Five Steps to Curb Workplace Anger

Gregory Kyles, at the Anger Management Institute of Texas wrote an article about workplace anger recently. he distilled a list of five steps to curb workplace anger:

Steps to curb Workplace Anger: Managers should be cognizant of the first signs of aggression. Absenteeism, late-coming, tardiness and deterioration in performance are some warning signals.
• Organizations should invest in Anger Management Programs at regular intervals to enable employees to express feelings and release pent-up emotions.
• One-to-one sessions with employees should take place regularly even when no problems are apparent. This helps prevent any lurking anger issues that may blow up later.
• Active listening and conversations in informal settings should be encouraged to make people feel at ease and open up.
• Proper systems for complaints and grievances must be established. Every complaint must be dealt with within a specified time frame.
• If an employee has to be terminated, it has to be done as civilly as possible. They should not be made to feel small and humiliated.

Let's consider these steps:

1. Invest in Anger Management: The skills of anger management, emotional intelligence, assertive communication, and stress management will help any employee to work more productively. Adding anger awareness for employees whose attitude or behavior is getting out of line is also useful. Large corporations may want to train their human resources or employee assistance professionals to provide these trainings in regular workplace classes or workshops.



2. One-on-one Sessions: Ideally, supervisors and management would have developed emotional intelligence and communications skills to be a helping person for their direct reports. Unfortunately, however, management is often a serious contributor to morale and anger problems. Bringing in an outside professional to assess work units, teams, and project groups can go a long way towards helping companies avoid not just violent outbursts of rage, but also passive-aggressive slow-downs by aggrieved employees.


3. Active Listening: According to a Kaiser Permanente internal document, employees are most motivated by a) being appreciated, b) feeling like they're active participants in the process, and c) management sympathy for their problems. These three highest priorities of employees can be met readily by a manager trained in emotional intelligence using active listening. Such an approach will draw management and labor closer together.


4. Feedback: All too often, American corporations ignore employee feedback. W. Edwards Deming identified employee feedback about work process and work conditions as essential to a corporations success. Companies need to ensure that management culture can effectively receive feedback from employees and help them feel safe in providing that feedback.


5. Treat Employees with Civility and Dignity: It doesn't take a graduate degree in organizational psychology to realize that workers who are treated with contempt and hostility, will be resentful workers. Anger management training within corporations will not work until any corporate culture of management's hostility towards workers has been transformed.

How can a corporation's culture be transformed? One person at a time. Implicit in assertive communication is respect for the other individual. Teaching collaborative and cooperative methods of work, implementing consensus processes, and encouraging employee leadership and expertise can go a long way towards creating a workplace liberated from anger.

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Anger Words: Wroth

wroth. Pronunciation: ˈrȯth also ˈrōth. Function: adjective

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English "wrāth"; akin to Old High German "reid" twisted, Old English "wrīthan" to writhe. Date: before 12th century

Meaning: intensely angry : highly incensed : wrathful

Anger management skills can help prevent twisting one's life up with anger, can help prevent the writhing with suffering that anger leads to. Wroth. Wrath. Rage. It's good to develop a correct understanding of what something is.

Too often, anger masquerades as a powerful way of controlling the world. We imagine it our tool to keep us safe, to impose our will on the world. In reality, it keeps people from wanting to cooperate with us. We engender angry responses and even hatred when we use anger as our main tool. Instead of safety, we create suffering.

Learning to understand anger, learning to communicate assertively, learning to practice emotional intelligence, and learning the skills of stress management — these will enable us to live life more effectively. Certainly they will help us avoid writhing with twisted wrath.

[Next article Anger Words: Ire]

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wroth. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.
Retrieved August 2, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wroth

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Road Rage & Bumper Stickers

A study by Colorado State University social psychologist William Szlemko found drivers of cars with bumper stickers, window decals, personalized license plates and other "territorial markers" are more likely to be aggressive drivers.

