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Expressing anger in the workplace

Saturday, Jun 07, 2008, Page 9

ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

Mark Rolle, head of Human Resources at Lester Alldridge LLP, coaches employees to deal with anger in the workplace, and says that the best way to avoid getting cross is ... to stay calm.

“Take a deep breath and think about the issue from the other person’s point of view,” he said. “Work out why there’s a difference of opinion. The process of rationalizing takes the heat out of the thing and allows you to approach it in a more structured way.”

Of course, by the time you have done all that empathizing, rationalizing and structuring you’re unlikely to be angry anyway. So is Rolle really saying that it’s never OK to be angry?

“Once you get to the point of being cross, you are on the verge of losing it,” he said. “You have to observe the line between assertive and angry if you want to get your point across.”

I’ll take that as a no, then.

Admittedly, having an attack of the screaming ab-dabs in the middle of the working day, as the entire office looks on, is not, I concede, ideal. Neither is turning purple, crying and slamming all the doors on your way out. But Sandi Mann, senior lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire and author of Anger Management in a Week reckons that we could do with getting angry a bit more often.

“It is OK to get cross at work. If your colleague has repeatedly failed to pass on a message, or is continually late with reports — the sorts of things that are more than just irritations — then getting angry can be a useful communication tool. If you don’t express your anger they won’t know,” she said. “What’s not OK is losing your temper — in countries like here in the UK we don’t like extreme displays of emotion, so you have to keep your anger controlled and appropriate.”

Controlled and appropriate anger? An impossibility surely? Apparently not. Astonishingly, there are people — anecdotally at least — who have managed to pull it off. Donna Miller, a director at Enterprise Rent-a-Car, recalls a boss who turned the art of getting angry into, well, art.

“My boss never closed her office door, so if she invited you in and closed the door, you knew you were in for it. When it happened to me, she got really angry and I felt terrible,” Miller said. “But once she was done, she asked if I wanted to go out for a drink after work — she knew that people make mistakes and that once you’ve said it’s unacceptable and what they need to do to put it right, you move on.”

So how can you get cross well?

“Phone and e-mail are not the best way to do it, because there is room for miscommunication,” Miller said. “I don’t think it’s ever appropriate to use foul language, to do it in front of other employees or to humiliate or bully anyone in the process.”

It’s also tricky for women to show anger, as Mann explained.

“I don’t think women’s anger is taken as seriously unless it’s extreme — so if you just say you are really angry, your colleagues might just say ‘OK,’ but if you burst into tears they’ll believe you,” she said. “But at the same time, where a man showing anger is seen as assertive, women tend to be seen as hysterical and weak.”

That does not mean women should not get angry, however — just that they need to be smart about it.

“Lower your voice. People tend to raise their voices in volume and pitch when they’re angry and that can come across as squeaky and girly,” Mann said. “And make sure you explain what the consequences are — don’t just say someone’s an idiot, spell out the impact.”

Sarah Lafferty, European managing director at the Hoffman Agency, has another approach.

“A boss in one of my old companies was really aggressive, it was his ‘management style’ — but you’d never see a woman getting away with that,” she said. “So I think a good policy is to be fairly assertive so you’re always perceived to be in control.”

But what if you simply lose the plot? Like taking to the IT team with a butter knife because they “don’t know” when they can fix your crashing computer. Or scrawling the lyrics to the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK all over the stationery cupboard door because, yet again, your colleagues have lost the key. Is it possible to recover from a proper temper tantrum at work?

“If you are part of a pretty tight team, whom you’ve known for a while and who know you — in other words, a safe environment — then if you do blow your top, you’ll probably get away with it,” Mark Rolle said. “But if you do it in the boardroom, or in front of the wider organization, it might make you look weak or irrational.”

So next time you’re about to lose your rag, consider this — shouting at the person who sits next to you, in a moderate and low voice, especially if you are a man, is fine. Screeching at the whole floor, no matter how justified, just makes you look like you are in line for the sack.
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