“Complaining about work” is more at scale than “being productive at work”

From here:

My friend, the legendary executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, interviewed more than 200 of his clients and what he discovered matched previous research he read, but found hard to believe: “a majority of employees spend 10 or more hours per month complaining — or listening to others complain — about their bosses or upper management. Even more amazing, almost a third spend 20 hours or more per month doing so.”

That’s a lot of time spent complaining — but if you’ve ever worked in an office, you can probably believe that stat, give or take. Now yes, it’s based on 200 interviews. Not a large sample size. But this is also a series of topics people aren’t openly usually that willing to discuss, so you gotta find pockets of intel where you can.

Why so much complaining?

Easiest answers:

• It’s relatively easy to do.
• It makes us feel heard.
• Work is a very emotional place because it’s made up of people different from us, yet we have to spend 10-12 hours/day collaborating with them.
• As it’s emotional, it’s also lacking in priority often.
• People often aren’t respectful of others.
• Since most of work is hiding from real communication (what do you think email is?), complaining — which is a behind-the-back way of hiding from actual communication — fits well in the picture too.

How we can complain less?

• Promote more empathetic people into management.
• Promote more women.
• Encourage people to be direct and go to the person they’re complaining about, explain what they did, and try to resolve it.
• Hire more for soft skills.
• Care about creating a workplace that isn’t a cesspool of everyone saying how awful “Brad” is.
• If there are 1-2 managers getting complained about the most, FIRE THEM. Their numbers don’t matter. FIRE THEM.
• Spend some time trying to fix communication in your workplace.

What else might you add?

Oh, and yes — look at these stats about how productive people are in most white-collar offices. Complaining > productivity. For sure. That’s sad, but as long as the company is producing revenue and making numbers, no one with authority ever cares.