The Next Time You Want to Complain at Work, Do This Instead
I looked at my watch. It was 3:20pm. I had been on the phone for over an hour, almost all of that time listening to Frank*, a senior manager at Jambo, a technology company, complain about his boss, Brandon. Jambo is a company I know well — I have many ongoing relationships there from when I used to work with their CEO — but they are not, currently, a client. In other words, I wasn't soliciting complaints or asking for feedback.
"He's so scattered," Frank griped about Brandon, "He'll waltz into a meeting — late, mind you — and share his most recent idea, which is often a complete distraction from our current plan. Totally ignoring our agenda. And then he'll micromanage everything we do, reorganizing our work — though we're still accountable for the stuff he's ignoring. And that's not the worst. The worst is he's completely clueless. He thinks he's great. At yesterday's meeting . . ."
This was not the only complaining I heard from people at Jambo. Earlier that week I had spoken to several others, as well as a few members of the Board. And they weren't just complaining about Brandon — they were complaining about each other as well.
