Dear Readers,
Thank you for coming here!
Hope you all had a great break!
I would like to start the new year with one more entry in the "Good Employee" series. Hope we all achieve good career progression in 2021~!
This is the episode 3 of the “Good Employee” series.
Again, this post will focus on only one point.
How to properly express anger as a professional employee.
In Asian culture, anger is perceived mostly as negative and impolite. Growing up, we were taught to control our anger or at least hide our anger.
However, anger is a type of emotion, just like happiness or sorrow. And emotion needs letting out sooner or later, one way or another.
As an emotionally healthy human being, we need to allow anger to be expressed, just like any other emotion.
However, it is hard, partly because expressing anger involves conflicts and confrontation which is again something we are taught to avoid in Asian culture.
I have suffered in my career, on both my feelings and career progression, because I did not know how to express anger properly.
Luckily, over the years, I have reflected and learned.
And now I have some thoughts and techniques that allow me to handle anger in workplaces properly, at least in a way that neither bothers me nor hurts my career progression.
I would like to share them with you in this post.
Why is it necessary to express anger?
So why do we have to express our anger? Cannot we just suppress it inside ourselves and avoid the uncomfortable confrontation?
That was my approach in the beginning of my career.
And from my experience, it does a lot of harm and almost no good.
1.It harms the mental and physical health of you and people around you
As mentioned above, anger is emotion and needs letting out sooner or later, one way or another.
Suppressing your anger as a habit will either make yourself feel really bad or push you to bring the negative emotions to people around you, especially your families.
And this could happen without you realizing it.
Till today, I can still very vividly remember the experiences during my first job as a supply chain specialist.
Business was booming and the team was under tremendous pressure to deliver equipment. And manufacturing department always made unreasonable requests to demand components ordered the day before to arrive today, and without exception blamed supply chain department for the delay of progress.
As the supply chain representative, I got the “fire” every day in the morning stand-up meetings.
I was new and I was the only non-manufacturing employee in the room full of people, including management of manufacturing department. So I sucked up and only updated the current status and expected delivery date.
However, I often felt angry afterwards, to a point that the anger became the “background” of my life.
I would wake up during the weekend, automatically recalling the experience and feeling angry and depressed.
Or it could come to me any time during the day and ruin my mood, during movies, meals, friend-talks etc etc.
It got so bad that I started to read religious articles to make myself feel better.
My wife, my girlfriend then, told me once “You have not been happy for a long time”.
Thinking back, I may have taken some of the comments too personally, but still not expressing anger could hurt you really bad.
Of course, there is a far worse form of this effect: you suppress your anger at work and unleash it upon your families after work because you think they are weak in front of you.
Anyone who does that is just a coward and loser.
2.It harms your relationship with your colleagues
Not expressing anger when we feel it could make people think that we do not have any bottom line and they can bully us.
Not expressing anger sometimes could also mean refusing communications.
Either way, it harms the relationship with our colleagues.
Surprisingly, expressing anger properly will give us the opportunity to recalibrate and rebuild our relationship through meaningful communications with clear boundaries.
In my example above, my relationship with my colleagues from manufacturing department became very hostile.
They actually believed that they were under so much pressure and criticism because I did not bring them the components. How could they not “hate” me?
I believed that they unreasonably brought so much pain and negative impact to my life when I did my best to bring them the components. How could I not “hate” them?
Until I decide to change.
I started to push back in the meetings, sometimes raising my voice, telling them “Do not expect me to do magic”.
And surprisingly, things started to improve and people started to talk more sense. We started to understand each other’s frustrations.
We slowly “hate” each other less until we could finally sit down and discuss how to find solutions to the problems we face.
And that provided the necessary condition for cooperation.
3.Last but not least, it harms your career progression
First, not expressing anger harms the overall performance.
In my example above, there was no real cooperation or collective problem-solving between manufacturing and supply chain until we could finally improve the relationship, which meant lost opportunities to the company.
Second, not expressing anger could give the management and colleagues the impression that we do not care about the work or the organization, which causes loss of credibility and authority, which surely harms career progression.
Therefore, for the sake of ourselves and the organization we work for, it is necessary for us to express anger properly!
How do we express anger properly?
It involves having the right mindset and technique.
Mindset 1: It is allowed to express anger in the workplaces
Contrary to what we have been taught growing up, it is allowed to express our anger.
Based on the reasons above, it is necessary and required for us to express our anger properly.
Mindset 2: Expressing anger is merely a means; always remember the goal
Always remember expressing anger in workplaces is to re-install the balance in the relationship and ultimately help our career goals.
The key here is to never lose emotional control.
Expressing anger in workplaces is like a show. When we express anger, we need to be rational to show the “audience” our bottom line.
If we burst out our anger, caused a conflict and damaged a relationship because we lost our emotional control, it would have shown our unprofessionalism and come with irreversible consequences.
If we expressed anger, showed our bottom line and recalibrated the relationship, it would have proven our high IQ.
If we pretended to be angry and expressed the “anger” to warn the other party not to overstep, it would have been a great show to avoid future troubles.
If we were very very angry in the occasion where expressing anger would not be appropriate and we suppressed that anger, this would have shown our capability for emotional control.
Always remember express anger is only a means to the end goal.
Technique 1: Facts + My feelings + My expectations
In expressing anger, we should always start with facts, because facts are acceptable and undisputable to most.
“You did not mention my work in the last management reporting”
“You were late three times in the past week”
“…”
Then we follow with our feelings.
“It makes me feel undervalued and not appreciated”
“It makes me feel you do not respect the team norms”
“…”
Then we end with clear and specific expectations.
“I hope we could report together in the next meeting”
“I expect you to be on time from now on”
“…”
The key here is to never “judge” the other party, even though that might be the “natural” reaction.
Do not say “you are too greedy” or “you are just incapable of following plans”.
This will cause push backs and arguments.
Remember we have the end goal for expressing anger. And that goal is not unleashing our emotional frustration or making the other party apologize.
It needs to be much more productive.
Hope we can all become better in expressing anger in workplaces!
Till next time!
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