Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, explains how constant complaining damages employee motivation and forgiveness. Employees who are forgiving are 42% more likely to be motivated. He teaches leaders to redirect complaints toward solutions, limit venting to five minutes, and use the phrase "let's focus on what we can control" to prevent negativity spirals.
I want to show you how to redirect rampant complaining. Listen, there are plenty of reasons for people to complain right now. Like, there are literally dozens of legitimate grievances that workers could have on any given day. But here's the problem: the more we complain, the angrier we're likely to feel. The angrier we feel, the less forgiving we're likely to be. And the less forgiving we are, the more disengaged we're going to become. Hi, I'm Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, and let's get into this. In Leadership IQ's recent study on forgiveness, we discovered that people who can forgive others, listen, are 42% more likely to be motivated to give their best effort at work. So how do you teach your people to be a bit more forgiving while still acknowledging that there are likely legitimate reasons to be annoyed and want changes to be made. First, when your folks start to enter a negative spiral, take note of whether they're complaining about issues as a way of creating change, or they're just idly griping. For example, imagine your company changed their work-from-home day from Friday to Tuesday. Our data at LeadershipIQ shows that Tuesday is the day employees least want to work from home, while Friday is their favorite day to work from home. Okay, so if people in a staff meeting are spending half an hour idly complaining, kvetching about the idiocy of the executives who instituted this policy change, they're probably entering a negativity spiral where each successive grumble becomes more intense and bitter. The more negative the conversation becomes, the less forgiveness is possible, and the more that motivation and engagement will suffer. By contrast, imagine that those same people in the meeting spent 20 minutes discussing how to create a unified front and a cogent recommendation for a policy change. That's a radically different experience. In this case, the complaints are merely a launching point for instituting a change based on a well-reasoned argument. Now, your task as a leader is to see the difference between those two scenarios. When you see the change focus scenario, that's cool. If you want to support your change self, then simply guide the conversation and strengthen the case. But in the former scenario with idle griping, you're gonna want to tell your team, let's focus on what we can control. That one simple phrase, let's focus on what we can control, Mark Murphy has almost magical powers to redirect conversations from emotionally negative grapefests into productive, change-focused planning sessions. Listen, there's nothing wrong with complaining per se, but complaints need to be focused on making things better. Otherwise, they're likely to become ever-increasing spirals of negativity, entrenching and hardening our discontent, and thus making forgiveness Nearly impossible. There were times, of course, when it's perfectly acceptable to give employees a little space to vent. But the key word here is little. I've seen countless meetings where the griping goes on for 15, 20, even 30 minutes. 5 minutes is an appropriate amount of time to vent. 30 minutes is a full-fledged negativity spiral. If you can teach your leaders the difference between idle griping and advocating for change, you're gonna have a huge impact on their ability to improve the motivation and engagement of their people.
