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Managers could prevent employee blow-ups with "emotional first aid"
Chicago, August 15, 2005-- Anger in the workplace is killing people. In an average week, one employee is killed and 25 are seriously injured nationally in violent assaults by current or former co-workers. And nearly 80 percent of the killers left warning signs before going over the edge, according to a USA Today report that examined 224 fatal cases.
Managers can prevent blow-ups, contends Mitch Messer, therapist and executive director of The Anger Clinic, if they move in time to defuse a disgruntled employee's anger.
“A lot of people resent their supervisor's tactics, but they don't kill people,” Messer says. They can become so resentful that they become insubordinate, which leads to dismissal. But insubordination can be a prelude to a violent act. Rather than dismissing such an employee, Messer believes, his supervisor or manager or Employee Assistance Program should intervene. That way, Messer says, “they might discover why he was insubordinate in the first place.”
Messer's anger management clinics teach managers and supervisors to provide on-the-spot “emotional first aid” to avoid workplace violence. “If these people were bleeding from a cut finger, managers would know where to send them. But when someone is angry, we don't know what to do,” he continues.
He teaches managers to ask the employee focusing questions such as, “I know you're angry but what angers you most about the incident?”
The employee's perception of the incident may be very different from the manager's. He may say, “It was unfair of you to promote the other person and not me.”
The manager shouldn't defend that decision because it's not the issue. He must ask, “What angers you most about this unfairness?”
If the employee answers, “Why does this always happen to me?” the manager will recognize that the employee perceives himself as a victim of unfairness every time he doesn't get his way.
The manager then asks, “What angers you most when you feel like a victim under these circumstances?”
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Mitch Messer appeared on WBBM-TV Channel 2 in Chicago, Jan. 25, 2004.
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