What's the best way to deal with flare-ups of anger at work?

Have you ever had someone flare up at you at work, or witnessed a colleague slam down the phone and reel off expletives? Traditionally, expressing anger in the workplace is seen as unprofessional, as sheer aggression. A model developed by Deanna Geddes takes a different tack, and receives empirical backing in a recent study in the journal Human Relations.

Geddes and co-author Lisa Stickney point out than rather than being uniformly toxic, anger is often provoked by a sense of mistreatment, and can point to problems in the workplace. Geddes has suggested a Dual-Threshold Model of workplace anger where the organisation can be harmed in two ways: when expressions of anger are so extreme and deviant that they break an 'impropriety threshold', or when anger fails to ever reach the expression threshold, meaning the feelings are unvoiced and the underlying issues fester. When the thresholds are too tightly stacked together in an organisation, any expression of anger is automatically considered deviant and muted by the threat of punishment.

In the present study, 194 participants completed a questionnaire that asked them to reflect and comment on an occasion when someone at work went 'too far' in expressing their anger. As well as the type of expression – verbal outburst, inappropriate communication or a physical act, participants recorded how the event was responded to, both formally and informally, and how the situation changed following the event. This last feature was critical: did the handling of the situation lead to resolution of the root problem or leave it hanging?

The authors predicted that outcomes should be most positive when the responses to anger are more supportive, rather than punitive, and indeed neither management sanctions (such as a written warning) nor coworker sanctions (distancing themselves from the individual or responding in kind) were more effective than doing nothing at all. Conversely, speaking to the individual and understanding their situation led to more situations taking a turn for the better.

It's worth noting that when the original event involved some physical acting-out of the anger, the underlying issue tended to be resolved better. This is surprising, seeing as physical expression often triggered sanctions due to their perceived high deviance. The authors speculate that the pure visibility of physical actions make it impossible to duck that there is an issue: sanctions may be applied, but the conversations that accompany it go deep enough to gain a full understanding and act.

Geddes and Stickney suggest that “anger expressions may be better viewed – conceptually and practically – as focused forms of employee dissent or voice by which the employee confronts inefficient, unjust, and/or offensive workplace situations.“ So when we witness anger, we should consider whether there may be just cause for the reaction. We should also be cautious of zero-tolerance approaches that automatically apply sanctions; if an employee already feels wronged, introducing further punishment can compound the strain on their relationship with coworkers and the organisation. Instead, we should train ourselves out of treating all charged expressions as aggressive behaviour. Anger can be a gift, if we choose to see it that way.


Geddes, D., & Stickney, L. (2010). The trouble with sanctions: Organizational responses to deviant anger displays at work Human Relations, 64 (2), 201-230 DOI: 10.1177/0018726710375482

Drinking habits of freelance musicians are a response to job demands

When we pore over biographies of Cobain, Mozart, or Shakur, are we getting a true insight into the psychology of musicians? Doubtful; dealing with rare figures whose musicianship is confounded with celebrity, the psychological autopsy is inadequate for understanding this ancient and valued profession. The stereotypes it can reinforce, such as the 'mad genius', are often dispelled by more rigorous investigation: a study of psychopathology in a sample including artists, writers and scientists revealed that composers had almost the lowest rate.

And how about the other stereotype, that musicians love to get trashed? It's true that jazz greats often got high, but their reasons were more varied than simply hedonism; many used drugs to deal with pressure from the job and from peers. A recent study suggests our current jazz and string musicians, in a similar spot, find themselves deep in the drink.

Melissa Dobson from the University of Sheffield conducted interviews with eighteen freelance musicians, half string players and half jazz musicians. Reviewing these reveals that a key professional capability for these musicians is social expertise with peers. If looking to draft in a cellist for an event, differences in talent between candidates may be too minor to matter for the audience, so the job may swing to whoever's a better laugh to hang with during the breaks. In their informal economy, musicians know the power of these fickle decisions and do what needs to be done to maintain a reputation that they “get on with people”.

