I’m sure you’ve been there. An employee shows up at your door, or, perhaps more likely, in your Slack message, with a familiar story. They start venting about another person or department, a surefire way to make things worse for everyone, especially for the person complaining. Maybe it’s a frustrated team member complaining that “Laurie never comes through,” or a manager who insists “the product team just doesn’t get what our customers need.”

It’s tempting to nod along, offer sympathy, and jump straight into problem-solving mode. You want to be supportive, and oftentimes your instinct is to fix things. But when we accept an unfiltered complaint as the whole truth, we step out of leadership and into what tho Cy Wakeman calls “emotional waste.” This is the time and energy spent arguing with reality instead of working to improve it.

So, how do you handle these situations in a productive way? How can you validate someone’s feelings without enabling drama or taking sides? It requires a shift from being a referee to being a coach. 

Let’s look at some strategies to turn complaints into opportunities for growth, accountability, and collaboration.

Separate fact from story

When someone comes to you with a complaint, they are rarely presenting a neutral sequence of events. They are providing a narrative filtered through their emotions, personal experiences, and unmet expectations. The first step for a leader is not to react to the story but to uncover the facts. That is arguably one of the hardest steps.

As Cy Wakeman teaches, a simple yet powerful way to do this is to ask, “What do you know for sure?”

This question acts as a brake on the emotional momentum. It interrupts the narrative and prompts the person to engage in self-reflection. They must shift from a heated story to a cooler examination of the actual events. Instead of adding your own story (“Yeah, that department can be difficult” or “I am having a hard time getting prompt responses from Bob as well.”), you guide them toward objectivity. This models emotional neutrality, which is a key trait of reality-based leadership.

Suppose someone tells you, “Marketing doesn’t promote our new features effectively.”
Rather than nodding or offering to “bring it up with Marketing,” try asking:

• “What do you know for sure about how the last feature was promoted?”
• “Were there specific metrics or results that fell short of expectations?”

This approach helps the person move from a sweeping judgment (“Marketing doesn’t promote effectively”) to a discussion about data, outcomes, and ownership.

When someone complains that “HR just isn’t hiring the right people.”
Instead of reacting, you might say:

• “What do you know for sure about our recent hires?”
• “Have we defined what ‘the right people’ means for our current stage and culture?”

This approach encourages curiosity and shared definition, a critical skill for leaders navigating fast-growing teams or institutional change.

Coach for accountability

Your role as a leader is not to be the hero who swoops in to resolve every interpersonal conflict. Doing so creates dependency and positions your team members as victims who need saving. A more powerful approach is to coach them back to a place of accountability and ownership.

Instead of offering to fix the problem for them, use coaching questions to return the responsibility.

Try questions like:

• “What part of this situation can you own?”
• “What would a great outcome look like here?”
• “How have you tried to resolve this directly with the person involved?”
• “What is the first step you can take to move toward that outcome?”

These questions gently shift the focus from blame to empowerment. They help the individual move from “victim energy” (“They are making my job impossible”) to “leader energy” (“Here is how I can influence this situation for the better”).

Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, frames this as the balance between caring personally and challenging directly. You are not dismissing their frustration; you are showing that you care enough to help them rise above it. You’re communicating your belief in their ability to handle challenges effectively, which is a much more powerful vote of confidence than simply fixing the problem for them.

Redirect gossip into collaboration

Complaints, especially those targeting another team or department, present a critical choice for a leader. You can either allow the complaint to create a wedge between teams, or you can use it as a bridge to build connection. Triangulation, where a person complains to you about a third party, is a common source of workplace drama. Your job is to shut it down and redirect that energy toward collaboration.

When you hear a complaint about another department, resist the urge to validate it. Instead, invite direct collaboration.

For example, if someone says, “It sounds like there’s a disconnect between your team and Finance,” follow up with:
“I hear you. How about we invite someone from Finance into the room so we can understand their perspective and solve this together?”

This prevents you from needing to fight the instinct of defending the people who are not in the room. It also disarms gossip. People who are merely venting often back down when faced with the prospect of a direct, constructive conversation. Those who genuinely want to solve the problem will welcome the opportunity. 

This strategy aligns with the principles from The Arbinger Institute, which distinguishes between an “inward mindset” and an “outward mindset.” An inward mindset sees others as obstacles or vehicles to achieve one’s own goals. An outward mindset, in contrast, sees others as people with their own legitimate goals, needs, and challenges. By pulling people into a shared conversation, you are actively fostering an outward mindset and building the cross-functional trust that healthy organizations depend on.

Model calm and be rooted in accountability

Complaints often spread because people are looking for permission to vent, to blame, or to disengage from finding a solution. As a leader, your emotional response sets the tone for the entire team. If you meet frustration with calm, curiosity, and a focus on solutions, you quietly establish a cultural norm: “We don’t do drama here. We do ownership.”

When you remain neutral and curious, you train your team to do the same. This doesn’t mean being robotic or unemotional. It means acknowledging the feeling without getting swept up in the story.

The next time an employee comes to you with a complaint, try this powerful phrase:
“I can tell this is really frustrating for you. Let’s talk about what we can control.”

This approach validates the person’s emotion (“I can tell this is frustrating”) and makes them feel heard and understood. In addition, it pivots the conversation toward productive action (“Let’s talk about what we can control”). It anchors the discussion in agency and responsibility, steering it away from the black hole of complaining about things outside of anyone’s influence.

Turn complaints into valuable data

Every complaint is a piece of feedback about your organization’s systems, processes, or culture. While it’s important to handle individual issues, the greatest value comes from listening for patterns. If you only react to each complaint as a one-off personality clash, you miss the opportunity to make systemic improvements.

Start treating complaints as data points. When you hear one, ask yourself:

• Is this a symptom of a communication gap between teams?
• Does this point to a broken or inefficient process?
• Is there a resource constraint (time, budget, staffing) at the root of this?
• Does this reflect a mindset habit (like blame or victimhood) that we need to shift as a team?

When you aggregate these data points, you can move from being a reactive manager to a more evolutionary leader. For example, if multiple people complain about last-minute requests from the same department, it’s not just an interpersonal issue. It’s likely a sign of a flawed project planning process. That’s a problem you can solve at a systemic level, potentially eliminating dozens of future complaints.

By reframing complaints as insight, you turn drama into a catalyst for organizational improvement. You start building systems and processes that are so effective they make future complaints unnecessary.

Leading beyond the drama

The most effective coach to see that real power lies not in controlling other people’s behavior, but in choosing their own response.

As Cy Wakeman powerfully states, “Suffering is optional.” The pain of a difficult situation may be real, but the drama we add on top of it is a choice.

When you lead from this mindset, every complaint becomes an invitation and an opportunity to build accountability, foster collaboration, and create a more resilient, reality-based, and effective workplace.

What about you? How do you handle complaints without fuelling drama?