Malcontents

Malcontents....

Every organization and every team has to put up with the Malcontents (at least, for a little while). 

Malcontents practice one or more of the following disruptive strategies:

• Complain - about everything or anything: schedules, workload, unfairness, millennials, pay,  customers, systems, the weather....
• Resist - anything that represents a change in the status quo (which they seem to hate so much).
• Evade - efforts at improvement or innovation.
• Disengage - when it's time to craft solutions or have consequential dialogue.

How can we deal with Malcontents?

• Ignore them when we can.
• Marginalize them if possible.
• Disinvite them to trouble-shooting or strategy-crafting meetings.
• Give them minimal time and platform.
• Help them find another place to be.

If the Malcontents are only happy when they make us unhappy, perhaps we should flip the script.