Recently, I wrote about how I experienced the behaviour of conductor Mario Papadopoulos in rehearsal in a posting entitled Lost your temper with your staff? You may have lost more besides. When we lose our temper we risk losing our authority and the respect of those we lead. But all is not lost when we lose our temper. The question is what to do next – and how – to turn our anger into gold.
In what way does anger become gold? In my experience, we turn anger into gold when we take time to connect with the unmet needs that underpin our anger. Creating this awareness opens up the opportunity to find ways to meet our needs. We get to feel better. And we achieve this without alienating others on whom we depend.
How can we transform anger into gold? Here is just one of my favourite ways, from Marshall Rosenberg. In the approach he has called Nonviolent Communication (see his book of the same name to learn more), Rosenberg encourages the use of self empathy to get beneath the surface of our anger.
How does it work? As a first step, you might notice what has stimulated your anger and seek to make a clear observation, cutting out any “stories” you might be telling yourself or at least owning your story. For example, your first reaction might be to think “John’s really let me down! He’s so unreliable! He should have let me know if there were problems meeting the deadline!” A more accurate observation might be to say: “When I asked John if he’d finished the report yet he said no. I felt a powerful surge of anger and I notice that I was thinking ‘I told you three weeks ago that the report was due by the end of this week. If there were problems, why the **** didn’t you tell me?'”
In this case, the observation leads us to our second step, which is to connect with our emotion (in this case, anger) and this is something that Rosenberg also encourages. When we feel angry, there is usually another emotion – fear – lurking underneath, so it may help to make a further observation as we examine what it is we are afraid of. Using the same example, you might notice another layer of thinking and emotion such as: “I realised I had really messed up but I didn’t want to admit it. I’d been so busy myself that I hadn’t checked John’s progress and with the deadline approaching there was barely time to finish the report. I’ve been worried about how my boss has been thinking about me and I didn’t want to give him an opportunity to think less of me”.
As we begin to turn our “story” into a clear observation and connect to our feelings, we can move to the third step, which is to notice what needs were stimulated in us and – in this case – unmet. This is about going beyond specific actions by specific people to understand the underlying needs. In this example, it’s possible that your most fundamental need – for security – was stimulated, especially if your thoughts included thoughts about the risk of losing your job and what that would mean for your home and for your ability to pay for food and other essentials.
Once you have uncovered your underlying needs, you have the option to make a request of yourself or of someone else. This is the final step in Rosenberg’s four-step process. Perhaps you might start by requesting of yourself that you take time out to relax before talking to John about next steps in order to calm down. Or you might make a request of John that he tell you just how far he’s got so that you can assess how much more need to be done to meet the deadline.
Going through this process has the potential to transform feelings of fear and anger into a deep sense of connection with our needs. In doing so, it moves us away from our primitive “fight or flight” response towards a more resourceful state in which we can clearly assess the situation and find ways to meet our needs.
There is another way I like to use to transform anger into gold. If you’d like a second option – keep reading.