How do I help my team move beyond grumbling?

Every leader knows the sound of discontent. It is the side conversation before the meeting begins. It is the complaint spoken in the hallway after the decision is made. It is the weary silence that follows the phrase “here we go again.”

Grumbling is not the enemy. It is an expression of loss. People grumble because they care, because something they valued feels diminished, because their voice seems smaller than it once was. The difficulty is when the grumble ceases to be a moment and becomes a culture. Then the complaint is no longer a passing feeling but the water we swim in.

The temptation is to silence it. To insist on positivity. To redirect people back to the agenda. Yet this rarely works. Complaint simply finds another outlet, and the discontent deepens.

The work of leadership is different. It is to create a place where frustration is allowed to be spoken, and at the same time invite the group to notice what it costs to stay there. Negativity is contagious. So is hope. The real question is not how to end complaint, but how to help people choose where to place their energy.

In what follows, I explore five pathways from psychology and behavioural research that help with this shift. Each comes with a practice that can be used in the room with a team. Not as a technique to control people, but as an invitation to claim a different kind of agency.

Energy drain and energy gain: noticing the life that leaves the room and the life that enters.
Attribution theory: moving from blame to ownership.
Immunity to change: surfacing the fears that sustain resistance.
Appreciative inquiry: rekindling pride and possibility.
Learned optimism: loosening the grip of helpless narratives.

Change is not first a technical problem. It is a human conversation. The choice we face is whether our conversations deepen the culture of complaint or open a pathway to something more life-giving.

Five pathways from grumbling to growth

Pathway 1 – Energy drain and energy gain

Every team knows what it feels like when the air gets heavy. It is not just the words that are spoken but the weight behind them. Meetings that begin with good intent can collapse under the gravity of frustration. A few comments, a shrug, the sense that nothing will change. Before long the whole group is tired, not from the work itself but from the tone of the room.

Psychologists have long noted that moods spread through groups. Sigal Barsade’s work on emotional contagion (2002) shows how even subtle non-verbal cues can shift the climate of a team in minutes. Negativity often moves faster than optimism because our brains are tuned to notice threats more quickly than opportunities. Complaints serve a purpose, but when they repeat without resolution they become rumination, a cycle that drains energy without producing agency.

The invitation of leadership is not to banish complaint but to give it form. To notice what it costs to stay there, and to hold alongside it what gives life. The truth is that energy is never absent. It is always flowing somewhere. The question for every team is whether we will continue to invest it in what drains us, or whether we will choose to amplify what sustains us.

Supporting Exercise – The energy audit

This exercise creates a moment where people can speak their frustration and then pivot toward possibility. It is not about silencing complaint. It is about helping the team see both realities and then decide where to put their energy.

Step One – Make room for the drains

Facilitation: Prepare a chart or board with the title What drains us. Ask the group to call out what feels heavy, frustrating, or exhausting right now. Capture their words visibly without comment or debate. Keep the tone neutral. Limit this stage to 5–7 minutes.
Why it matters: Venting without structure deepens negativity. This step contains it. By writing frustrations down where all can see, you honour the voice of complaint without letting it dominate the session. Research on affect labelling (Lieberman et al., 2007) shows that simply naming emotions reduces their intensity.

Step Two – Turn toward the gains

Facilitation: Prepare a second chart titled What gives us energy. Ask the group: “When have we felt alive or proud here, even in difficult times?” Invite specific stories such as a good customer interaction, a helpful colleague, or a decision that clarified the way forward. Capture as many examples as possible.
Why it matters: This shifts attention from problem-saturated stories to life-giving ones. Appreciative Inquiry research (Cooperrider and Srivastva, 1987) shows that recalling positive experiences increases resilience and strengthens social bonds.

Step Three – Place the two side by side

Facilitation: Display both lists together. Allow silence before speaking. Then ask: “Looking at both, which of these do we want to feed in the weeks ahead?” Encourage the group to discuss what balance they notice and how it feels.
Why it matters: Side-by-side comparison externalises the choice. Instead of arguing opinions, the team can see their collective story. This supports what organisational psychologists call sensemaking (Weick, 1995), the process of creating meaning together rather than passively absorbing it.

