Expressing Your Anger at Work
Getting frustrated at work is common. However, how you express it or don’t, may greatly influence the environment that you’re in, as well as future opportunity. While expressing your anger at work may be generally frowned upon, there are certainly strategies that will help with this process. Consider these three tips below when expressing your anger at work.
- Timing is important – Remember that when you are anger this may not be the time to resolve an issue. However, coming back to a situation after decompressing and letting the parties involved know how it impacted you will allow you to be a better communicator and express the importance of the situation, improving the likelihood of resolution.
- Understand what helps you decompress – Having an understanding of what kinds of strategies are most effective for you in reducing anger is important. This may be walking, exercise, writing, listening to music or a wide variety of other things. Taking the time to explore what works best will benefit you in the long run and give you the chance to effectively express and reduce anger instead of letting it become a problem.
- Remember the context – This is a very important component. Even though telling someone exactly how you feel may seem like the best idea at the time, the context may suggest otherwise. Being mindful of how and where you are expressing anger, if at all, may be a very important factor to consider.
The better question to ask may be how to reduce anger in general. Understanding how to control our feelings may be beneficial in many different environments. Having the ability to respond to events rather than react, may serve us well. If we know how to control our sense of reactivity then we may respond in a more appropriate way. Understanding ourselves, how we respond/react and triggers that we have, may involve some self-exploration.
Interestingly, the expression of anger may be totally culturally contextual anyway. In our culture we tend to look at the expression of anger to be generally unfavorable. In other cultures expression of anger may actually be of health benefit. In a study by The Association for Psychological Science, they found that expression of anger in Japanese culture was associated with better biological health. This suggests that anger isn’t necessarily positive or negative but the meaning that it is applied to it may impact the results of its expression.
This idea of exploring our anger to identify what kind of meaning we apply to it may give us another reason for self-exploration. Certainly the negative or positive consequences of expressing anger are still being studied. In the meantime, we do know that improving our understanding of self and how we respond and react can have a great impact on our work and home environments.
Thanks,
Michael
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Five Strategies for Effective Boundaries in the Workplace – Arc Integrated
I was once featured on Livestrong in an article about setting effective boundaries so that you do not become emotionally or even physically drained. Sometimes not having clear boundaries can do this. Without good boundaries we can feel exhausted. Since for most of us the majority of our time is spent at work, I wanted to elaborate on how to set effective boundaries in the workplace.
Having clear workplace boundaries not only impacts you, but all those you work with as well. Having clear boundaries in the workplace helps to improve productivity, decrease stress, helps foster good relationships and improves motivation. Although setting boundaries is complicated based on the nature of the work and relationship, a study that examined boundary setting in the workplace found that evaluating and setting boundaries did in fact impact relationships. According to The University of California San Francisco, when boundaries are clear organizations work more efficiently and groups within work more productively.
5 strategies for effective boundaries in the workplace
- Responsibility – Having a clear idea of roles and responsibility is crucial in a work environment. If this is unclear, then meeting with co-workers and supervisors may be important for clarification in order to understand who is responsible for what.
- Self-Care – Self-care may not seem as obvious when looking at boundary setting. However, this is more of a preventative measure. It is easy to become unclear about where appropriate boundaries should be when we are run down, stressed out, irritable or overwhelmed. Having good self-care practices will allow us to not only function at peak level but also remain clearer about where appropriate boundaries should be.
- It’s not Personal – Remaining aware that work relationships may differ from personal relationships is an important perspective to hold. This doesn’t mean that there is not a certain level of familiarity or closeness with those you work with. Some decisions in a work environment may be out your control. In addition, there may be decisions that are made that don’t make sense due to components that you be unaware of or are not privileged to know. Just like in all relationships – learning to not take things personally can be a game changing perspective to hold and a way to reduce stress and anxiety.
- Clear and Friendly Communication – Setting clear boundaries does not mean needing to be dry, cold disconnected from your fellow co-worker. In fact, having a positive friendly attitude can generally impact the environment in a great way. Remember that there can be a balance between clear boundary and a friendly, positive attitude.
- Be the Leader – In an environment of unclear boundaries there is an opportunity. This opportunity is for someone to establish a leadership role and be a model for how to set clear boundaries of relationship and responsibility. We always have the option of being in a position of either following the trend or stepping up as a leader, regardless of our position in any environment.
How else have you been able to set clear boundaries in the workplace?
Thanks,
Michael
