Anger at work: the one emotion you're not allowed to show

The meeting ends, everyone smiles, someone says “great, so we have a plan”. You close your laptop, walk to the coffee machine and notice that your hands are shaking. Your manager has just presented your analysis, which you spent two weeks on, as “something we put together as a team”. Nobody said anything. Neither did you. That evening at home you snapped at your partner for leaving the dishes in the sink.

Anger is the emotion almost all of us feel at work and almost none of us are allowed to show. Sadness is sometimes tolerated, enthusiasm is even expected, fear hides behind “I’m a bit stressed”. But anger counts as losing control, as unprofessional, as something that can cost you your reputation. So we swallow it — and then it goes somewhere else.

In this post I want to look at anger at work differently: not as a problem to be removed, but as information worth listening to — and as a message that can be said in a way that gets heard.

Anger as information

Anger has a clear job in the body. It appears when we sense that a boundary has been crossed, that an injustice has happened, or that someone is blocking our way to something that matters to us. It speeds up the heart, tenses the muscles, narrows attention. It gets us ready to change something. I wrote about how anger can turn from helplessness into a driver of change in Anger is not the problem: how it turns from helplessness into energy for change, and the concept is also briefly explained in the knowledge base under anger.

The psychologist James Averill, in research published in the early 1980s, asked people to describe their everyday episodes of anger. He found something surprising: anger is rarely aimed at strangers. It most often arises with people we know and who matter to us, and almost always over something we experience as unjustified. The same holds at work. It isn’t a random person in the corridor who makes us angry, but a manager we trust or a colleague we work with every day.

So the first question about anger at work is: what is this anger telling me? Was a rule of fairness broken? Was my work not seen? Did someone decide about me without me? Only once you know that can you think about what to do with it.

Why it is so forbidden at work in particular

A workplace is a system, much like a family. It has a hierarchy, unspoken rules and roles. One of the strongest unspoken rules in many teams is: we don’t get angry here. Not because anyone wrote it down, but because everyone who broke it learned what it costs.

Anger is more dangerous at work than elsewhere because it is tied to power. Who is allowed to be angry often depends on who holds the position. A manager who raises their voice is “demanding”. An employee who raises their voice is “difficult”. At the start of this century the researcher Larissa Tiedens showed that people often attribute more competence and higher status to someone expressing anger than to someone expressing sadness. Anger works as a signal of power. And that is exactly why it is risky for those without power — because it looks like an attempt to take some.

The same anger, a different verdict

Added to this is a difference that is very concrete for women at work. In 2008, in three experiments, the psychologists Victoria Brescoll and Eric Uhlmann showed participants recordings of job interviews in which a person described a situation at work that had made them angry. When a man expressed anger, participants gave him the same or higher status than a man who wasn’t angry. When a woman expressed the same anger in the same words, they gave her lower status, less competence and a lower salary too.

Even more important: participants explained the man’s anger by circumstances (“something made him angry”) and the woman’s by her character (“that’s just how she is”). When the woman explained why she was angry, the gap narrowed. A few years later, Jessica Salerno and Liana Peter-Hagene found something similar in a mock jury: a man who defended a minority opinion with anger became more persuasive, while a woman with the same arguments and the same anger became less so.

This doesn’t mean women mustn’t get angry. It means that many women at work learn to translate anger into something else — into tears, sarcasm, excessive politeness, tiredness. And it means that for anyone with less power, it matters not only whether they express anger, but how. A reason, said out loud, is clearly one of the things that helps.

Two thresholds: between silence and outburst

The researchers Deanna Geddes and Ronda Callister proposed a two-threshold model of anger in organisations that I find very useful. The first is the expression threshold: whether you show the anger at all. The second is the impropriety threshold: whether you show it in a way the environment still accepts.

This gives three areas. Below the first threshold is suppressed anger — you feel it but don’t tell the person who could change something. Between the thresholds is expressed anger — you say it directly and within a frame the team can handle. Above the second threshold is anger that crosses the line: shouting, humiliating, threatening. The authors point to something that runs against everyday wisdom: the most damage to an organisation is done not by expressed anger, but by both edges — the outburst and the silence.

Where unspoken anger goes

Suppressed anger doesn’t disappear. A systemic view helps us see where it moves.

To a third person. Instead of telling your manager, you tell a colleague over coffee. She nods, perhaps adds her own story. For a moment it’s easier, but nothing changes — except that a small camp against the manager forms in the team. This is the classic triangulation we know from families: tension between two spills over onto a third, because a direct conversation feels too dangerous. More on this in the knowledge base under triangulation.