Step Four – Make a personal choice

Facilitation: Invite each person to select one item from the “gain” list they commit to nurturing in the coming week. Ask them to name it aloud or write it where all can see.
Why it matters: This creates ownership. Small acts of agency interrupt the cycle of helplessness. Martin Seligman’s research on learned optimism (1990) highlights that shifting from passive complaint to active choice builds resilience over time.

Variations

Silent Start: Instead of calling out drains and gains, give each person sticky notes or use a digital board where they can post quietly. This reduces the risk of louder voices dominating.
Personal Audit: Ask people to draw two columns in their own notebook labelled drains and gains, and reflect individually before sharing. This can surface deeper insights from quieter participants.
Future Focus: After the gains list is created, add a third sheet titled What could give us energy that we have not tried yet? This extends the exercise into co-creation.
Ongoing Pulse Check: Use the two categories at the start of weekly meetings, giving five minutes for quick additions. This turns the exercise into a ritual rather than a one-off event.
Pair Reflection: In remote sessions, send people into breakout rooms of two and ask them to share one drain and one gain before returning to the group. This deepens connection and increases honesty.

This exercise does not make the frustrations disappear. It places them in proportion. It reminds people that energy is always present, and that where they invest it is a choice.

Pathway 2 – From blame to ownership

Blame is our most familiar defence. When things go wrong, locating the fault elsewhere is almost automatic. We do it to protect ourselves, to shield against shame, to make sense of events that feel too large. There is a kind of comfort in blaming others. For a moment, the burden is lifted. If the problem belongs to them, then I am innocent.

Yet comfort is not the same as agency. The more we rehearse blame, the more powerless we become. Meetings that are full of complaint rarely move to action. Energy drains away, not because people do not care, but because the story they are telling leaves them no role to play.

Psychologist Bernard Weiner’s Attribution Theory (1985) helps us see this clearly. Human beings are sensemakers. We are always asking: Why did this happen? And our answers matter. If the cause is external and unchangeable, we feel helpless. If the cause is internal and within reach, we act. Our explanations of events shape whether we retreat or take responsibility.

The paradox is that people already know this at some level. We know that spending energy on what others should do rarely changes the situation. And yet we keep rehearsing it. Why? Because complaint is easier than ownership. Because blame gives us temporary solidarity. Because naming what others should do is less risky than asking what we will do.

The invitation of leadership here is not to deny complaint, and not to demand positivity. It is to make the story discussable. To help people notice where their explanations leave them stuck, and then to invite an alternative explanation where they still hold choice. Ownership, in this sense, is not a duty. It is an act of freedom.

Supporting exercise – Reframing the story

This practice invites people to examine their recurring complaints and discover what part of the story they can reclaim as their own.

Step One – Name the complaint

Facilitation: Ask each person to write down one complaint they often make about the current situation. Keep it personal and specific. Encourage statements in the form “They always…” or “We never…” since these reveal habitual attributions.
Deepening questions:
- What complaint comes up most often in your conversations with colleagues?
- What sentence begins with “They always…” or “We never…” that you catch yourself repeating?
Why it matters: Complaints that are repeated become part of the culture. Naming them brings them into the open where they can be worked with. Research on affect labelling (Lieberman, 2007) shows that putting experiences into words reduces their emotional intensity and creates space for reflection.

Step Two – Explore the current attribution

Facilitation: In pairs, invite people to share the cause they usually assign to their complaint. Encourage honesty. This is not about fixing anything, only noticing where they currently locate responsibility.
Deepening questions:
- When you make this complaint, who or what do you usually hold responsible?
- What assumptions are hidden in this explanation?
- If this story were true, what options does it leave you with?
Why it matters: Attribution theory shows that our beliefs about causes drive our behaviour. If the cause is always external, the conclusion is usually that nothing can change. Surfacing this belief makes it easier to question.

