Anger Management at Work

Call in the bomb squad

The emotion of anger has gotten a bad rap it does not deserve. We could not survive without anger. It is the power emotion, a signal that our interests are not being addressed and we want that situation to change. Anger provides us with energy and intensity for the effort to make the environment more suitable to our needs. Without it, we would be eternal victims of circumstance.

Anger has a bad reputation because it is often equated with rage and violence, though it is different. Rage occurs when anger is transformed into hate and all positive connection with the object of the anger has been lost. Violence is the destructive enactment of that rage and hate. Most people are rightly threatened by the expression of more than mild anger, as it can cascade into rage and violence.

In civilized settings like the family and the workplace, people tend to react to an angry person with a combination of appeasement and avoidance. While the direct expression of anger will often result in short-term submission by others, it is generally a self-defeating strategy for satisfying one’s wants and desires over the long term. People will usually find a way to even the score, often through indirect means (passive-aggression, encirclement, ostracism/banishment).

If you have a too-angry employee who is disrupting your workplace, and you want to institute a successful anger control program, the following elements are key:

When all of these components of a successful intervention are built into the plan, the probability of success can rise above 50/50. Without such an intervention, the odds of things staying the same are nearly perfect.

Thanks for reading. Please share your thoughts in a comment.

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