But the opposite behaviour, bottling the anger, may be just as bad for a company and an individual as showing too much emotion. Having assisted hundreds of work colleagues in reaching mutually satisfying agreements on how they could work together, Crawford has observed how anger often arises from a long-term simmering problem that hasn’t been resolved and then flares up. In contrast to personal relationships, the conventions of work require emotions are kept under wraps because of how it will impact upon your position and the need to remain “professional”.
“In a personal relationship, you have permission to explore the relationship but often it’s not until there is a misstep in a working relationship that those boundaries are explored,” says Crawford, who has a Master of Organisational Psychology from the University of New South Wales.
The emotional fallout of anger at work is because “there is always something else driving it”, according to Town. “In organisations, people need to be very clear about what the roles are and those need to be reviewed periodically: Whose responsibility is it? What does the organisation want them to do? Often assumptions are made and things don’t get done. Lack of communication is often the trigger for anger.” But Town agrees that if it is managed properly, anger expression can improve relationships because it allows people to discuss their feelings.
It comes down to engagement and people’s connection to their employer and clarity about why they come to work and what they are doing there, believes Crawford. “If people have shared goals and feel the organisation understands them and is supportive, they feel more able and willing to give their best effort. If there is discontent and it’s not managed well, however, anger can blow productivity, team engagement and harmony out of the water.”
Engaging sympathy
Responses to anger in the workplace do not only depend on how it is expressed. The causes of the anger also affect how a person’s behaviour is interpreted by those witnessing it or on the receiving end, suggests Cheng. If the general perception is that someone is angry because of a situation originating from outside of themselves, they are more likely to receive sympathy and co-operation than if it is judged they are angry because that’s simply their disposition.
To test this hypothesis about the causes of anger and the level of anger expression, Cheng conducted some preliminary research using 78 university students in the Philippines whose average age was 18. He assigned them to role-play as directors listening to a project manager [played by an actor, on video] who has a series of complaints and lacks funds for his project. The actor expresses his dissatisfaction either neutrally, with moderate or tempered anger or intense anger. Cheng gauged the students’ response and how it influenced their decision to recommend the man for promotion and to allocate funds for his project.
Cheng found the students were likely to feel more positive towards the manager if the anger expression was reasonable or tempered and was seen as being caused by external circumstances. That being the case, they were more likely to recommend him for promotion and award him more funding. The most negative reactions among the students were when they were confronted with high levels of anger which, although it didn’t have a significant impact upon their decisions to fund or promote, gave rise to strong feelings of injustice and mistreatment compared to tempered anger or neutral behaviour.
More research is required to examine how anger expression affects business functioning, Cheng says, but high levels of anger appear to have a corrosive effect on working relationships that are easier to harm than they are to heal. “Anger can be a catalytic agent, but it has to be managed so it doesn’t impact upon people’s self worth and engagement,” says Crawford, who differentiates between a healthy level of conflict around ideas and unhealthy conflict between people. “Diversity in a group is better than a homogenous group where everyone agrees with one another,” she notes.
Management styles that embrace consultation and openness are pushing out the old-fashioned, command-and-control style where anger is more likely to fester, observes Town. He puts this down to the growing influence of a younger workforce. “Gen Y are just not going to put up with that stuff; they want to work much more collaboratively and they will choose companies depending on whether they have a wellbeing scheme and good management support.”
Google Analytics reveals Australia’s most populous city, Sydney, is the biggest searcher of “anger management” online, points out Town. Most of his clients are aged 25 to 55 and are referred through general practitioners and public health insurer Medicare’s Better Access to Mental Health Care program. Town is also contacted by employment assistance providers and counts Victoria Police among his former clients.
Working across all sectors, Crawford says she has seen how anger and an inability to negotiate emotional conflict in the workplace impacts upon productivity. While Australian business has become really good at managing the physical problems, Crawford says the next frontier to be conquered, is the psychological frontier.
“I believe that if people can be happy and healthy at work then they can be more productive and make a bigger contribution.” With competition for high-calibre staff increasing, anger management research and other welfare at work investigations are set to focus the minds of human resources practitioners on the issue.
