Dealing with angry employees at work
There are various different types of anger that you as a manager may experience. It can become very disruptive to have an employee that continuously gets angry with you and it can eventually rub off on others if you are not careful.
Anger towards to you as a manager may surface through activities such as, rumour spreading, poor performance, un-cooperation. It is important to try to identify this sort of anger before it becomes verbal or physical towards you and address it early on. However, if it is allowed to fester and the employee becomes overtly angry, what do you do?
It is never a good idea to react in the same way back to the angry employee with an outburst. This is quite often the first thing that is done but can be in fact very destructive. People will be watching you very carefully at how you handle such anger so it is important to deal with it in a calm and collective way.
If someone erupts in anger, it needs to be dealt with there and then. Take the employee into a meeting room or to one side and speak to them about the issue and resolve it straight away. If something like this occurs in a meeting, ask them if they would like to talk about it there and then or if they would like to wait and discuss it later.
If your employee closes up and does not want to speak to you about the problem, then it may be a good idea to calmly say that you understand they may not want to discuss this with their boss but it would do both of you a great deal of good if it could be let into the open and moved on from.
Always allow the employee to talk and finish what they have to say. Do not stop them or interrupt them as this will create more anger.
Once the employee has explained the problems and issues, calmly say to them that you understand what they are saying and try to match both of your perceptions in your reply to make it look like you are the same side. Finish by saying you are going to both help to work out the problem rather than telling them what to do/think.
Before going into detail about how you will move on from this, try to get the employee to agree with some points so you are both on the same terms. E.g. “now do we both agree that we do not want this sort of behaviour to interfere with our work?”
When you have finished the conversation, ask the employee how they feel and if they are satisfied with how you are going to move forward from here.
People are different so the way you handle one angry employee can vary to the next. Try to be as calm as possible and follow the general guidelines given here to help you manage the process.