Step Three – Reframe toward ownership

Facilitation: Now ask pairs to explore the same complaint from a different angle. Guide them with deeper questions that move from blame to agency. Encourage them to search for small openings rather than dramatic solutions.
Deepening questions:
- What part of this belongs to us?
- Where do we still have influence, even if it feels small?
- What choice could we make that would move us closer to what we want, without waiting for others to act first?
- If we stopped repeating this complaint, what fear or loss might we need to face?
- What possibility opens when we accept even partial responsibility?
Why it matters: Reframing shifts the conversation from powerlessness to possibility. Kegan and Lahey’s research on Immunity to Change (2009) shows that many complaints conceal competing commitments and fears. These questions invite people to notice those fears and reclaim agency.

Step Four – Share insights with the group

Facilitation: Bring the group back together. Invite a few volunteers to share their reframed complaint and what changed in their thinking. Capture examples visibly. Highlight where small acts of ownership revealed surprising options.
Deepening questions:
- What did you learn when you looked at your complaint differently?
- What surprised you about the options you discovered?
- How might we, as a team, take responsibility together for part of this story?
Why it matters: Sharing reframes makes them collective. The group sees that ownership is possible, and that others are willing to take it. This normalises accountability as a cultural act, not an individual exception.

Variations

Leader Modelling: Begin with your own complaint and demonstrate the reframing process in front of the group. This signals safety and reduces defensiveness.
Collective Complaint: Choose one well-known group complaint and reframe it together. This shows how ownership can be distributed.
Silent Reflection: For teams with high defensiveness, allow private reframing in journals before pairing up. This reduces pressure and allows honesty.
Reframing Ritual: Turn the practice into a habit. Whenever a complaint arises in a meeting, pause briefly to ask: “What part of this is ours to own?”

Blame does not disappear overnight. Nor should it. It tells us where the pain is. The shift comes when people see that while the pain may be real, they are not powerless. The act of reframing is not about denying what is wrong. It is about reclaiming the right to act.

Pathway 3 – Surfacing hidden commitments

Some complaints are easy to name and easy to reframe. Others remain stubborn. A team may acknowledge that change is needed, may even see possibilities for action, and still find itself circling back to the same frustrations. On the surface this looks like resistance. Underneath, it is often protection.

Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s work on Immunity to Change (2009) describes this dynamic. We say we want one thing, but at the same time we are committed to another that feels safer. These competing commitments are rarely conscious. They arise from fear of loss: loss of status, loss of competence, loss of identity, loss of belonging. When change threatens these, grumbling becomes a shield.

The paradox is that resistance often hides loyalty. People complain because they care, and they resist because they fear losing something they value. When leaders help teams surface these hidden commitments, the complaint can be honoured without being indulged. The group can see that behind negativity there is something worth protecting. That recognition can free people to make different choices.

Supporting exercise – Hidden commitments map

This exercise helps individuals and teams uncover the fears that lie beneath their complaints, and to recognise how those fears keep old patterns in place.

Step One – Name the stated commitment

Facilitation: Ask each person to write down one positive intention they hold for the change. Examples: “I want to support the new system,” “I want us to work together more effectively,” “I want to adapt to the new direction.”
Deepening questions:
- If you were fully aligned with this change, what would you want to contribute?
- What do you say you are committed to in this situation?
Why it matters: Stating the positive commitment first ensures that resistance is framed as care rather than sabotage. It reminds people that they do have aspirations for the change, even if they feel blocked.

Step Two – Identify the counter-behaviour

Facilitation: Ask participants to reflect on what they are doing, or not doing, that works against their stated commitment. For example, “I avoid meetings about the new system,” or “I keep using the old process even when I do not need to.”
Deepening questions:
- What behaviours of yours might make it harder to fulfil your stated commitment?
- When the topic comes up, how do you find yourself acting?
Why it matters: This step gently surfaces contradiction. It shows that resistance is not only “out there” but also enacted in daily choices. Making this explicit prepares the ground for deeper exploration.

