How Do You Deal With Your Anger?
Every manager at some time in their career experiences anger when interacting with people. An employee challenges you, low performance levels or an incorrect decision made by an employee can stir up strong emotions. There are many opportunities to react to employees with anger, yet does this reaction, if expressed, help the employee or you?
How would you evaluate your frustration or anger levels? For some managers, anger is a chronic behavioral issue that influences their productivity and effectiveness of the team. In this case, it’s really more about the manager’s unhappiness in their role.
Others bump into their anger on occasion and do express it. We are all human. So how do we use our anger to gain the most from this powerful energy?
Emotions affect everyone…good or bad. People react differently to the same emotion. Some employees get motivated if their manager is upset with them, others crawl into a hole like a wounded animal licking their wounds. We also react to anger expressed from our manager or a peer.
I make a basic assumption when I’m working with people…reacting with anger isn’t good for them or me. However, I do have a right to feel anger or frustration. What I do with the emotion can enhance or deplete the effectiveness of my team.
When managing employees, anger provides information to us. If you are angry at the performance or behavior of an employee, how can you best relay that message to them? Remember anger is a result of something that happened. The situation is in the past, so there is nothing you can do to change the action of the employee. What you can do is:
- Stop before you react to the employee. Use this energy wisely…to your advantage.
- Analyze what issue is upsetting you. Be aware of your own feelings and the reason behind them.
- What about the employee – is this new behavior/performance or a chronic issue? Use this information in your decisions.
- Create a discussion plan with the employee.
- Set up time to meet soon after the incident.
- Follow up to insure that the behavior or performance is corrected.
You are being watched closely by your team…it’s part of the job. They will use that information to create beliefs around how you will treat them, should they trust you and whether they enjoy their job. Studies have proven that retention and productivity of a company’s talent is directly impacted by the supervisor or manager’s style.
It’s a big and challenging job to be a manager. We are not perfect and will never be, though we can motivate ourselves to be a stronger manager. The advantage we can give ourselves is to step back and think about what is the best way to handle a situation. When we do this, we elevate our self-confidence as we have wisely used a powerful emotion to the best of our ability.
We always have time to evaluate the past and decide to do something different the next time.
Pat
21 Ways to Hire and Keep The Best People by Brian Tracy
Effective Manager Series by Brian Tracy
