, and some time later the executives were politely told to pack their things and get out.
They got what they wanted: a hefty paycheck and a load of shares from the acquiring company. The entire company was an acquisition scam from the get-go.
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#67Most of the time, complainers are a exhibiting a personality trait (or learned behavior as the article says); let's call those "unserious complainers". Some of the time (maybe 10% IME), the person complaining knows how to fix a problem, and is confused why no one is taking them or their suggestion seriously. It could be that the problem has existed for so long that the team has a cognitive blindness, or the team is s…
> Some of the time (maybe 10% IME), the person complaining knows how to fix a problem,
Knowing how to fix the problem shouldn't be a hard prerequisite to raising an issue. I've seen situations where everyone on the team is aware of a problem, but the only people with authority to solve it are sitting around waiting for it to work itself out without their intervention.
Of course the natural thought is "raising an issue constructively isn't complaining", but there's a kind of viewpoint bias on both sides of this. Sometimes people who are too wedded to some idea or way of doing things view any criticism at all in a reflexively negative light, just as some people tend to air grievances as a hobby without a constructive outcome in mind.
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#68Most of the time, complainers are a exhibiting a personality trait (or learned behavior as the article says); let's call those "unserious complainers". Some of the time (maybe 10% IME), the person complaining knows how to fix a problem, and is confused why no one is taking them or their suggestion seriously. It could be that the problem has existed for so long that the team has a cognitive blindness, or the team is s…
Reality check.
Complaint: tickets created by the QA team for developers, even seemingly trivial ones, stagnate in Jira for months and sometimes years without anyone looking.
Written plan: Hire somebody who will be actually responsible for planning and prioritization. Hire more developers, so that the existing ones are not overloaded.
Reality: "This is not a realistic plan. There is a budget, and you are not the one who makes hiring decisions, so shut up and stop creating tickets unless there is something really serious".
So - is the complainer above serious, or not?
(all of the above is pure fiction)
Re: How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article: > Complaining is not a character flaw; it is a response shaped by context, past experiences, and unmet needs such as recognition, belonging, or agency. When leaders interpret complaint only as negativity, they risk silencing the very signals that reveal what people care about. By seeing complaints as expressions of care in disguise, leaders can move beyond irritation and instead use inquiry to uncov…
> Complaining is not a character flaw Sometimes it is. I was complaining a lot, but then someone had enough and explained to me that it isn't productive (complaining about every minor annoyance) and makes people not like me. Now I'm not complaining so much, only when I know how to change something or that it really needs to be changed. My life got a little better.
I'm not making a claim one way or another. I merely quoted the article in response to this claim by OP:
> Calling someone a complainer is corporate-speak for “they noticed the fire before leadership did.”
Just so I'm being crystal clear: I was pointing out that the article already addressed OP's statement.
I should also point out that your own comment doesn't refute the article. You just followed the article's advice for yourself rather than for a subordinate (which is fine).