People get angry at work for all sorts of reasons, here are my top 4:

1. Personal or professional reasons having nothing to do with you.

Listen to them and empathize, we all have bad days.

2. Bruised ego / loss of face.

Not everyone reacts gracefully to this and some will get angry.

No, it’s not very mature but no one’s perfect and you will come across it.

If you know them well enough and they’ll let you, engage with them. Perhaps seek their opinion on something; generally let them talk it out.

3. To establish authority.

This one can be tricky.

Sometimes used to exploit people’s natural desire to avoid confrontation.

Take a deep breath (very important).

Try to take a step back from the emotions (meditation helps a lot with this).

Remember you have some control here.

4. An issue with your performance or behavior.

To be clear: anger is not the appropriate reaction by a manager to a performance issue.

But if it happens don’t freak out; do proactively seek feedback.

Your attitude should be “I see there’s a specific issue here and I want to make sure I address it. Can we schedule some time for that?”

To summarize:

Key point: You retain controlf of the situation through your reaction so learn to manage that reaction:

Give yourself a brief pause to avoid getting drawn into the emotion of the moment.

Try to identify the general cause of the anger

Use the guidelines above to respond in a deliberate way.