The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work

Chapter 3. Morale

She knew that when Jim was fired up, the best thing to do was to calm him down by agreeing with him and then share alternative ideas later. Thankfully, her caffeine boost was kicking in, and her adrenaline was flowing. She was starting to think more clearly. Jim was a hard charger, take-no-prisoner kind of manager who liked order and results. They certainly would have to find out who these bloggers were, but there was more to the story. She was the bridge between the executive team and thousands of employees, and she didn't need anyone on national television to tell her that they had a morale problem on their hands. She had approached Jim and Dan several times about their issues and even offered suggestions to improve the culture, but as usual it was put aside as a "good idea" for the next meeting because there were more pressing issues to be discussed. Logistics, sales, call center problems, customer complaints, stock price, shareholder meetings—everything was always more urgent than their employees' concerns, so negativity kept spreading and morale kept getting worse. After a while she grew tired of saying anything. Besides, she had enough problems of her own to deal with that she certainly wasn't going to fight to solve her company's problems if no one wanted to listen.

Sure, everyone would get excited after attending a leadership seminar and talk about being positive ...