What to do about that complaint — you know, the one you repeat over and over.

How I discovered I was living in a mood of resentment, recovered a friendship and enriched my life.

As leaders, we inevitably face circumstances that do not turn out as we would like. Sometimes we get disappointed and sometimes we get resentful. We can be particularly challenged when it appears the situation is unfair or underserved and someone else is the cause of the problem. It can be plain scary to even think about sitting down with the person to resolve the issue. Instead, we complain to anyone other than the person involved and fail to notice we have got stuck with our complaint.

When it is a colleague who is doing the complaining, we can see the impact on them and others of their not dealing with the complaint. Who has not noticed a friend or colleague suffering because they are stuck in a complaint about what someone did or (did not do) or something that happened (or did not happen)?

Our challenge is to notice when it is ourselves that are stuck in a state of complaint.

I can vividly recall when I noticed I was trapped in a complaint about my friend and business partner, Ralph (not his real name), and how…