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EQ Leadership Vital Sign The Power of Anger

Written by: Joshua Freedman

Article Overview: Blamed for violence, outbursts, and all manner of relationship troubles, anger has a bad reputation. But what if anger is actually a good, helpful ally that’s just badly misunderstood?

EQ Leadership Vital Sign The Power of Anger

Blamed for violence, outbursts, and all manner of relationship troubles, anger has a bad reputation. But what if anger is actually a good, helpful ally that’s just badly misunderstood?

While anger is often expressed at work (more than any other emotion, according to Wharton professor Sigal Barsade), the “common wisdom” is that anger is bad. How do you handle your own anger as a leader and a person? Do you tell yourself (and others) you should not be angry? Do you throw your anger around? Do you express anger in a useful, constructive manner?

Left unexamined, anger will typically escalate, and often drives people toward aggression and attack. But understanding the real message of anger allows you to transform it to something useful.

Like all emotions, anger is a signal containing information and energy that you can learn to access. The basic “message” of anger is that there is something you really want to change, but your way is blocked. Maybe you want to change someone’s opinion but they are not listening. Maybe you want to change a policy, but someone is sidetracking your efforts. Maybe you want to change your own behavior, but you are stuck in a rut.

When you clearly understand what it is that you’re wanting to change, and begin to see a path forward, the anger transforms to energy and motivation. In other words, when we stay angry (or get more angry), it is primarily because of our own confusion!

We remain in the confused state if we either avoid or over-indulge the anger. Understanding and transformation come from self-acceptance and a commitment to action.
Avoiding: When we tell ourselves, “I shouldn’t be angry,” it’s very difficult to get the value from the feeling. Anger WILL come out – maybe it passive-aggressive ways – so better to deal with it in a clean, direct way.
Over-Indulging: It turns out that for most people, “venting” (expressing for the purpose of “letting it all out”) actually INCREASES anger (Bushman, Baumeister, and Stack, 1999). Some people like to “wallow” in feelings. Often it feels better to stay angry than to deal with the actual issues (which are often tied to unpleasant feelings such as guilt, shame, and fear).
Accepting: Give yourself time to “sit with” the feeling. Acknowledge that you probably have good reasons to be angry - this is a legitimate feeling. Your feeling will cause your attention to shift to particular issues – let yourself focus into the “heat of the fire” – discover the specific obstacles that are triggering the anger. Ask yourself what you’d like to change about that situation, and then what you can do (focus on your own actions and commitments, not on what you wish someone else would do).

From a leadership perspective, one of the biggest challenges is handling team members’ anger. If anger is a valuable source of information and motivation, employees’ anger could be a great asset. Seeing it that way is a key to accessing the value. Next time a team member is frustrated, remember that s/he is demonstrating a useful, passionate commitment – and your job is to help harness and direct it.

I hope you find some useful anger!

Warmly,
- Josh

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