Tyrannical bosses. Incompetent colleagues. Pushy clients. The objects of our disaffection may vary, but griping about work is always in season -- even though it's usually a futile exercise. People spend such vast amounts of time complaining, in fact, that two Harvard researchers have come up with a name for it: "BMW mode" -- short for "bitching, moaning, and whining."

It doesn't have to be that way, says Robert Kegan, a professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, and Lisa Laskow Lahey, research director for the school's Change Leadership Group. The two have spent 15 years studying how people interact at more than 650 organizations, and they have found that complaints can actually be the seeds for corporate and individual transformation. Just turn the "language of complaint" into the "language of commitment," they say in their new book, How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation (Jossey-Bass, 2000). In an interview, Kegan and Lahey discussed how to stop the whining -- and start getting stuff done.

To understand complaints, deconstruct them.

Lahey: Behind every complaint is an idea or a belief or a value that a person is committed to. Otherwise, why be upset? A person who complains that his boss is a jerk might be committed to the idea of having a relationship with that boss that is based on respect and trust.

Kegan: And once people stop thinking of themselves as complainers -- which is not an ennobling way for anyone to feel -- and start thinking of themselves as people who are committed to something, that sets the stage for them to do something about their problem. That happens not by dismissing the complaint but by finding the commitment behind it.

To change the culture, take responsibility.

Lahey: Figure out what others around you -- and what you yourself -- are doing to thwart the goal you're committed to. Identify to what degree you have some control of the situation. That doesn't mean that other people aren't responsible. It's about recognizing that in almost every circumstance, we have some hand in why our commitment is not being realized. For example, somebody might realize that he's never told his boss, "I don't feel you're taking my perspective into account. I'm not happy with the way we work together."

To get respect, examine your commitments.

Kegan: Typically, there are good reasons why you're not telling your boss certain things, and they have to do with competing commitments or secret fears. You want your boss's respect, but at the same time, you're not entirely candid because you're afraid you'll be seen as a troublemaker. Once you identify those fears, you enter a whole new world of learning. It's a complex system that we call the "change immune system" -- a dynamic system that is continuously producing antibodies, or resistances, to change.

Lahey: We tend to have simpler explanations about why a change initiative didn't work, rather than why it did work. People weren't sufficiently motivated. They weren't genuinely committed. We didn't bring enough people on board. The picture is often much more complex than that. It's really about the collective effect of people's change immune systems.

To discover the truth, question assumptions.