Complaining is a good signal.
At a job early in my career, I was incredibly frustrated with the state of the company and leadership, and many of my coworkers were complaining as well. One of my older, wiser coworkers said this was a good sign, because complaining meant that people cared. Once they stopped complaining, it meant they had given up and were on their way out.
As a leader, if your people are complaining, at least you can hear what their frustrations are. In response, you can better explain your context for making the decisions you did, you can better understand the underlying issues that are driving the complaining, and you can take actions to try to make things better.
Or you can decide that the person complaining is an idiot that should be dismissed, as the CEO at that early job did to me (“More we, less me!” was one memorable email). So he never heard what I had to say, and continued to drive that company off the cliff into bankruptcy.
How can you use complaints as a signal to improve your decision making?
#leadership #decisionmaking #youhaveachoice