Courageous Leaders Blog

I read this article about "angry man behaviour" with keen interest a few weeks ago and I sent out a few tweets about it too. I have referred to it and thought about it quite a lot since this time. So I wanted to share some of this thinking and reflection.

Firstly, I am still appalled that we can claim as it did in the article that "angry men are seen as more competent, more focused, more effective and even more worthy.....". This claim has appalled, frustrated and disappointed me - and mostly because I know it to be true. Debriefing many senior businessmen on their 360 degree feedback they own their aggressive "angry man" behaviour with pride and with the certainty that it achieves results. And yes it does achieve results in the short term - however they are not sustainable from either a personal or organisational level.

Personally this kind of behaviour brings stress and tension and it takes a toll on health. Organisationally this behaviour creates fear and stymies the release of people potential. People working for a leader who employs angry man behaviour do what they are told - independent thinking is stifled, collaboration is non existent and achievement potential from a revenue and profit perspective is below what it could be. It is a case of you don't know what you don't know - you don't know what could be achieved should the angry behaviour be outlawed!

Angry man behaviour is rewarded and forgiven because it produces results. I have engaged in many coaching conversations about this kind of behaviour. It is sad that too many Australian leaders continue to adopt this short term approach.

Courageous leaders recognise that angry man behaviour is not constructive. They recognise that it leads to passive responses robbing people of their self esteem or it is matched with more angry man behaviour. This kind of matching results in the person with access to the greatest positional power - be it their own or that of their boss - doing their utmost to get their way, breeding fear into anyone who attempts to stand in their way. Let's eliminate angry man behaviour - it really isn't an acceptable way to achieve results.

 

Illustration by Edd Aragon

I read this quote from Mark Twain

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."

and it got me thinking:

 

Having been on the receiving end of many angry bosses I thought I don't know if I agree with this quote - because it hurts loads when it is poured on you. However on deeper reflection I agree totally with the quote because those who store it become isolated, feared, removed, lonely and eventually lose their way back. They don't know any other way to turn up because the anger erodes any other emotional choices and it becomes easy to retain my reputation of being angry. Others get to know the triggers and may even push them in order to discount you in a meeting - irrational angry person!

Courageous Leaders don't allow anger to fester and dwell - in fact I would go as far to say they choose to come from a place of anger less and less - choosing to access a more constructive emotion.

 

 

Coaching a senior person recently we explored the importance of managing your anger. He wanted some tools to deal with it so I thought I would share the essence of our conversation with the intent it could support someone else in the same situation.

I believe in the power and depth of these 3 simple yet incredibly challenging mindset shifts to manage your anger:

1. Learn to recognize and label your emotions - in our busyness we too rarely take the time to reflect on how we are feeling and know that emotions impact dramatically on how we choose to engage in conversations, give feedback to someone, make decisions and various other behaviors needed to survive in the business world. So be conscious of when you are feeling angry - be present and in the moment with it.

2. Become conscious of what triggers these emotions - sometimes anger is triggered by us perceiving someone is being lazy, or someone's lack of initiative or lack of attention to detail. Start to understand these triggers and look to manage them constructively before emotion like anger is triggered in a disruptive way. So the most important thing is to start with YOU and how you can turn up differently to these situations. Be conscious of why you choose to feel anger and what triggers your choice

3. Should you feel anger then own it and excuse yourself from the situation until you can assert this anger constructively  - never take it out on someone else! Remember you have chosen to be angry........you could choose to access a different emotion - you could choose to see the situation differently......there are loads of choices available. In the short term you need a strategy to stop you from taking your anger out on someone - walk away after acknowledging your anger and that you want to resolve this situation/conversation tomorrow when you have had time to collect your thoughts more constructively.

Would love to hear from people who put these 3 steps into practice.

While meeting with a newly promoted existing leader we got talking about the changes he wants to make within his leadership team and within the Organisation as a whole. He explained how he has "set the marker" for no more anger within his team.

He passionately explained to me that there is no reason to exhibit such an emotion at work and absolutely no place for using it when asking people to get work done.

This got me thinking - and I acknowledge people will always experience anger at sometime or another - what this existing leader is asking people to do is not to take this emotion "out" on other people.

Having the emotion of anger is not a bad thing – indeed it can be constructive and, in some cases, be indicative of passion. It is how one chooses to use that emotion for their own development and how they choose to control their own reactions by not taking it out on others.

This is courageous and would certainly make for an empowering and constructive work environment. I am looking forward to seeing his progress as he holds people accountable to this expectation.