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.
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.