Joe, a participant in my workshop, was upset when he came in this morning and in the first exercise shared his frustration. “I don’t understand why I was sent to this interpersonal skills workshop. I am a great manager. I am at work before everybody and I am the last one to leave. I walk around I tell my employees over and over again what they need to do to complete their work. I am there for them. I have an open door policy. They can talk to me anytime they want. But, everyone is walking around tense and they don’t do their work. Joe’s classmates that day already knew what could be the problem. Joe was yelling out his frustration and gesturing at us with his fist. They were scared of him. Joe needed to see how his behavior was affecting his body language and his health and his anger's impact on everyone he worked with.
”Workplace anger is costly to the employee, the company, and coworkers. Studies show that up to 42% of employee time is spent engaging in or trying to resolve conflict. This results in wasted employee time, mistakes, stress, lower morale, hampered performance, and reduced profits and or service.
In 1993 the national Safe Workplace Institute released a study showing that workplace violence costs $4.2 billion each year, estimating over 111,000 violent incidents. Further, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 500,000 victims of violent crime in the workplace lose an estimated 1.8 million workdays each year.
Clearly, poorly handled anger, frustration and resentment will sabotage business productivity.
One solution for your workplace anger is to “Check In” on your behavior. Anger can be recognized by certain facial and body language cues. Notice what you are showing about your behavior.
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at http://PattiWood.net. Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
