Founder and President,
Leadership Performance Systems and Qualifying.org
While researchers may disagree on how the emotion of anger is developed and expressed throughout life, everyone agrees that anger is an emotion with significant consequences in your life. Often “feeling terms” such as resentment, annoyance, or frustration are associated with anger, and none of these are positive.
Yet, anger may serve various constructive purposes, when properly understood and managed. At its root, anger is an expression that you are unable (for various reasons) to achieve a certain goal or objective. Anger is a “feedback energy” to your psyche that things are not going as you might like or expect. The question is how to manage anger for constructive purposes.
Information in this emotion:
When you are angry, the internal feedback is that you perceive an individual has:
- Failed to fulfill an expectation or agreement
- Intentionally violated an important value or principle
- Created a barrier to reaching an objective
- Misused or misjudged you in some way
- Gotten in your way intentionally
This emotion serves you by:
The emotion of anger prompts your body to prepare to fight or demonstrate protest. With anger, you are preparing for a physical response such as yelling or even physical contact. This emotion serves to focus attention, and when prompted for good reason, it can harness motivation to change policies, laws, and influence others. This contributes to a state of motivated interest even if it is negative.
Variations by Type
When we experience anger, everyone has the same neurological event. However, the triggers of anger vary by personality type. What one type experiences as a violation of trust, principles, or agreements is not the same as another. Summarized below are the triggers by the mental functions of psychological type:
Sensing +Thinking Triggers:
- Lack of attention to detail
- Lack of verification of information
- Failure to follow through as specifically described
- Inefficiency
Sensing + Feeling Triggers:
- Failure to respond to personal inquiry
- Failure to acknowledge hands-on efforts
- Lack of attention to personal needs
Intuiting + Feeling Triggers:
- Perceived condescension, insensitivity
- Focus on “it” or “task” rather than on the individual’s needs
- Failure to acknowledge efforts
- Judgmental
Intuiting + Thinking Triggers:
- Incompetence
- Irrationality
- Lack of logical basis for decisions
- Failure to address competence after it has been identified
Short Cut: Transform this emotion to a constructive use by:
- Acknowledging the anger and reflecting with the individual on the prompter for the response (e.g. feel misunderstood, obstructed, etc)
- Exploring the desired outcome of “setting things right”
- Discussing how anger relates to what you feel is important -- how you feel threatened and how to redirect that energy into less stressful strategies that will produce a positive outcome (e.g. problem solving)
