Anger and Leadership

A powerful guideline that I offer the leaders I work with is “Anger is not allowed.” Don’t show it outwardly. Don’t let your people see it. And don’t harbor it for very long within yourself.

You see, as I often explain, leadership is performative. As a leader, you are always putting on a show. You are always on display, always in the spotlight. People always have their eyes on you. The behavior that you choose to demonstrate has real effects on the people who are observing you and on the environment as a whole. You have an audience who are taking in and processing everything that you express. 

Leadership is performative.

As a leader, you are always putting on a show. You are always on display, always in the spotlight. People always have their eyes on you. The behavior that you choose to demonstrate has real effects on the people who are observing you and on the environment as a whole. You have an audience who are taking in and processing everything that you express.

Anger, as well as any emotion marked by intensity that stems from the response of the sympathetic nervous system (that is, “fight-or-flight” or the more inclusive “fight, flight, freeze, or fawn”) is chaotic energy. Putting anger on display is going to increase feelings of chaos, uncertainty, instability, anxiety, and danger. None of these are correlated to a productive work environment. 

Is anger a common, even a primal, human emotion? For sure! But leaders have more at stake with what they show than the average person. They possess structural power and the ability to influence others. They need to be more careful with what they present, what they perform. 

Are leaders still going to experience anger in the workplace? Also, for sure! They are human, after all. But the question becomes how they notice, navigate, and negotiate it. 

Notice

I encourage leaders to develop a strong sense of self-awareness so that they reach the point at which they can say “Uh oh, I’m feeling angry.” Instead of allowing the anger to mindlessly consume them, hijack their cognition, and directly influence their behavior (and thus what they are showing to others), noticing the presence of anger is the first step. Anger tends to be a one-way highway with ever-accelerating speed, so simply being able to notice that it is affecting you allows you to reconnect to your own power. 

Navigate

When you find yourself on that one-way highway of acceleration, you give yourself the option to realize that this is not the only direction available to you. Anger is not the inevitable response to any situation. It just often happens to be the first and the least conscious or mindful. I joke with my leaders that, in the moment they recognize themselves becoming angry, I hope they hear my voice in their head: “Anger is not allowed.” Yes, experience it enough to see it for what it is (which is chaotic, unhelpful, and often destructive), and then realize you need to change directions. Just like when you become lost while traveling, take the nearest exit off that highway and give your internal GPS a chance to recalculate. The Anger Highway leads straight to . . . a lot of bad things. We don’t want to go there. Navigating means to chart a course for where you want to go—with conscious intention. 

Negotiate

I tell leaders that they are allowed to experience anger temporarily, but then they need to negotiate its transformation into something more productive. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Once you’ve noticed the anger and decided that it’s worthwhile to navigate toward a different direction, you’re in a position to negotiate—that is, to make compromises that turn the anger into a state that is more aligned with what you actually want. You make a deal with your own feelings, giving up something in order to gain something more important to you. 

When negotiating with your own feelings, it’s helpful to ask: 

What’s the wisdom hidden within this anger? 

In other words, what is the anger actually about? What is it really telling you? What’s valuable and actionable about what it is bringing to your attention? 

In essence, we are trying to distill the wisdom, knowledge, or insight from the chaos, intensity, and destructive potential that are all present in raw anger. 

Intensity aside, you can arrive at insight. What do you know you want to happen now? What is the path forward?

If you can transmutate your anger into a more productive emotion before you appear in front of your people or interact with anyone in any way, you are far more likely to bring about the desired positive changes that the initial anger cued you in on. 

“What’s the wisdom hidden within this anger? 

In other words, what is the anger actually about? What is it really telling you? What’s valuable and actionable about what it is bringing to your attention? ”

Productive Alternatives to Anger for Leaders to Show

Calm

Your people take their emotional cues from you! Act how you want them to feel. 

Composure

No one wants to see their leader out of control, falling apart, or losing it.

Clarity

The opposite of chaos; be clear about what you want moving forward.

Certainty 

Using anger to emphasize a point doesn’t make you appear strong. Certainty of what you’re asking for does. 

Conviction

“Given what happened, we now know what we need.” 

Consistency & Continuity

Anger in response to a crisis can prompt swift, thoughtless, and reactionary changes that cause confusion and instability. 

Commitment

“I’m not going anywhere and neither are our values. You can rely on me for . . .”

From Righteous Anger to Righteous Conviction

Sometimes leaders will ask me, “But Jesse, sometimes I have a right to be angry!” Believe me, I’m not telling you that anger is wrong or that anger can’t alert us to something in our reality that is very wrong, but it’s what you then do with it that matters. If you can turn righteous anger into righteous conviction: that is, certainty of what you want to change and determination to follow through on that, what you’re essentially doing is converting the chaotic and unstable energy of anger into the focused and productive energy of conviction and therefore purpose.

The Performance of Anger and Trauma

As someone deeply committed to advancing trauma-informed leadership, I shudder when I hear about leaders who have allowed themselves to be overcome with anger in front of their employees. For many people who have incurred traumatic events, especially violent ones (for which anger is so often a precursor), witnessing angry behavior is going to prompt feelings of being unsafe and activate a trauma response. No workplace can afford to alienate and disempower their people this way. As I argue in many other places, trauma obfuscates talent! Furthermore, demonstrations of anger from a leader can traumatize anyone, leading to an environment characterized by fear and threat. 

We know that in order for people to be at their best in the workplace, we need them to be experiencing the four F’s:

Feeling Good

Freedom

Flow

Fascination

All of these are compromised in the performance of anger, as well as the leader’s own command of respect, authority, and admiration. 

So, remember, “Anger is not allowed!” You can feel it briefly, use what it has to show you, but then transmute it into something vastly more powerful!