Showing anger at work may help you move up the ladder

By Maore Ithula

Expressing anger at work is not a career killer after all. Research shows that showing anger at the workplace may help you move up the career ladder.

BBC reported on Monday that experts at the Harvard Medical School have found that people who repress frustration are three times more likely to say they have reached the proverbial glass ceiling and quit.

But the team, which has followed 824 people over 44 years, said it was important to remain in control when standing your ground in an explosive matter.

Outright fury was destructive, the researchers added.

"People think of anger as a terribly dangerous emotion and are encouraged to practice positive thinking, but we find that approach is self-defeating and ultimately a damaging denial of dreadful reality," said Prof George Vaillant, the lead author.

"People who are assertive are able to stand their ground, while remaining respectful. Negative emotions are often crucial for survival," he said.

Vaillant, who is director of the Study of Adult Development, which published the research, said uncontrolled fury was destructive.

Research findings

Mr Moses Onderi, a human resource officer at CARE International agrees with the research findings.

"Whereas the findings are enormously credible based on the size of the sample population and the painstaking time taken, human resource managers and workers should adopt it cautiously lest people turn their places of work into battle fields," he said

He says managers should empower workers with emotional intelligence techniques. These are the mental ability to identify one’s emotions as they occur and manage them to get better results at the place of work.

Onderi says emotions of whatever kind are not bad because they help people to understand one another. "They should therefore never be repressed," he says.

To manage anger, he advises, pause when your temper flares and reflect on the alternatives. Always ensure that your actions serve the interests of the organisation.

Onderi says although no research has been conducted locally to establish which gender is more prone to outbursts at work, his take is that anger has no gender bias.

However, he says, men are likely to keep anger in longer than women. He also observes that because they carry more responsibilities, managers are more prone to anger than their juniors.