The advice given by the Roman philosopher Seneca that "the greatest remedy for anger is delay", but she might have done well to heed it. When Cooley, of Jacksonville, Florida, saw a 'help wanted' ad in the newspaper for a position that looked suspiciously like her current job — and with her boss's phone number listed — she assumed she was about to be fired. So she went to the architects' office where she worked and erased seven years' worth of drawings and blueprints, estimated to be worth $2.5m.
It didn't take Steven Hutchins, owner of the architecture firm that bears his name, much time to figure out who'd done it — Cooley was the only other person who had full access to the files. Police arrested her and charged her with a felony offence. She eventually received five years probation and was required to compensate Hutchins for his losses.
As for the job, it turned out Cooley wasn't actually in danger of losing it. The advertisement was for Hutchins' wife's company. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, Cooley no longer works for the practice.
Anger in the workplace rarely reaches such extremes but it can still have an immensely damaging effect on productivity, morale, reputation and, ultimately, the bottom line of any business — however large or small. According to recent research from employment law firm Peninsula, eight out of ten employees can suffer from 'work rage' and as many as seven in ten report that verbal abuse and shouting is common in their place of work. Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation, whose research shows that 64 per cent of us believe we are becoming angrier as a society, maintains that "anger is the elephant in the room in mental health".
It seems that anger is now a fact of life in the workplace, but what are the causes, what effect can they have on an organisation and what can businesses do about managing this most powerful of emotions?
When it comes to understanding anger, Mike Fisher has more experience than most. Founder of the British Association of Anger Management, he has trained more than 150 anger management facilitators and more than 13,000 people have attended his courses. He believes that stress is the primary cause of anger and that contributors to stress can be low self-esteem, unmet primary needs, challenges to our core beliefs and a failure to express ourselves properly.
When it comes to angry bosses, Alan Redman, a director at business psychologists Criterion Partnership, believes that there are specifics at work that can lead to anger amongst managers. He argues that a lot of anger at work is created by the flipside of our strengths. When under stress or emotional overload, these strengths can flip into what are called 'dark side' behaviours and create negative emotions — such as anger. Different strengths can flip into different forms of anger. Thus, the confident, driven, assertive leader can flip into anger driven by a sense of entitlement and an unwillingness to admit mistakes or listen to others; the passionate, enthusiastic leader can flip into anger that is volatile, moody and driven by disappointment in the perceived worthless efforts of others; and the shrewd, cautious leader becomes angry through feelings of paranoia and distrust of others.
In the latter case, he gives the example of a manager who was promoted because of his exceptional technical skills but became immensely stressed when managing people. He became paranoid and withdrawn but would then flare up in meetings, causing distress amongst his colleagues. The solution to his problem came with awareness and acceptance of the issue and in developing methods to identify feelings of potential anger early on.
He was then able to be more open with his colleagues, test his erroneous assumptions and become more present in his work. When it comes to those being managed, Mike Fisher's view is that the problem of 'calculated subversion' is far more damaging to an organisation than an angry boss. "Although it is still deemed acceptable in our society for senior directors to blow their tops and bawl out colleagues, overt aggression is very rare amongst the lower ranks," he says.
He believes that for those workers who feel that they don't have a voice, undermining the organisation can be a far more subtle and deadly way of fighting back. And with the neverending expansion of the internet, mobile phone cameras and social media, the effect on a corporation's PR can be devastating.
"Make any situation extreme enough and anybody will get angry," says Professor Ivan Robertson, a founder of business psychology company Robertson Cooper. "A lack of autonomy and the lack of an opportunity to express grievances, coupled with bad communication and ill-defined goals are a lethal combination."
For Paul Dubois, who leads Reed Learning's two-day Anger Management course, anger can often be the result of a hard-working employee being too personally involved and emotionally attached to a company. He gives the example of an employee working for an office equipment company who would react aggressively to each complaint, viewing it as a demonstration of her personal failure. Another worker, responsible for parking spaces, would fly into a rage with each double parking incident, seeing it as a personal attack on the business. It was only when the two were able to gain a detached objectivity that they could deal with their anger rationally.
But if an employee cares so much they are prepared to fight for their company, then surely that must be a good thing. In fact isn't anger an essential part of all of us - and particularly of those who are highly successful? Take Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson. Ryan Giggs described him administering his famous 'hairdryer treatment' as "red-faced with rage, like some uncontrollable force of nature." Yet anger never seems to have stood in his way. Indeed, there is some indication that those who express anger healthily and in the right environment can outperform those who don't.
This was the case with a Harvard Medical School study that found that those who repressed frustration were three times more likely to say they had reached a glass ceiling. As lead author Professor George Vaillant says, "We all feel anger, but individuals who learn how to express their anger while avoiding the explosive and self-destructive consequences of unbridled fury have achieved something incredibly powerful. If we can define and harness those skills, we can use them to achieve great things."
Professor Ivan Robertson agrees that anger is present in all of us and that it is how we deal with it that matters. Put very simply, he says that anger in the workplace is down to the individual and the situation. Individuals have to take responsibility for their own actions but organisations clearly have a role to play in supporting them and must take a leading and proactive role when managing the situation. "Dealing with anger," he says, "should be just another part of performance management."
So what steps can an organisation take to deal with anger? BT is widely recognised as one of the world's leading companies when it comes to employee wellness and performance management, and anger is clearly definedas an issue for the organisation. Dr Catherine Kilfedder, BT group health adviser, explains how BT has developed an 'interdependent' model whereby employees are responsible for their own wellbeing but also for paying attention to the colleagues around them. Line managers are responsible for knowing that "the key is local, early identification and intervention," she says, "then practical advice and support."
Dr Kilfedder believes there are clear benefits for the individual but also for the success of an organisation. "There is a growing realisation that people's health and wellbeing, including their mental health, actually impacts on the bottom line," she says. "Being healthy and well improves performance. There is no question about that."
As an example, Dr Kilfedder references the MacLeod Report, which connects wellbeing and employee engagement and states that organisations with engaged employees enjoy 43 per cent more revenue and suffer 3.5 days a year less absenteeism, with 86 per cent less chance of an employee leaving the organisation.
It seems clear that businesses concerned with their own performance need also to be concerned for the wellbeing of their staff and be aware that managing anger is an integral part of a wellness program. As Seneca said, "Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it." When it comes to proactive management the Romans were clearly on to something. Let's hope that some of our modern businesses still taking an 'ancient' approach to anger management catch up soon.
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