A client faced that situation recently and here is the solution we developed. We created an email called “Living with each other” and essentially used what happened to me along with several other generic examples and described why people should cut each other some slack by reminding them that they never knew what difficulties people were facing or even, as Wally points out in his comment, what had just happened five minutes before.

He told them to think about the last time they had faced significant problems and still had to come to work and carry on. He focused on how much easier it would have been to do if instead of grumbling their colleagues had lightened up and been supportive. He finished by saying that everyone had days like that during their careers and it was the support they received that set their organization apart from other workplaces.

I’m happy to say that it worked on about 97% of the organization and that peer pressure worked on the other 3%.