May 30, 2023

How to Deal with Grievances

By Ken Giglio, Principal of Mindful Leadership

An executive complains their team is underperforming. A leader is struggling to collaborate with a peer, who they say is refusing to collaborate with them. Coworkers quietly and defiantly avoid interacting with each other.

We have all had grievances at one time or another, large and small. They are a reality of our workplace experiences and general lives. A grievance, by definition, is “a real or imagined wrong or other cause for complaint or protest, especially unfair treatment.” We experience grievance at an emotional level as “feelings of resentment over something believed to be wrong or unfair.”

(This article is about personal grievances, not those escalated into the legal realm as in a filed grievance against a company.)

When something doesn’t go our way, or someone doesn’t agree with us, we become aggrieved—the root word of grievance is to grieve. We mentally and emotionally carry whatever “real or imagined” thing that happened as a burden. We replay it in our minds and find ourselves feeling frustrated, angry, and/or resentful. We somehow can’t let it be or let it go. There seems to be some satisfaction in complaining about our unfair treatment, about how we’ve been let down by ourselves, others, our families, or companies.

The list of complaints can be long for those of us who are aggrieved. And, sadly, this way of thinking and emotional reactivity can become habitual and create a drag on our energy. Holding a grudge affects our bodies and our minds. This is because grievances keep us stuck in the past, and we re-live them and project them into the future. A downward spiral of negativity is created and fed by our anger and resentment, and the burden saps our energy, distracting us from the vitality of the present moment. We harm ourselves by carrying our grievances. Research suggests chronic complaining increases the stress hormone cortisol and bathing our brains in reinforced patterns of negativity can impact our memory.

Being with people who are openly carrying and sharing their grievances can be challenging. The negativity of their resentment can be contagious and infect us with a skewed perspective on what is a real or imagined hurt. Chronic complainers are loud about their discontent about others and their organization without being proactive in engaging in the change they want to see. Even more corrosive is the person who silently harbors their grievances. These individuals hold their grudges close, yet still exhibit a grumpiness that can cause others to ask themselves, “what did I do to get on the bad side of her/him?” We harm others and our relationships by carrying our grievances. And, by sharing them indiscriminately, we can harm entire departments or organizations.

Yet, grievances are not good nor bad, and some complaints are warranted and healthy if geared toward important changes that benefit oneself, others, and wider systems. Venting what is unfair to key influencers in ways that lead to addressing a wrong or solving a problem can be an empowering experience and lead to increased confidence and improved mental health. If the executive who complained about their team’s ineffectiveness follows up by providing feedback to their group and engaging them in a team development process, then positive, generative results can occur.

It can be helpful if we consider grievances as a range of feelings, the lower end as feelings of being let down, put off, or slighted, and the higher end as feelings of being disregarded, put down, or even betrayed. When it comes to grievances, it matters less, or not at all, whether the wrong done to us is real or imagined. What matters most is how we react to the wrong or unfair treatment. We choose to be aggrieved and to complain; no one puts us up to it. It is our choice to become more aware and learn from our own grievances and others’ and move beyond them. Otherwise, our grievances keep us stuck in disruptive emotions and a string of unproductive and potentially damaging behaviors. When things don’t go our way, we can either perpetuate a cycle of grievance or break through to a new way of seeing and acting.

Practices To Deal with Grievances

• Cultivate Mindful Reflection – Grievances need to be worked through from the inside out. By closely examining how we think and feel about being treated unfairly, we increase our awareness and pick up insights that result in shifts in our approaches to grievances. Being mindful reduces the chance we’ll become reactive when a perceived wrong occurs. It also lessens the contagion of negativity spawned by complaining. For example, when your peer doesn’t recognize your contribution to a project, you can practice noticing how your mind starts to spin with projections about the peer’s intention in ignoring you. By noticing the workings of our minds and our emotional reactivity, we can build in a buffer that slows, then stops, the grievance from taking hold of us.
• Foster Equanimity – As the Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi put it, “Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind.” Equanimity is the reminder everything is constantly changing, which helps us to detach and care less about unfair treatment. This practice of detachment and perspective allows us to be mentally calm when we feel like we’ve been given the short end of the stick. We have the choice to pause, breathe, and steady our minds in the face of grievances.
• Adopt Active Acceptance – Waiting for another person, culture, or system to change can be a fool’s errand. It’s best to focus our attention and energy on changing what we can change in ourselves. When it comes to others and organizations, practicing active acceptance can strengthen our relationships. To accept actively means letting go of a perceived wrong or letting it be. Time is not what heals our wounds or our grievances. It is changing our relationship with our wounds and grievances in the present that allows for healing over time.
• Set Clear Boundaries – I once brought a complaint to a wise coach. It was about my manager. They listened quietly for a bit and said, “I’m here to support you, but I will not wallow with you in your stuck-ness.” My coach then proceeded to challenge my thinking to lift me out of my self-imposed misery. I’ve learned to watch out for the tendency to commiserate with those who come to us with a grievance. It is rarely what they need. Listening empathically is always a good starting point when someone comes to us with a grievance; however, making their grievance our grievance can feed a negativity loop and victimhood and spread across a team or organization. Set clear boundaries with others’ grievances, letting them know how you view chronic complaining as disempowering for them and you. Model and encourage mindful reflection and other practices for dealing with grievances.
• Generate Gratitude – Being appreciative and thankful on a consistent basis can lift us out of our state of grievance. Studies have shown expressing gratitude brings mental and physical benefits, like an improved mood and more positive feelings about ourselves and others. Practice gratitude daily by noticing what is positive around us and capturing, mentally or in writing, the things we are thankful for. Gratitude insulates us from victimhood.
• Be Compassionate with Yourself and Others – Grievances produce unhealthy relationships. They can cause negative feelings and self-criticism and distance between us and others. Compassion is the antidote. By having compassion for ourselves when we are aggrieved, we acknowledge and tolerate our disappointment and resentment in being wronged. We normalize our feelings and do not let them consume us or define us. Being compassionate toward those who have ignited our grievance means listening, stepping back from judgement, and staying engaged with an open mind and an open heart. Being compassionate means forgiving and letting go of our grudges.

Grievances are a normal part of our personal and professional lives. It is inevitable people and life’s circumstances will let us down. In these moments, we have the choice to either carry the burden forward, allowing a grievance to take root and then grow by our complaints, or we can nip it in the bud through mindful reflection and other practices. The more we practice dealing with grievances mindfully, the more we’ll see life as neither unfair nor fair, and people, as neither good nor bad.