Quick Coach: How to coach to transform complaints into commitment

Transforming A Complaint Into Commitment
Sharon Feltham, Excellerate

When an employee comes to you with a complaint do you hear it as a criticism or as just another problem that needs fixing?

Unfortunately when we only hear the criticism or complaint we become defensive or reactive, we then fail to see or hear the real opportunity. The good thing about complaints is that they can camouflage an underlying commitment. They can be a clumsy expression of this or even an indirect way of making a request.

It can help to reframe the complaint as "This person still cares enough to complain, to invest time, energy and effort in fixing something" (whatever that something may be)

Commitment in Camouflage

We can disguise our commitment in many ways. For example:

Not Making Requests Often we don't make a request directly. We will complain to others but we wont approach the other person to make a direct request. Disgruntled customers are a classic example of this.

Unclear Requests It's unrealistic to expect others to know what we want. By making our requests precise and detailed we can take the guesswork out of the situation. (Generally women tend to communicate more indirectly than men - it's that Mars/Venus thing)

Uncommunicated Expectations We have private conversations with ourselves about what others should and should not do. But we don't communicate these expectations clearly, then when they don't meet our expectations we are frustrated and disappointed.

Inappropriate Language and Tone Depending on our language or our tone of voice we can either make requests sound demanding or insignificant. We then fail to see the impact this has on the other person. If we're demanding, people might be offended and decline. If we are too tentative they may not take the request (or us) seriously. Adapted from "You Are What You Say" by Matthew Budd

"Meaning lies in people not words"

How to work with this

When your team member comes to you with a complaint:

• Listen beyond the words for the request
• Look for underlying commitment
• Use questions to clarify what you think the person is asking for
• Use questions to discover what the person is committed to
• Test your conclusions by explaining these to them
• Coach team members (and customers) to express their requests more directly  

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