Step Three – Surface the hidden commitment

Facilitation: Ask: “If you stop those counter-behaviours, what do you fear might happen?” Encourage people to dig beneath the surface until they identify what they are really protecting. Common answers include fear of losing competence, fear of not belonging, fear of increased workload, fear of conflict.
Deepening questions:
- What do you fear you might lose if you truly lived out your stated commitment?
- What unspoken commitment are you holding on to instead?
- What does your grumbling allow you to avoid facing?
Why it matters: This is the heart of the exercise. Resistance is reframed as loyalty to something important. By surfacing the hidden commitment, people can see that their behaviour is not irrational but protective.

Step Four – Test new possibilities

Facilitation: Ask participants: “What small step could you take that honours both your stated commitment and your hidden commitment?” Encourage experimentation rather than perfection.
Deepening questions:
- What could you try that supports the change and still honours what you are protecting?
- What would be a safe first step to test whether your fear is as absolute as it feels?
Why it matters: This reduces defensiveness. Instead of demanding people “get on board,” it invites them to experiment. Kegan and Lahey found that small tests of change help people discover that their fears, while real, are not always determinative.

Variations

Team Mapping: Instead of working individually, create a group map of stated commitments, counter-behaviours, and hidden commitments. This normalises that everyone struggles with competing loyalties.
Silent Journaling: For sensitive contexts, keep the mapping private. Invite people to journal their commitments without sharing. The value lies in personal awareness, not public disclosure.
Pair Dialogue: Pair people and invite them to gently question each other using the prompts. This can deepen honesty and reduce self-justification.
Leader Transparency: As the facilitator, map your own hidden commitment publicly. This models courage and makes it safer for others to follow.

Surfacing hidden commitments is not about eliminating fear. It is about recognising its presence and making choices in the light of it. When teams see that their resistance comes from a desire to protect something valuable, the grumble becomes less a wall and more a doorway. The act of naming frees people to step toward possibility with more honesty and less defensiveness.

Pathway 4 – Rekindling pride and possibility

Negativity narrows vision. When a team is discouraged, its attention is drawn almost exclusively to what is broken. The imagination contracts around scarcity: not enough clarity, not enough resources, not enough leadership. Over time, this lens becomes self-reinforcing. The more people look for deficits, the more they find them.

Appreciative Inquiry, developed by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva (1987), offers a counter-movement. Instead of beginning with problems, it begins with strengths. It asks people to remember times when they were at their best and to draw lessons for the present. This is not a denial of difficulty. It is a refusal to let difficulty define the whole story.

Pride is not indulgence. It is fuel. When people remember moments when they made a difference, when they felt alive in their work, when they supported each other, they rediscover resources that discouragement had hidden. Possibility emerges when pride is remembered and shared. The role of leadership is to create space for these stories and to treat them as raw material for shaping the future.

Supporting exercise – Best of times stories

This exercise helps teams reconnect with pride by sharing stories of when they felt alive and effective.

Step One – Invite the story

Facilitation: Ask people to pair up. Give each person a few minutes to answer the prompt: “Tell me about a time here when you felt proud, energised, or deeply connected.” Encourage them to describe the context, what happened, and how it made them feel.
Deepening questions:
- What was happening in that moment that mattered to you?
- Who else was part of that story?
- What did you contribute that you are still proud of?
Why it matters: Stories bypass the analytical mind and bring people into lived experience. Research on narrative psychology (McAdams, 1993) shows that recalling positive life stories strengthens identity and resilience.

Step Two – Listen for themes

Facilitation: After sharing, ask pairs to reflect together: “What themes or patterns do you notice across your stories?” Capture phrases or insights that stand out.
Deepening questions:
- What conditions allowed these good moments to happen?
- What values or strengths were at play?
- What does this reveal about what gives us life here?
Why it matters: Pride becomes more powerful when seen as a pattern rather than an isolated event. Appreciative Inquiry research shows that collective themes create a foundation for imagining future possibilities.

