Australian, Australia
29 Apr 2013
Copyright Agency Ltd (CAL)
licensed copy
Anger at work is no longer a taboo as
bosses and workers look behind the
emotion for the message it holds
IT is often painted as an unaccept-
able emotion that smashes the
civility of a workplace and leaves
destruction in its wake, but anger
is undergoing an image makeover,
and the old days of shunning and
isolating the angry worker could
soon be over.
In many workplaces, particu-
larly the service industry, out-
bursts of anger - even when
entirely reasonable in the cir-
cumstances - are completely
unacceptable.
Other industries are full of
forceful personalities that swear
and tantrum their way through a
day, using conflict and tension to
drive productivity. Construction is
a classic example, but corporate
lawyers and financial traders are
also little known as serenity-
seeking shrinking violets.
Expressions of anger in the
workplace can range from some-
thing as benign as snapping at a
customer to violence such as
punching a wall or bringing a fist
down on a desk. More commonly,
angry workers are often the ones
complaining or ranting about
workplace policy or the boss.
When anger crosses the line in
an office or on the factory floor,
managers have often packed the
Other, page 14 - 702.90 cm²
National - circulation 122,428 (MTWTF)
ID 191707077
WORK
HOT
UNDER
THE
COLLAR
offender off for some corporate
behaviour management, in the
process devolving themselves and
the workplace more generally of
any responsibility for the causes of
the worker's disgruntlement.
Personality tests such as the
DISC Behavioural Assessment,
originally developed by William
Moulton Marston in 1928 and the
Myers Briggs Personality Test, de-
veloped by Katharine Cook Briggs
and her daughter Isabel Myers in
1962, are used during therapy to
hone a worker's self-awareness in
an attempt at behaviour control.
"The focus has been on trying
to get people to control their
anger, rather than the sources of
anger, and why people get angry
in the workplace," says Peter
Jordan, a professor of organis-
ational behaviour at Griffith Uni-
versity's business school. He and
his colleagues have recently been
awarded Australian Research
Council Discovery Project fund-
ing to examine how workplaces
can manage workers' anger at per-
ceptions of unfair managerial
treatment. The results of the re-
search are likely to herald a new
approach in anger management
- one that places the onus on the
workplace itself to respond appro-
PAGE 1 of 2
priately to workers' anger, and
ultimately harness that anger to
improve productivity.
"Anger has always been seen as
a pejorative emotion within work-
places, so there's always been this
idea that you shouldn't be angry at
work, you really need to control
your anger," Jordan says.
"But I don't think that's the
case. Anger is a natural human
emotion, everybody has a right to
express those emotions, and you
really need to understand where
anger comes from. Anger emerges
generally as a response to some
sort of perceived injustice."
Kathryn Moura, a consultant
who runs anger management pro-
grams in workplaces, says work-
places often refer an employee to a
program when their behaviour
becomes destructive to the work-
place as a whole.
Yet even though their behav-
iour has crossed the line of what is
acceptable, feisty workers are of-
ten highly regarded by their bos-
ses. "Often that employee is valu-
able to the company and they
don't want to lose the employee,'
Moura says.
"Employees need to gain
awareness about the triggers of
their anger, and the triggers are

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different for different people," she
says. "We describe it as a smoke
alarm - the triggers could be
associated with different reactions
you have to certain things."
Although behavioural change
can be effective on a small scale,
Jordan says simply pushing a
message of "calm down" can be a
missed opportunity. "Generally,
anger management programs
treat people very much one-on-
one, and it's about getting people
to reflect on their sources of
anger," he says.
"And so it's almost like a cogni-
tive behavioural therapy
approach in which they get people
to identify situations and then re-
flect on where their anger came
`Anger emerges
generally as a
response to
perceived injustice
PETER JORDAN
GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY
Australian, Australia
29 Apr 2013
Other, page 14 - 702.90 cm²
National - circulation 122,428 (MTWTF)
ID 191707077
from, and why they behaved as
they did. It's very much a
counselling-type approach.
"One of my basic messages for
the past few years is forget about
this idea of positive and negative;
it's about the utility of the emotion
that is being expressed.
"You don't want to go around
saying 'be positive', 'be positive'.
There were plenty of companies
that were super positive during
the global financial crisis and they
were positive to the point that
they went bankrupt."
Jordan and his colleagues will
initially recruit working students
for a laboratory experiment in
which the participants will be sur-
veyed on their reactions to inci-
The four personality types the
DISC program uses to understand
triggers for anger
PAGE 2 of 2
dents of workplace anger.
They then plan to launch a field
study in which workers in major
Australian workplaces will be sur-
veyed on their daily workplace in-
teractions, recording when they
came up against an angry client or
co-worker and how they them-
selves reacted.
A team-based anger manage-
ment program that the academics
devise as a result of their research
will then be tested.
"This research will give us a
basic test of what people do in a
workplace in response to anger,
and how that can be transformed
into productivity," Jordan says.
DOMINANCE
Employees with this profile shape the
work environment by overcoming
opposition to accomplish results
Possible triggers: Feeling vulnerable
or taken advantage of
INFLUENCE
Employees with this
profile shape the work
environment by influencing
or persuading others
Possible triggers: Loss
of influence, disapproval,
being ignored
STEADINESS
Employees with this
profile co-operate with
others within existing
circumstances to
carry out the task
Possible triggers:
Change, loss of stability,
offending others
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
Employees with this profile
work conscientiously within
existing circumstances to
ensure quality and accuracy
Possible triggers: Criticism
and being wrong
Source: www.discprofile.co