There are moments when you will feel anger at work. I know this because I know you are mostly human, and that’s how humans react to certain situations, particularly when things get personal. Common moments at work that are likely to make you angry include:
- Someone you respect says something disrespectful about you
- Someone you respect says something disrespectful to you
- Someone you don’t respect says something disrespectful about you
- Someone you don’t respect says something disrespectful to you
Probably in that order of severity. What is “disrespectful” changes wildly from person to person and context to context, but these often include:
- False accusations (and it is even more anger-inducing if the other person knows it is false, but still anger-inducing if he is just misguided)
- Assigning you bad intentions (and it is even more anger-inducing when your intentions weren’t bad to start with, and of course, they never are)
- Observing negative traits about your personality (this hurts whether true or false, and it hurts even more when you don’t see yourself as having those traits)
And others along these lines. As you can see from the above words and my “I’m trying to be really cold and objective when I write this,” this has happened to me many times!
There’s an ideal world in which you stoically realize that what some idiot thinks for 5 minutes truly doesn’t matter in your life and you forget it the way the universe will forget this. You focus on what is meaningful to you, like your deep relationships, family, your life missions and goals, and you move on. But of course, doing that requires decades of internal struggle to reach that point of stoicism. As a half-stoic myself (but I won’t tell you which half), I strongly encourage you to follow that stoic path. It’s only a good thing. But that’s the subject of another book and one that has been written many times since ancient times, even before Marcus Aurelius.
Instead, I’m going to make a different suggestion to you in these situations, and this is part of how I deal with it. Let your anger out or otherwise deal with your anger outside of work, as well as anyone or anything work-related. Additionally, plan very carefully how you respond in your work role. In other words, whenever you feel anger, think strategically first.
Should you respond to them by showing your anger? Or by keeping your anger close to your chest? Or letting your anger go? Or maybe you want to let your anger go so you get over it, but you want to act angry, so they think you’re angry? Or maybe something else?
The option you choose depends on what goal you want to achieve with them, and which one you think would best help you achieve that.
As an example, maybe you want to have a reputation as the calm guy who never, never gets angry. Then, in the one per million cases where you do show anger, everyone will take it very seriously. You’ll be the boy who never cried wolf.
Maybe you want the opposite. There are some people for whom the only way to understand other points of view is by seeing anger: if they don’t see you angry, they won’t take your issues seriously. That requires a different strategy. (And it would make me question if I even want to work there but it’s your life, not mine!)
Years ago, I read a biography of Bill Gates. One anecdote stood out in my mind. In the early days of Microsoft, they were in a tiny office. Some big-wig from another company came in to negotiate in a company-changing deal. Gates was with them in the conference room. During the meeting, he could be heard screaming and screaming. It was still a tiny office back then, so everyone outside the meeting heard. He left the meeting at one point to go to the water cooler. One of the other employees went up to him to ask him if everything is okay in there. To which he smiled in response and said, paraphrase from a memory long ago, “it’s going great, according to plan.”
Bill Gates, in other words, took anger to the next level: even when he wasn’t angry, he pretended to be very angry because it helped him win a negotiation. Now that is a true master at work, and why Bill Gates is Bill Gates.