Step Three – Share back to the group

Facilitation: Bring the group together. Ask pairs to share one theme or insight from their conversations. Capture these on a board titled What gives us pride.
Deepening questions:
- Which of these themes feels most alive for us now?
- Which strengths do we want to bring forward into this next chapter?
Why it matters: This collective harvest shifts attention from complaint to possibility. It creates a visible reminder of what the team values and can build upon.

Step Four – Connect to the present

Facilitation: Ask: “What small step could we take this month to bring more of these qualities into our current reality?” Encourage people to propose actions that are concrete and doable.
Deepening questions:
- What is one practice we could try that would recreate some of what made us proud?
- How could we remind each other of these strengths in the middle of change?
Why it matters: Pride only transforms culture when it is linked to action. This step ensures the stories generate forward momentum, not just nostalgia.

Variations

Written Stories: Ask people to write short reflections before sharing. This helps quieter members bring forward richer details.
Photo Prompts: Invite people to bring or choose images that represent a proud moment. Visual metaphors often unlock memory more powerfully than words alone.
Thematic Breakouts: After initial sharing, create small groups around recurring themes (teamwork, creativity, resilience). Let each group brainstorm how to activate that theme now.
Mini-Awards: End the exercise with each person naming a “gift” they received from their partner’s story. This builds gratitude alongside pride.

Rekindling pride is not an escape from reality. It is a return to resources that discouragement conceals. Possibility comes not from pretending everything is fine, but from remembering that the capacity for life and contribution has always been present. When teams tell these stories together, they do more than recall the past. They create a foundation for the future.

Pathway 5 – Loosening the grip of helpless narratives

When change drags on and setbacks pile up, teams often fall into a particular pattern of speech. “It is always like this.” “They never listen.” “Nothing ever changes here.” These phrases are spoken with conviction, but they are rarely accurate. They are narratives of helplessness. They reduce a complex reality into absolutes.

Martin Seligman’s research on learned helplessness (1975) showed how animals exposed to repeated, uncontrollable shocks eventually stopped trying to escape, even when freedom was possible. Later, his work on learned optimism (1990) revealed that how we explain events shapes whether we persist or give up. People who use absolute and permanent explanations, “always,” “never,” “everyone,” “no one”, are more likely to feel powerless. Those who frame events as temporary and specific remain more resilient.

Helpless narratives are contagious. They spread quickly through grumbling and soon become the assumed truth of the group. Leaders cannot erase these stories by countering them with optimism. What helps instead is to gently question the absolutes, to bring attention to exceptions, and to invite people to see that possibility has not been extinguished.

Supporting Exercise – From “always/never” to “sometimes”

This exercise helps teams loosen the grip of helpless narratives by noticing when they overgeneralise and by exploring where they still have influence.

Step One – Surface the absolutes

Facilitation: Invite people to recall common phrases of frustration they hear or say, especially those beginning with “always,” “never,” or “everyone.” Capture a few on a board for all to see. Examples: “Leadership never communicates,” “We always end up cleaning up after others.”
Deepening questions:
- What phrases of complaint do you hear most often in our team?
- What words signal that we feel powerless?
Why it matters: Naming these narratives makes them visible. Once they are externalised, people can question them. Cognitive-behavioural research shows that overgeneralisation fuels helplessness, while challenging it restores perspective.

Step Two – Test the language

Facilitation: Choose one phrase and invite the group to test it. Ask: “Is it really always true? Are there moments when the opposite has happened?” Capture the exceptions.
Deepening questions:
- Can you recall a time when this was not the case?
- What was different in that situation?
- Who helped make the exception possible?
Why it matters: Finding exceptions breaks the spell of permanence. It reminds people that their experience is varied, not fixed. Seligman’s work on explanatory style shows that moving from permanent to temporary explanations is a key ingredient of resilience.

