Chronic Complainers

Clients most often show up in coaching with an underlying complaint; something is not going right. They are frustrated, stuck, in a quandary about a professional or life situation.

Dissatisfaction is good - it motivates change. Astutely detected and redirected, dissatisfaction is a coach’s friend - the key to helping clients realign their values and set their lives on a purposeful path.

But what about those clients who are chronic complainers? Session in and session out they show up with complaints, sometimes so craftily disguised that It’s hard as a coach not to fall prey to the legitimacy of this well-developed adaptation.

I spoke with Zerrin Basar, Erickson Master Coach and leadership development specialist who works with Executive Leaders in Europe. Zerrin provides useful tips and ways of thinking about complaining to help coaches work effectively with chronic complainers.

However, neuroscience has demonstrated that talking about the problem, expands the problem. When we repeatedly express our anger, frustration, disappointment, those neural pathways and emotional responses become hard-coded. Indeed, it is like playing those old gramophone records over and over: a deep groove forms and eventually the needle gets stuck. That’s what’s happening when we have a chronic complainer. It’s a subconscious and stuck pathway in the brain. So how then do we help clients to unlearn complaining behaviours that have been so well-entrenched? In Solution-Focused coaching, we step quickly away from the complaints and lean into the desired state.  We work with clients to construct new neural pathways by activating the parts of the brain that help them to envision a different story, one that complainers, in particular, have lost sight of. As coaches, the less time we spend listening to  the complaints, the more successful we will be helping the client to shift to a new reality.  We need to hear the complaint, the struggle, the "story" and quickly ask powerful questions that stop neurons firing along that complainer highway and open up new neural pathways that start to build a new story.

Tip 2: Contract for no-complaining We all know a key process in coaching, whatever the coaching niche, is creating a solid contract for the coaching relationship and each session. . “I always ask my clients in our first session if they are really willing to be coached; to have a mirror put up in front of them,” says Zerrin.

 This direct conversation is a critical step to determining whether a client understands that the coaching outcomes will depend on their own willingness to be courageous in the face of old patterns.  Zerrin tells clients that she is going to be asking some difficult questions and gets their permission to do this, to be challenged and to partner for real transformation. This is an important arrow in every coach’s toolset, especially when faced with a chronic complainer. It’s somewhat of a paradox: while deeply accepting the client as a whole human being, we simultaneously have to notice the complaining and, through powerful questions, guide the person to seeing it as an unhelpful habit worthy of change. Zerrin does note, however, that she has had clients who do not move out of complaining and stubbornly resist making progress. “I have had to have tough conversations with clients,” notes Zerrin. “If they are not willing to shift, it is not a good use of my time or theirs, and we may need to agree that they work with another professional.”

Tip 3: Dissociate for Clarity A coach can help a client to get beyond complaining to a deeper place of self awareness in themselves. “I sometimes ask a client to visualize zooming out slowly to high above themselves and to look down at themselves to notice what they see,” says Zerrin.

This is a dissociation exercise and it gets the client to reflect on themselves from a third-person perspective. Usually, the client says something like, “...that isn’t how I remembered it happening…” They see something in their story differently and become more open to reconstructing it in a more useful way; perhaps a way that generates positive, empowering emotions.

Tip 4: Find the lost value hiding behind the complaint 

One possibility is that clients’ complaints are the symptom of values that have somehow shifted out of alignment. The coach can help to guide the client to a deeper awareness of the underlying value that needs stronger expression in their life. Guiding clients through a thinking process to identify who they become when that value is lived to its optimum is essential. When they connect more deeply with what is important to them (their values), and how their complaints reflect what values are not getting enough light,  they can envision what that "lived value"  might look like in their lives.  That inspires action and the helpless complainer in them dissipates over time.

Tip 5: Love your Client "It's important to remember that as coaches, we are not coaching the story. We are coaching the person,” says Zerrin. It’s easy to get hooked into the story and to unintentionally validate a complaining metaprogram back to the client.

We know we need to be curious, but we must stay curious about the person, and not the story. Milton Erickson noted something along the lines of, “When I am with a client, it’s only me and that person.” He said we must love our clients. What he meant is that we need to stay in loving compassion for our clients. We need to see the person beneath the complaining. We stay in the potential of that emerging human. Then we can help them to become who they want to be, and often through the coach-to-client relationship, that tangible acceptance lays the soil for the learned helplessness of complaining to transform into meaningful, purpose-driven living. 

Author: Louise Hendey  

Interview: Zerrin Basar