I’m not a native English speaker, can someone point me to a definition of “commiserate” that matches the usage in this article? It seems to have a different meaning according to the dictionaries.
Think of it like this: when two soldiers in boot camp are complaining to each other about their drill instructor, the difficulty of the situation, why the food sucks, etc. - they are commiserating. It is a bonding over being in the same shared crappy situation, and having sympathy for that person because of it.
The author is essentially saying this: a manager shouldn’t join in complaining about the job/company/personal problems etc. with his/her subordinates, because it sets up false emotional relationship expectations.
It's a verb used to describe multiple people lamenting the same bad circumstance, with the idea that it's made slightly less bad by the experience of having to go through it together rather than alone. The phrase "misery loves company" is somewhat common in English, and while it's more often used to describe situations where one person feels bad and acts out to make others feel bad as a coping mechanism, the roots of the word are pretty recognizable in it; "co-misery", as in "we're miserable in this together".
I'm a native English speaker, and I also have no idea what the author is talking about. I don't think that word means what he thinks it means. I think he is using "commiserate" to mean "complain".
Commiserating together means validating each other's negative feelings about something.
You may commiserate with a team member when you both get made redundant, as a healthy example.
When a team of several engineers are all thrown under a bus by a PM, they may commiserate with each other about the workload they find themselves with, as a slightly less healthy (but common) example.
But when you, as a manager, commiserate with the team about the PM throwing you under the bus, you are doing your team and the organisation a disservice, in that you're creating an unhealthy us/them dynamic when doing so, and the other things the article suggests.
It didn't make sense to me either. When normally I read "commiserate", I think someone is expressing empathy to someone else on their bad fortune. I assumed the employee was sorry something bad happened to their boss.
But I think you're right, he's saying employees are complaining and the boss is providing sympathy.
Yeah, I think it makes more sense when you consider that the former (boss complaining to direct) is something that should seem obviously bad to even non-managers, but handling the reverse situation correctly is also critical. It's confusing because the title is written as if I am the direct report, while the article is written as if I am the manager.
One teardown and rebuild of the words that make up the roots of "commiseration" might be "to share in wretchedness" or in another way "to be co-miserable".
it always used to mean some kind of shared negativity though like many words the nuance and original meaning has somewhat drifted.
I think the article is a bit weird. To commiserate means to empathize with another's suffering, such as the getting dumped by your girlfriend example in the article.
But the article launches (literally the first sentence) into "As people become managers, it’s quite common for their team members to want to commiserate with them." as though it is just obvious that all managers have some sadness that their team members need to help them through, which is obviously nonsense.
I can only assume the author omitted context. ex: seems to be primarily expressing sympathy with complaining/venting, particularly when it is about another department or higher level within the company. It is commiseration, but without that additional context it is difficult to understand why it is viewed negatively in the post.
I think of the word as a mixture of complaining and sympathizing.
I would consider it commiseration if one were to complain to their coworkers about an HR policy in the hopes of receiving sympathy or agreement about the problems with the policy.
The author is essentially saying this: a manager shouldn’t join in complaining about the job/company/personal problems etc. with his/her subordinates, because it sets up false emotional relationship expectations.