Step Three – Reframe into “sometimes”

Facilitation: Invite participants to restate their absolute phrase with “sometimes” instead of “always” or “never.” For example, “Leadership sometimes fails to communicate clearly, and sometimes we do hear what we need.”
Deepening questions:
- How does it feel when you soften the language from always to sometimes?
- What new choices open when we hold the story this way?
Why it matters: Language shapes perception. This simple linguistic shift restores nuance and makes action possible again. “Sometimes” suggests variation, and variation means influence is still possible.

Step Four – Identify points of influence

Facilitation: Ask: “Given that this does not happen all the time, what role can we play in creating more of the positive moments?” Encourage people to name one small action they could take.
Deepening questions:
- What do we do when things go better?
- How can we build on those moments?
- What part of this is within our control or influence?
Why it matters: This step shifts the group from analysis to agency. It highlights that exceptions are not accidents but contain clues for how to act differently in the future.

Variations

Personal Reflection: Ask each person to journal their own “always/never” statement privately and work through the reframing process alone before group discussion.
Collective Narrative: Choose a single dominant team narrative and reframe it together, identifying exceptions and sources of influence.
Optimism Practice: Make it a standing agenda item to notice when absolutes creep into meetings and pause to reframe. Over time this becomes a cultural habit.
Leader Transparency: Share one of your own helpless narratives and reframe it publicly. This models humility and keeps the exercise from feeling imposed.

Helpless narratives are powerful because they are easy. They protect us from disappointment by insisting that nothing can change. But they are also prisons. When people loosen their hold on “always” and “never,” they rediscover that even in difficult times, choice is still available. The invitation of leadership is to make that rediscovery possible.

Closing Reflection – Choosing where we place our energy

Grumbling will always be part of organisational life. It signals loss, it gives voice to frustration, it even binds people together for a time. The problem arises when grumbling becomes the culture itself. Then it no longer serves as a release but as a prison. The five pathways we have explored are not techniques for silencing complaint. They are invitations to place our energy differently. To notice the life that leaves the room and the life that enters. To shift our stories from blame toward ownership. To surface the fears that make resistance seem safer than change. To remember moments of pride that still live in our history. To loosen the grip of helpless narratives and recover the possibility of choice.

Leadership in this sense is less about fixing morale and more about creating a space where the team can see itself clearly. It is about asking questions that restore agency and remind people of their own capacity. It is about honouring complaint as a signal of care, while refusing to let it define who we are.

In the end, what matters most is not the absence of grumbling but the presence of choice. The choice to invest in what sustains, the choice to act where influence is possible, the choice to step into possibility even when certainty is not available.

Reflective questions for leaders

When my team complains, do I hear it as resistance, or as an expression of care and loss?
In my own language, how often do I lean on blame, helplessness, or absolutes?
What small practices could I introduce that help us move from complaint into agency?
Which pathway feels most urgent for my team right now, and which could become a new habit?
How do I model the act of choosing possibility, even in the middle of uncertainty?

Do you have any tips or advice on how to work with grumblin team members or colleagues?

What has worked for you?

Do you have any recommended resources to explore?

Thanks for reading!

References

Barsade, S. G. (2002) ‘The ripple effect: Emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(4), pp. 644–675.

Cooperrider, D. L. and Srivastva, S. (1987) ‘Appreciative inquiry in organizational life’, Research in Organizational Change and Development, 1, pp. 129–169.

Kegan, R. and Lahey, L. L. (2009) Immunity to change: How to overcome it and unlock potential in yourself and your organization. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.

Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H. and Way, B. M. (2007) ‘Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli’, Psychological Science, 18(5), pp. 421–428.

McAdams, D. P. (1993) The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York: The Guilford Press.

Seligman, M. E. P. (1975) Helplessness: On depression, development, and death. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.

Seligman, M. E. P. (1990) Learned optimism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Weick, K. E. (1995) Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Weiner, B. (1985) ‘An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion’, Psychological Review, 92(4), pp. 548–573.