Why Allowing Commiserating to Fester Is So Destructive

At the bottom of the Spiral of Accountability™ is “generating commiserators.” Basically, this is when people engage and recruit others to join in, validate their Spiral Down feelings, and justify their destructive behaviors. No one wants to be in misery alone.

In a recent Harvard Business Review Article entitled, “Managing Your Team’s Emotional Dynamic,” the author, Amit Goldenberg, discusses “collective emotion.” This is what generating commiserators is all about.

Let’s explore this process and discuss some options for intervention.

Ultimately the thought is to not let it get this far. This requires a lot of awareness from leaders, and it starts in the Fog. Being able to predict, recognize, and address a Fog situation can possibly prevent and probably minimize the destructive Spiraling Down behaviors.

A Fog is any time there is uncertainty, confusion, miscommunication, conflict, or change. In other words, there is almost always a Fog situation going on. As a leader/leadership team, you make decisions. These decisions impact your employees. They will have an emotional response to hearing or experiencing these decisions. Pay attention, ask about those responses, and be prepared to address them. If you can get information clarified and give employees the opportunity to express their initial feelings early before Spiraling Down occurs, you will prevent much of the negative commiserating. This requires you to decenter yourself and focus on the needs of employees. Realize they are two steps behind you in getting on board with decisions.

Watch for the early Spiraling Down behaviors. Things like, silence, withdrawing, avoiding the subject, avoiding you, continuing as if nothing has changed, pretending like there is no issue. These are ignoring behaviors.

If you notice passive-aggressiveness, snide remarks, or comments about why they can’t follow through. These are signs of excuse-making.

When there are longer than usual lunches, breaks, and quiet/secret chatting before or after meetings. If you see signs of frustration or anger, eye-rolling, etc., there is most likely blaming and complaining going on and commiserators are being generated. People are advancing their “collective emotions” in destructive ways.

“Strong emotions are contagious, and this contagion can lead people who were

not initially impacted by a situation or even to coalesce around a given emotion.”

~Amit Goldenberg

When this is allowed to fester it can result in decreased productivity, turnover, outbursts, HR complaints, and insubordination.

Once you get to the place of a critical mass of commiserators, that is a tough turnaround.

One of the strategies, suggested in Goldenberg’s article, for managing this collective emotion, was “reappraisal, which involves rethinking or reinterpreting a situation in a way that impacts the subsequent emotional response.” In other words, reframing.

Helping people reframe their thoughts and feelings begins with getting those thoughts and feelings expressed. What doesn’t get talked out, gets acted out. Their feelings need to be acknowledged. You don’t have to agree with their feelings to acknowledge that they are true to their experience. People will not move to problem-solving until they have felt heard and acknowledged. This is the time for your very best listening and empathy. You cannot know how to address their issues until you understand their feelings.

Realize that all human beings make up stories in their head about situations and these are fueled by their emotions and then the emotions in turn fuel the absoluteness of the story. Knowing this story helps you to address misinformation or missing information. It helps you to help them find some clarity and other ways of looking at the situation.

The key is also being clear about expectations and accountability. Clearly define the behaviors you expect to move forward. This begins with more questions, “What do you need to put in place to move forward? What strengths do you bring to this situation? What is your most productive response?” Also, ask what they need from you to move forward. Be clear about what you can, cannot, or won’t do.

Lastly, for now, stay on top of how things move forward. Check-in from time to time with people.

And stay tuned, the Spiral of Accountability book, coming in early May 2024, will expand a great deal on this topic.