Why Your Workplace Anger Management Strategy Is Probably Making Things Worse

Related Resources:

• Name Coach Blog
• Focus Group Posts

Twenty-three years in corporate training, and I reckon I've seen more workplace meltdowns than a daycare centre during naptime. The thing that gets me fired up? How spectacularly wrong most organisations get anger management.

Here's my controversial take: telling people to "count to ten" or "take deep breaths" isn't anger management. It's anger suppression. And mate, that's like putting a band-aid on a broken water main.

I was consulting for a mid-sized engineering firm in Perth last month when their site supervisor—let's call him Dave—absolutely lost it during a team meeting. Started throwing papers, yelling about "incompetent graduates," the whole nine yards. Management's response? Send him on a traditional anger management course where he'd learn breathing techniques.

Wrong. Completely bloody wrong.

The Real Problem Nobody Talks About

Most workplace anger isn't about anger at all. It's about feeling powerless, unheard, or genuinely frustrated by systemic issues that nobody wants to address.

Dave wasn't angry because he had poor emotional control. He was furious because his team kept making the same preventable mistakes, management ignored his repeated warnings about resource shortages, and he felt like a mug for caring more about quality than anyone else in the room.

Traditional anger management would've taught Dave to swallow his frustration. What he actually needed was conflict resolution training and a management team willing to listen.

But here's where it gets interesting—and where most HR departments completely miss the boat.

Why Australian Workplaces Are Getting It Wrong

We've bought into this American-imported notion that all workplace emotions need to be managed, controlled, contained. Fair dinkum, sometimes anger is the appropriate response to incompetence, corner-cutting, or workplace bullying.

I remember working with a manufacturing plant in Adelaide where workers were routinely expected to work unsafe conditions. When one bloke finally exploded at his supervisor about it, they wanted to discipline him for "inappropriate workplace behaviour."

The real issue? Management had been ignoring safety concerns for months.

This is the fundamental flaw in how we approach workplace anger: we treat the symptom, not the cause. It's like medicating someone's headache when they've got a brain tumour.

The Three Types of Workplace Anger (And How to Actually Deal With Them)

After two decades of workplace psychology consulting, I've identified three distinct categories of workplace anger. Get the category wrong, and your intervention will backfire spectacularly.

Type One: Justified Anger This is anger at genuine workplace problems—poor processes, unfair treatment, safety issues. The solution isn't anger management; it's fixing the bloody problems. About 60% of workplace anger falls into this category, yet most organisations treat it like the person has an emotional disorder.

Type Two: Misdirected Anger This is when someone's genuinely frustrated about work issues but takes it out on the wrong person or in the wrong way. Here, you need communication skills training and proper escalation procedures. Teaching someone to breathe deeply doesn't help if they don't know how to articulate their concerns professionally.

Type Three: Personal Anger Spilling Over This is the smallest category—maybe 15% of cases—where someone's personal life stress manifests as workplace anger. Only here does traditional anger management actually help.

Most workplaces treat all anger as Type Three. No wonder their interventions fail.

What Actually Works (Based on Real Results)

Here's what I've seen work consistently across industries:

Prevention beats intervention every time. Instead of waiting for explosions, create regular forums for raising concerns. I worked with a construction company that implemented weekly "gripe sessions"—10 minutes where anyone could raise issues without consequences. Workplace incidents dropped 40% in six months.

Train managers to recognise the difference between emotional dysregulation and legitimate grievances. Most supervisors panic when someone raises their voice and immediately assume it's a behavioural problem. Sometimes raised voices mean people care deeply about their work.

Focus on emotional intelligence for managers rather than just anger management for employees. I've seen countless situations where managerial incompetence created the conditions for workplace anger, then the same managers complained about "difficult" staff.

The pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson gets this right. They train their supervisors to ask "What's behind this reaction?" before jumping to disciplinary action. Revolutionary stuff, apparently.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Workplace Culture

You want to know what really reduces workplace anger? Competent leadership and fair systems.

I consulted for two insurance companies last year with identical demographics, similar pay scales, even similar workloads. One had constant anger issues, explosive meetings, high turnover. The other was remarkably harmonious.

The difference? The peaceful workplace had managers who actually listened to feedback and acted on it. The chaotic one had managers who said they had an "open door policy" but then got defensive whenever anyone walked through that door.

Workplace anger is often the canary in the coal mine for organisational dysfunction.

The Role of Australian Work Culture

There's something particular about Australian workplace culture that complicates anger management. We value straight talking and calling out rubbish, but we've also imported corporate speak that discourages authentic communication.

I see this tension constantly in Perth mining companies. Blokes who'd normally sort out disagreements with direct conversation suddenly have to navigate performance improvement plans and formal grievance procedures. The mismatch between cultural expectations and corporate requirements creates pressure.

The solution isn't to suppress that directness—it's to channel it constructively.

What Your Organisation Should Do Instead

Stop sending individuals to anger management courses unless you've first examined what they're angry about.

Start with systems analysis. Are your processes efficient? Do people have the resources they need? Are workloads reasonable? Is management responsive to concerns?

Fix those first. Then, if someone's still having explosive reactions, consider whether they need stress management training or communication skills development.

But for the love of all that's holy, stop treating justified workplace anger like a personal defect.

The Bottom Line

Real workplace anger management isn't about teaching people to suppress their emotions. It's about creating workplaces where anger rarely becomes necessary because problems get addressed before they reach crisis point.

After 23 years doing this work, I can tell you with absolute certainty: organisations with the fewest anger management issues are the ones that rarely need anger management training.

Think about that for a minute.

---

Want to transform how your organisation handles workplace conflict? Check out our advice section for practical resources.