I don’t understand this. I’ve asked co-workers and even my boss to change their behaviors. Respect is something you can request from anybody.
I had a coworker like this. It was awful because the moment she gained momentum, there was no way of stopping her until she ran out of steam. Any of the techniques already described would just add fuel to her fire.
After numerous verbal and written warnings with no change in her behavior, HR transferred her to another department where she works mostly by herself. We still hear her occasionally in passing. I cannot begin to tell you how much morale has risen since her departure.
I would just tell them if they are going to yell we can have this discussion later. There is nothing compelling me to stay around to listen to someone yelling at me, life is too short and it’s not productive.
If I walk away and they follow or it gets physical that’s another matter.
Honestly, most of the advice given here would probably cause me to punch you right in the face.
The short term solution is to try to listen to what they are saying and calmly respond to it. Just because they are angry shouldn’t affect your emotional state. They might not even be angry at you.
The long term solution is to avoid relationships with people who are perpetually hysterical and abusive.
Walk away or listen in stony silence, depending on the person and their level of anger.
But I remember one guy that I just had to agree with. He kept going on and on about how Saddam Hussein was personally pointing a nuke directly at his nut sack, and how if we didn’t send troops into Iraq in the next ten minutes, his nut sack would be nuked, and goddamit we need to stop those A-rabs NOW!
The more he talked, the more agitated he got, and I swear if I disagreed with him he’d beat the crap out of me. Eventually I backed away and let the lunacy run its course.
“Angry” could mean anything from:
A) a person who is legitimately angry about some circumstance (here “legitimately” means that any one of us would probably feel the same way in that circumstance), and is calmly expressing their anger through verbal means without resorting to insults or language that would be inappropriate in a workplace
to
B) a person who is exhibiting anger far out of proportion to the circumstance, is verbally abusive, using foul language, and/or appears to be on the verge of becoming (or has in fact) become physically abusive toward objects and/or people in their immediate vicinity.
Person A is behaving in a way that facilitates discussion, and so they ought to be heard out. For person B, acknowledge their anger, but tell them you won’t tolerate abusive behavior, and that the next time they start swearing/throwing things/pushing you, you will call their boss and/or security personnel next time. If it it continues, or if it happens again in the future, you need to make good on your threat and place that call.
The fastest way to defuse anger is to train yourself to not hear it, but hear what is underneath and respond to that instead. And don’t assume you know (that in itself is irritating), guess/ask, using phrases like ‘sounds like you’re saying (. . . ) am I right?’
If you can’t train yourself, pretend you have.
Speaking personally, the reasons I get angry enough to start yelling are mostly about
- being frustrated because I want something to happen/stop happening and it isn’t, plus 2. being frustrated because I am convinced that no one is listening or cares about (#1)
The more people respond with contempt (adult-to-toddler kinds of reactions which include jokes and other varieties of condescension), anger, or pretend to ignore me, the worse I feel. And the angrier I get, surprise.
Think you can force an angry person to be calmer by any method short of clubbing them into unconsciousness? Well, you can’t. Trust me on this please.
I have seen ferociously out of control people totally defused and brought to rationality with a minute or two of engaged caring listening.
That said, people who respond habitually to life with anger have bigger problems than one conversation can solve.
My anger is easily diffused by cash and sex. Just sayin’.
Get even angrier at them
This is an example of why we can’t have nice things.
I am very good at defusing rational anger expressed with inside voices. Because I work in a call center, I have to do this pretty much every day. I can handle that, because the anger is directed at my company (which, frankly, has usually done something worth being pissed off about in these situations). The second a caller gets irrational or abusive toward me, though, I step back and say something like, “I am doing my best to assist you, sir/madam. Please don’t be rude.” This sounds like it might be inflammatory if used on the wrong kind of person, but it works! If someone continued to escalate the situation, my next step would be to say, “If you can’t stop with the rudeness/yelling/profanity, I am going to disconnect this call.” I haven’t had to do that, though. So far, this phrase has a 100% success rate of causing the caller to calm down and/or be ashamed of themselves (perhaps it helps that I am unfailingly polite for the full duration of every call, it might be different if I snarked back). It works, so I’m going to keep doing it. I think the reason it works is because people don’t expect a CSR to call them on their rudeness, so it surprises them and defuses the situation. I also will immediately take ownership of a fuckup by somebody else (even if the caller themselves are the ones who fucked up), and sympathize by saying, “I agree, that’s not acceptable and I’m sorry that happened to you. Now here’s how to fix it!” I make sure to never say I *can’t *do something for a caller, I try to focus on what I *can *do for them. There’s a big difference in how the information is received, depending on whether you phrase it as a positive or a negative–it’s all part of soft skills. Example:
Wrong: “I can’t give you a list of medical providers, that’s a different department. Hold please.”
Right: “I’m sorry to hear there was an incident. If you’d like to file a claim for your employee now, I can certainly help you with that. If you just want the list of medical providers, I’d be glad to transfer you to our network referral unit and they’d be happy to assist you. Can I place you on hold for a moment?”
Someone who has poor soft skills might not understand the difference between these 2 approaches; after all, the end result is the same. But the attitude matters a LOT, and goes a long way to keeping customers from getting angry. Tone and word choice are especially important on phone calls, because customers can’t see my face while I’m talking to them.
Calm Voice: “The chance of me seeing your point of view (or getting what you want) is inversely proportional to your anger. Come back when you are able to increase your odds.”
What I learned from growing up with my Mom, who frequently went into irrational rages, is not to say a damned word. Absolutely nothing you can say at that point is going to make the situation better. She wouldn’t even hear, “I’m sorry” - it would just make her madder. Just say nothing until they run out of steam. And, of course, if you have the luxury of walking away, do so.
That’s what my husband says to me when I get pissed off. He gets angry, too, though - he just expresses it in a completely different way.
This, specifically, can backfire. Some people just get angrier when you use this approach.
If you use it on me, I get angrier. I do calm down. But I become coldly, deadly furious. It turns my ire into poisonous resentment, which lasts a LOT longer than ordinary anger. It turns you from an object of anger to a lifetime enemy.
My father had hellish anger issues; if I’d ever tried that on him, he’d have just knocked me to the ground.
Obviously, everyone is different. I’m sure there are many people for whom that approach would work very well. But be aware that there are at least some for whom it won’t.
My boss does the same thing. Complete loss of control over anything and everything. Add in throwing anything at hand. Lunch is missing a condiment? No problem. Heave it 10 feet and watch it splatter against the wall and have a screaming fit for 20 minutes.
The situation can’t be fixed so I have mastered the art of keeping a blank expression on my face.
Yes to above. Your approach depends on whether you want to make someone shut up and stop causing you problems right now, at the potential cost of making them hate you instead of just be angry at the situation, or want to create the opportunity for that person to change his emotional state for the better.
I understand there’s some good advice in this thread, but I was just thinking about something. It’s not anyone’s responsibility to teach adults throwing temper tantrums how to control themselves. I used to blame myself a lot for my Mom’s anger because I talked back to her. But it wasn’t my responsibility to control her temper, it was hers. I just want to make sure people are not taking on too much responsibility for the immature behavior of others.
I would walk out of there so fast he would think I’d vanished in thin air. But I’d stop along the way to report him to HR.
Becoming a prostitute hardly seems like a solution to workplace anger, though it does have a certain appeal.