One of the subjects we discussed on Woman's Hour this morning was whether having a temper can be a good thing. Apparently some new study from Harvard says that showing your anger at work can help further your career.
I reckon you can divide people into door slammers and sulkers. I am very much in the first category. I know I have a tendency to lose my temper volcanically but within thirty seconds I am back to normal. Experience shows me that many people find difficulty coping with this. If they have a row about something with someone most people harbour a grudge until at least the next day. I rarely do. For me it's over quickly, done and dusted, let's move on.
Anger at work is, in my view, more destructive than constructive. However, there's a delicate balance to be struck between showing emotion and being intimidating. Few people get it right.
Election campaigns bring out the worst in people and I defy any candidate or agent to get through a campaign without toys being thrown out of prams. The key is never to let it show with campaign volunteers.
UPDATE: Listen to the discussion HERE - scroll in 27 mins. (We also talk about Twitter and extremism)
22 comments:
Iain,
Did you catch THIS article in the GRauniad this morning?
Simmering is reaching boiling point.
Never mind bloody womens hour
"vulcanically"? - I thought only John Redwood got angry in this way
"showing your anger at work can help further your career"
Tell that to Derek Draper :-)
The way you state the problem shows you spend little time around women. Being angry is a result of being frustrated and that in turn is a result of dealing with unreasonable people. A woman would say that door slamming is aggressive and abusive and would therefore she would garner sympathy from a judging audience even if she was wrong. For a change try acting the victim. In most cases the biggest victim wins. In fact it's not good enough to be thebiggest victim you have to be the first victim. There is a race to victim hood.
Wise people understand this and women are wise. Try looking at theBBC news from this perspective. You will see that women editors give priority to stories of victims rather than what is important. Northern Rock? The news was about pensioners queuing NOT about the collapse of the financial system. Unfortunately until we all start acting like victims this ugliest form of reason will persist and you will remain frustrated and angry
is g. brown a shouter or a simmerer ?
throwing mobile phones about suggests a shouter but i would tag him as a simmerer with shouter tendencies
either way losing his temper at work doesn't appear to have held him back
-saviour of the world etc
'I defy any candidate or agent to get through a campaign without toys being thrown out of prams. The key is never to let it show with campaign volunteers.'
As a campaign volunteer I have to point out that we're already like Gerald the Gorilla on NTNON: 'absolutely livid!'
A shouter here living with a simmerer; hopeless combination as I can never even get a decent argument.
Inanimate object puncher - hmm.
Can you be both?
Why is Mandleson shouting about the bank pensions yet he is saying nothing about repaying his ‘leaving gift’ from the EU of many thousands of pounds. He did not even get sacked but was given the cash as a leaving present.
I could get very angry.
Shouters get heart trouble and strokes, simmerers get ulcers then cancer.
I aint making it up. It's all out there in the medical literature.
Do what I do. Take diazampam. Or sherry. (Tried brandy - turned me into a shouter). Who needs Bhuddism?
There is still CCTV footage of myself, having given a calm and reasonable lecture followed by a contructive debate in how to overcome a problem, throwing chairs and kicking desks.
The calm person person enters the private office, forgetting the CCTV, and lets rip with .."Why can't the stupid B*****s do it f****g right the f****g first time instead of B****g it all up and wasting everyone's time. The useless F******g*****g ***ts F****k etc.
Wouldn't have been so bad if the security guards were not training that day and all of the watching that monitor.
Vulcanically - Spock never loses his temper - it's illogical...
Iain,I'am a shouter after listening to Gordon Brown on talk sport this morning,he told lie after lie ,Iain.I ask of you Iain to go to talksport radio and listen to the audio of Gordon Brown,then you will have another headline subject for your blog.
There are ‘happy campaigns’ and there are ‘unhappy campaigns’. The latter almost never converts into the former. And an unhappy campaign is a miserable place - especially for volunteers.
You've been around for a bit ID and I am wondering what you thought of the swearing on the Lady T. programme the other evening. Call me an old fashion git if you will (I am) but I was quite shocked by the use of the f word. Was this authentic? I would have thought that the use of that type of language by educated people was not in keeping with the eighties.
Any views?
Shouter would be ok if it were door-slamming exits but some rant and rave in-situ. Sociopaths know how to use this to bully and intimidate.
king lear,
You forget Pon Farr.
Interesting Iain, very interesting.
I must have been doing it all wrong, as I have had election campaigns without throwing toys or anything else. Okay, in my own area we're fairly solid, though this changed when the ward doubled in size, taking on board some distinctly non-us areas!
I also helped in the 2005 General Election, so was in a whole range of types of places. The same applied in the last locals, where we were helping out in several other wards (marginals), and I have been delivering in strong Labour-voting communities and often caught in the streets or at the door.
I don't know what it is, but I just don't seem to get the really bad reactions from people. Perhaps it's my permanent silly smile!
Even so: in case I do get a bad day on the campaign trail next time, I shall remember the sherry tip from "Clams Linguini" a little way up the comments thread…
All I know is that the nearest mobile phone isn't going to be pleased when Gordon Brown gets angry.
Oooh, a definite personal-professional difference here.
Professionally I'm well known for never losing my rag; most iresome problems are human failures, and shouting at people for screwing-up has always struck me as singularly non-productive.
When away from the workplace, however, I'm a shouter. I bark at the radio, hurl imprecations at the TV and my computer monitor has reflected more deeply obscene sound-waves than ever Brand and Ross could imagine.
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