What makes us disgruntled? Can we stop the grunting and getgruntled?

[pamela]

July 7th, London. Bleak rainy day. What's in my head today

We all have days where we simply and inexplicably can’t help but grunt. Grunt about our bosses, our colleagues, or for those in management, grunt about the people who work for us as well. We grunt about policies, politics or processes. We grunt about how hard we work or how long we work. We grunt about the wrongs at work. We grunt about promotions and pay increases. We grunt about corporate speak, delayed decisions or poorly communicated bad decisions. We grunt about lies and deceit, stolen ideas and stolen credit where credit was due to another, probably ourselves. We grunt over coffee, over lunch, in meetings or in general conversations. Let’s face it, sometimes, we just like to grunt.

I’ve seen some chronic grunters. In fact, it's became fun to look for them. Finding people grunting, grunt factors and things to grunt about was as common place as finding the next solution to the next big problem. If there was a Grunters Anonymous I would have attended to really get to the root of all this grunting. I would probably be called the Queen of Grunting - i can spot grunting from miles. Your colleagues and maybe even you, are probably no different than many of the grunters out there, they spend time highlighting the weaknesses of management, gossiping about the musical chairs of corporate appointments or the longevity of the not so great, and wonder what photos they had on whom doing what, that kept them in their jobs. And there is nothing wronf with finding these things out - because these are the causes of the issues that are at epidemic proportions the globe over - a level of grunting that is so pervasive, we have levels of disgruntlement at all time highs.

And because of this obesity in the grunting ranks, many companies have been trying to solve the problem of disgruntlement for years! They call it many things - engagement, motivation - but i like disgruntled. You can play with the words so much better - grunters, grunting, getting gruntled. None of this is to say that the grunting is undeserved. Grunting generally stems from truth. It finds its roots in everyday occurrences that provide the fodder and food that feeds the grunting system. Each day, new grunters are pronounced, infected by the old grunters or grunt factors that sweep through our daily working lives.

And so, the more we grunt, the greater the grunting, the more grunt factors and the more dis-gruntled we become, a perpetual cycle of cynicism and cynics. Our work life punctuated with pot shots and secret picket lines. Our lives ruled by our judgement of others actions and the grunt factors they create.

Some grunting is just whining in disguise. Some is legitimate complaining and the need to vent to help get through our disgruntled days. And some grunting is equally legitimate caused out of real frustration and the desire to make things better.

So what’s important is that we recognise where grunting comes from. We also need to look at its impact – a mass movement of disgruntled people across the globe. Is it us, our colleagues, our bosses or our businesses that are causing this level of disgruntlement? I think all levels and parts of a business have a hand in the level of disgruntlement in our work lives but i also think WE play a big factor - The Secret to getting gruntled is us!

Let's stop the madness, the negativity, the constant complaining and look for ways to GetGruntled!

I took my first official job when I was 14 years and 9 months old (legal age in Oz) in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Since then I’ve lived and worked all over the world. And now all these years later, there is one consistent thing I’ve seen repeatedly, the world can be pretty full of grunting. In fact, my grunt radar can work pretty well! I can see grunters coming through the doors of their offices, plants or stores each day. Into the mines, the factories, the shops, the agencies that I’ve worked with, or where ever we invest the better part of our adult lives at work. I can see them checking me in at airports, serving me my dinner in restaurants or selling me my stamps in the post office. In fact, short of tattoos on ones head, those who are not gruntled are usually easy to spot, we take solitude in numbers, we can always spot a fellow grunter.

Since I joined my first frequent flyer club in 1987 and wracked up several million miles in air travel, I feel like I’ve learned a great deal about people at work. I’ve seen Grunters the world over and now it feels like it’s at epidemic proportions. On a very average week I could have travelled to Frankfurt, London, Toronto, Charlottesville, and back to London, Dortmund, and Aberdeen. It wasn’t unheard of for me to start on Sunday night in a goldmine 4000 meters into the Andes, followed by a bank in Britain or the United States by Wednesday and then finish my Friday a few hundred kilometres outside of Harare (before Mugabe went nuts of course!). From this level of travel and experiences, it was clear the size of the problem and its global nature - the epidemic was not limited to the place I called home in the world. I could see everyone was having disgruntled experiences across the planet, and that everyone has their own set of grunt factors.

In fact, I’ve seen a lot of grunting; people suffering through a day, a week, a month, a year or a career at work. Many people, no matter what piece of the planet they live upon, are looking for the same needle, and everyone has a very similar haystack. The needle is the key to getting gruntled and the haystack is work.

Are you gruntled, disgruntled or just a plain grunter? What are the things in your work life that make you really shake your head and say ‘What the.....’. We call these grunt factors....think about what yours are, or better still, ask your best friend at work - I bet they could tell you, because we all give off the fumes of our disgruntlement.

Before we talk about getting gruntled, let me talk a little more about why I think it’s at such epidemic proportions. I won’t quote all the research and the reading that I’ve done over the past twenty years, I’ll take it for granted that you can draw your own conclusions just by looking at yourself and the people you know. But I’ll take you through my conclusions. You can probably run your own quick research exercise to determine how gruntled you and your friends and family really are at work, right? So let me summarise my findings.

Firstly, I think the view from just about any point on the globe is bleak. For every ten people around you at work, my reading says that on average only two and half of them are actively ‘there’ – gruntled – at work. That means that the other 7.5 people (not sure how you split someone in half but those are the stats), are not gruntled. Some are completely disgruntled – that’s about 2.5 people out of every 10 - and then the 5 in between are grunters, neither gruntled nor completely disgruntled, these people just plod along to get through their days (is that you? It was me!).

Secondly. What if…. where you work is actually just average? If you work with 100 other people 75 of them just aren’t ‘there’, 1000? - 750 just aren’t there. 10,000? - 7500 just aren’t there. You can do the numbers. Get the picture? Well it gets a lot worse. This is about all of us. We’re talking every level and place in business, you, me, supervisors, managers, middle management and holy-corner-office-and-a-private-washroom - we’re talking the executive ranks as well!

That ‘what if’ really did just get a whole lot worse! What if management is struggling to fight the grunting? What if, your peers, your bosses, the people who chart the future course of your company and are paid to lead, are grunters and equally busy grunting? Who’s minding the store?
But this shouldn’t be news to anyone.

The fact is there are a whole lot of disgruntled people out there, and there are a whole lot more not gruntled than gruntled, and its costing all of us in time, effort, emotion and money.

I believe addressing disgruntlement (and its associated items - I call them grunt factors and babel) is probably the most important issue to target in the world of work today. It is the root cause of so many other issues. It’s costing you and me in emotion and having to deal with crappy things, its costing business, economies, and people billions in hard currency and reputation.

So I believe we (you and I) have to overcome these issues and get gruntled, and not wait for others to do it for us, not only for our own sanity and health but also for the good of each other, our workplace, and our businesses. If we could fix this issue, life would be so much better to spend at work.

This is not just a management issue. ‘Tu la monde’ in French literally means ‘all the world’, but it actually means ‘everybody’. Getting gruntled is everybody’s issue, all the worlds. But I think, it starts with U! or in my case, me!