Typically, that involves drinking. Partly a generational legacy, as hard drinking is tied into the subcultural furniture, it's also a fact of the environment, as venues for live music typically serve alcohol. It fills dull gaps between sets in unfamiliar places, and after the show offers a form of psychological detachment from work. Ultimately, it's socially self-perpetuating: if everyone drinks, then you need to develop a habit too. Some interviewees had mixed feelings about this: “lots of players that haven't been offered jobs.... [are those who] won't really go out for the whole sort of socializing thing... a bit sad, but that's sort of the way it works”.

As well as alcohol, the interviews revealed the highly political nature of the freelance music world, where musicians both compete against and depend upon each other for work, and can find themselves trading disparaging judgements on absent peers to shore up their in-crowd position - another form of social currency.

Melissa Dobson concludes that the professional training that musicians undertake focuses on technical development over the challenges of navigating a freelance career, leaving them to figure out how to maintain reputation through a 'hidden curriculum' that operates out of sight of the convervatoire. Is this the only form of professional training that this critique applies to?

Dobson, M. (2010). Insecurity, professional sociability, and alcohol: Young freelance musicians' perspectives on work and life in the music profession Psychology of Music, 39 (2), 240-260 DOI: 10.1177/0305735610373562

Booster breaks at work enhance health and energy, and could ripple through organisations

Many of us in developed countries know that our lifestyle gets in the way of achieving a level of health in line with our level of wealth. With around half our waking hours spent in work settings, Wendell C. Taylor recommends an evidence-based workplace policy aimed to boost our health, with follow-on benefits for the organisation.

Taylor's paper, an eclectic review of research and practises including US federal recommendations, yogic techniques and sports science, points out that the modern workplace is laced with health hazards. These include a lack of strenuous physical activity, prolonged bouts of sitting still, weight gain (often due to unhealthy consumption), and of course stress. His solution is to take fifteen minute 'booster breaks' that involve health-promoting behaviours such as physical activity, meditation and breath training.

Fifteen minutes may seem like small beer, but Taylor lays out the evidence that these small efforts may have big effects. The US Department of Health and Humans Services, through a review of hundreds of studies, concluded that having some moderate-to-heavy physical activity in your routine improves health, even when the doses are small; indeed, no minimum level has been identified for producing health benefits.

Sedentary behaviour has serious effects on health - the risk of obesity increases by five percent for every two hours spent sitting at work - and the effects are worse when not interrupted; luckily, that's just what taking a booster break will do. Snacking and smoking, both common ways to use or even to justify work breaks, are suppressed when alternatives are promoted to fill our time. Given that on average we can prevent weight gain by tipping our energy intake-outtake by 100 kilocalories, these small effects matter.

We can also put in time to change our state of mind. Meditation can reduce anxiety and increase clarity of thought, and it can be hacked to fit even the short times of work breaks. Taylor asserts that rhythmic breathing can affect stress and immune function as well as reduce depression, and cites evidence for decreases in blood pressure from three months of practice of a few daily fifteen-minute sessions. Of course, all these types of break can increase blood flow and energy levels, which are both important for work effectiveness.

Taylor recommends sanctioning and promoting these health-enhancing practises in the workplace as booster breaks where employees get together to breathe, work out, or experience Big Mind together. He argues that such a policy can have multiple effects in a ripple-like fashion: the primary impact is at the centre, on individual behaviours; a smaller but profound effect takes place for individual outcomes like health, stress, energy, fun; then increasingly smaller effects occur for organisational morale, productivity, healthcare costs, and even for the organisation's image.

Taylor argues that breaks can enhance daily productivity even if they reduce the total time working, citing research conducted with data entry workers. This might seem strange if we see the capacity for work purely in terms of 'time available', but once we see energy as a major limiting factor this makes a lot of sense. Organisational morale is boosted partly by the group design, which encourages worker cohesiveness and a sense of collective fun.

We all want to stay well at work - the challenge is to know what we can do within our busy schedules. This article argues that even as little as fifteen minutes from our day can make a personal difference, and by taking our colleagues along we can multiply that impact, for ourselves and for the organisation. The full Booster Break methodology is currently being assessed using an ongoing randomised control trial - rest assured we'll bring you a follow-up once it's completed.

Taylor, W. (2011). Booster Breaks: An Easy-to-Implement Workplace Policy Designed to Improve Employee Health, Increase Productivity, and Lower Health Care Costs Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, 26 (1), 70-84 DOI: 10.1080/15555240.2011.540991