>>Managing Workplace Anger: [How to NOT blow your top when things don't go your way at work...]

by Peter Morris

It’s normal to get angry at work. As a boss, I get angry. It’s a good thing to get angry; it’s constructive.

Inefficiency on the part of people that I work with and lead makes me angry. Sloth. Not meeting deadlines. Not being accountable. Double talk. Not responding to tough questions with facts.

But there are good and bad ways to manifest anger, productive and counterproductive actions. Anger in general is a mixed blessing. The determining factor of whether it’s an asset or a liability is not whether you get angry but how you utilize the anger or rule the anger as opposed to having the anger rule you. You must try to be psychologically aware, astute, a self-observer, so your anger can be channeled into positive energy, into making things better.

If you try to keep anger away then all you’re doing is sublimating it or pushing it down, and then training yourself not to feel your feelings. Then you start to somatize, or get physical symptoms; headaches, migraines, high blood pressure, a whole host of wonderful things if you’re not able to identify how you feel and recognize it for what it is. So the issue again is not whether you get angry or feel angry, in fact it’s good to feel angry and get angry, but you need to be in charge.

Ideally, if we can develop a more detached view of certain events that always occur and not let them get to us to the same degree, that’s healthy. But that’s different than ignoring it, denying it, or muzzling it or muffling it or refusing to feel it in the first place. I’m all in favor of being able to observe anger and be less connected to it and just say.

“Oh there it goes again, I feel red, I feel hot with anger but I understand it wasn’t personal towards me, it’s the nature of the beast, it’s the other person’s issue, and here’s how I’m going to deal with it.”

But we’re human beings, we can’t always control ourselves. Here’s what I do to try to maintain control.

My basic rule about workplace anger and being angry is that I feel it but I don’t irrationally act out on it. I find a way to channel it properly and productively. I try very hard to have a circuit breaker between my feelings of anger and my actions so that they do not appear to be irrational or driven totally by emotion. I’m not slamming doors, throwing things at the wall, hitting or shoving.

I try to recognize what happened and why I’m angry. A big part of anger reactions are things from the past that are personal and not necessarily related to that which just happened in the present. Activities or actions or things said or done by other people come from their ignorance and their pain; they’re not designed to hurt you. Once you filter and experience that understanding, the next issue is to redouble your efforts to be more productive.

For example in a workplace where I would get angry with somebody for not thinking properly, not meeting a deadline, not coming up with a good work product that he or she is capable of doing, not doing what I asked, what I would tend to do is sit down with the person, explain why I’m disappointed, mentor that person explaining the critical aspects of what was done and then explaining and cooperating with them to do better. I would set new more detailed guidelines and deadlines, and work with them to improve themselves while looking at my own performance to see where I could be more consistent in leading and inspiring them to do better.

One of the worst ways for employees to show anger in the workplace is to act in a passive aggressive manner – showing anger in subtle ways that are that are not productive. Sulking, for example. Missing deadlines. Generating poor quality work. Gossiping; spending too much time at the water cooler. Sick days. Coming in late. Leaving early. Pushing your work off. Not being crisp and focused or dedicated.

Workers can take specific actions to avoid such mistakes, mistakes that can cost them their jobs.

Remember everybody is a boss and everybody is a subordinate in life, it’s just a matter of degree and levels in the food chain. You may think that Bill Gates doesn’t have anybody to hold him accountable, but I can assure you that there are directors, there are bankers, there are attorneys general in different states, in different countries and governments watching him. There is his wife, his children. He’s accountable and he’s got bosses, too. Everybody has a boss and everybody generally has an underling, unless of course they’re pushing a shopping cart and homeless on the street, and then they have everybody on top of them and nobody underneath them. Or they feel completely free. But for most of us, the process is the same; it’s a give and take.

For workers, as with bosses, problems in the workplace that lead to anger need not lead to destructive confrontation. There should be a way to express your displeasure or at least get it off your chest.