It's a pity. Granted, one needn't be a genius to put a sticker on your bumper (as those still driving around with Bush 04 stickers prove), but personalizing a car, especially with a clever plate, seems more interesting.

This study supports the notion that IQ isn't enough. No matter how smart a person in this society is, no matter how creative, chances are that they've never learned the skills to handle anger well. And this translates to rage and tragedy.

I recently spoke with a person whose spouse had pursued another vehicle, resulting in a crash that killed their teenage daughter. Both parents are thoughtful people with plenty of psychological growth experiences. But neither had learned the skills of assertive communication or adequately developed their emotional intelligence.

Anger Management; consisting of understanding anger, learning to manage stress (and today's traffic can be a stressor), developing emotional intelligence, and learning assertive communications; can free up the creativity and genius that goes wasted when good people road rage.

Stress

Dr. Hans Selye, the father of stress theory, defined stress as "the nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it." The "demand" can be a threat, a challenge or any kind of change which requires the body to adapt. The response is automatic, immediate. Stress can be good (called "eustress") when it helps us perform better, or it can be bad ("distress") when it causes upset or makes us sick.

— Gregory Kyles, Anger Management Institute of Texas

Stress.

A stepping stone to anger.

It hits when demands stretch capacity. It becomes toxic when chronic or too intense.

The stress response activates the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), revving the body and mind up to handle a potentially dangerous situation. Fight, Flight (or Freeze).

Fortunately, we each have a parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) — one that acts to calm the body and to quiet the mind. One that engenders a relaxation response.

Unfortunately, research has shown that people who get angry a lot have a PNS that lets them down. It tries to bring comfort and peace, but then becomes ineffective.

So, if you experience a lot of anger, rage, resentment, or aggressive impulses, the old adage "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" needs to become your watchword.

Stress management:

1. Manage your life: Taking a little extra time to watch your schedule, to notice demands that may arise, and to plan for contingencies can drastically reduce the number of times your SNS pushes the stress alarm. Skills such as time management, organizing, effective and clear communications, and emotional intelligence are keys to this level of care.


2. Manage your stressors: Sometimes stressors intrude even into the well-managed life. These are to be expected. They will come. Managing your life simply reduces the number and severity of likely stressors. Having an action plan to manage stressors allows one to be more comfortable while dealing with stress.


3. Mangage your stress: Finally, take steps to manage your stress. Get a healthy amount of exercise each day. Schedule time for appreciating your immediate experience and to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Ask for and accept help. Practice breath-based or progressive relaxation exercises. Practice yoga daily. Coach yourself with self-talk "I am learning to manage my stress today."

This only scratches the surface ... but it's a running start!

Road Rage Kills

Police said Bender and Luciano were exchanging obscene gestures with the driver of a green Chevrolet pickup truck for some distance as they headed south in commuter traffic.

The truck swerved into the left lane in front of Luciano’s 1998 Chrysler Sebring, causing him to lose control, cross the right lane and hit the guardrail, said Maryland State Police spokesman 1st Sergeant Russ Newell.

Luciano was the 1998 state wrestling champion in the 171-pound weight class for Northampton High School in eastern Pennsylvania. Neither victim was wearing a seat belt and both were ejected and pronounced dead at the scene

Often times crowded freeways and poor planning lead to impatience and frustration with traffic. Sometimes, misplaced competition leads drivers to antagonized each other. In this case, rude gestures led to a fatal crash and a manhunt for the driver of the green pickup.

Anger management skills could have helped save Luciano and Bender. Enhanced emotional intelligence would have helped them to be aware of their rising anger and the social intelligence would have reminded them not to antagonize others. Stress management techniques would have helped them to "shake it off." They could even have taken a tip from the movie Anger Management and said "Goosefraba" to each other. That would have gotten them both laughing instead of leaving them dead.

Equally, the driver of the green pickup could have "just said no" and ignored the decedents. By escalating a hostile exchange and swerving in front of the other vehicle he contributed to two unnecessary deaths.