Home. Anger you can’t show your boss often lands on your partner or children. Not because they are to blame, but because home is safer. The scene with the dishes in the sink at the start is exactly that.

Into the body. A clenched jaw, a headache at the end of the week, poor sleep. The body carries what words are not allowed to.

Into resentment. When anger repeats and is never said, it hardens into resentment — a quiet, chronic anger that no longer seeks change, only confirms that the other is bad. Resentment is often what people carry out of a job when they resign, for years afterwards.

Where we learned that anger isn’t allowed

The rules about anger at work often match the rules we brought from home. If you grew up in a family where anger wasn’t allowed — where a parent fell silent, walked out or punished you when you were angry — you probably learned that anger is dangerous for a relationship. That lesson doesn’t stay at home. A manager you mustn’t anger, a colleague you mustn’t fall out with, a team where a “good atmosphere” matters more than the truth — these are all places where old rules wake up. I wrote about this in more detail in How a child who wasn’t allowed to be angry becomes an adult who can’t say no.

The reverse holds too. If you grew up in a family where anger was loud and whoever shouted loudest decided, you may avoid anger at work because you are afraid of becoming like that. Or anger may come too fast and too strong, and then you regret it for days.

In relational family therapy we see this as a pattern that once made sense. The child who swallowed anger kept the relationship with the parent. The adult who swallows it at work often pays too high a price.

How to express it so it gets heard

Expressed anger is not the same as an angry outburst. It is anger translated into a message. That is the heart of assertiveness, which I described in Assertiveness: how to say what you want without aggression or apology. Here are a few things that apply to work in particular.

Body first, then words. At the peak of anger attention narrows and words come out sharper than you mean them. If you are outside your window of tolerance, it is wise to postpone the conversation — not forever, but for an hour or a day.

To the right person. Anger told to a third person stays in the triangle. Anger told to the person who can change something has a chance of change.

With a reason. The research I described above shows that a reason helps — especially for women and for anyone with less power. “I’m angry” sounds like character. “I’m angry because my analysis was presented without my name” sounds like a fact.

With a need. Anger says what went wrong. A need says what would be right. Without the second, the other person doesn’t know what to do.

This is how the conversation from the start might sound if you had it. It is composed, not about a real person.

“Have you got five minutes? I’d like to tell you something about yesterday’s meeting.”
“Of course. What happened?”
“When you presented the analysis as the team’s work, it made me angry. I did it on my own, over two weeks. It’s not about praise, it’s about people knowing who did it.”
“Hm. I didn’t think it would bother you that much.”
“It does bother me. Next time I’d like you to mention my name with work like that — or let me present it myself.”
“Fair enough. You’re right, I should have.”

Not every conversation goes like that. Sometimes a manager won’t admit it, sometimes they’ll get defensive. But even then there is a difference: the anger hasn’t stayed inside you, in the triangle or at home. You said it where it began.

Timing matters too. Anger said early and calmly is often small. Anger that builds up for months is big when it finally comes out, and looks out of proportion — and then others can easily dismiss it as “overreacting”.

Exercise: from heat to a sentence

You can do this exercise the very next time you get angry at work. You need five minutes and a piece of paper or a note on your phone.

1. Notice your body. Where do you feel the anger — in your jaw, chest, hands? How strong is it on a scale from 0 to 10? If it is above 7, first step outside, breathe or take a walk, and come back to the exercise later.
2. Write down the fact, without interpretation. Not “he ignored me again”, but “in the meeting he presented the analysis without my name”.
3. Write down which boundary it crossed. Fairness? Recognition? Respect for my time? Being decided about without me?
4. Write down what you need. Not what the other person shouldn’t have done, but what would be right: “For people to know who did the work.”
5. Put together one sentence in the form: “When [fact] happened, it made me angry, because [boundary]. I need [need].” Then decide whether you will say it, to whom and when.

You may decide not to say it. That can be a wise decision too. But then you’ll be letting it go consciously, not out of fear — and the anger will no longer be nameless.

When anger isn’t information about work

Everything I have written assumes that anger is a response to something really happening at work. Often it is. But not always — and it is only fair to say where my argument doesn’t hold.

When the anger is constant and has no clear trigger. If you are irritable all the time, about everything and everyone, it may be a sign of exhaustion, burnout or depression. In men, depression often shows precisely as anger and irritability rather than sadness, as I described in Depression in men: anger, withdrawal and silence instead of tears. In that case, expressing anger better won’t help; getting help will — start with your GP.

When the anger comes from somewhere else. Sometimes we get angry at a colleague at work because of something happening at home, or because of an old wound this person merely reminds us of. Then the anger is real, but the address is wrong.

When the anger crosses the line. If you notice that your anger frightens others, that you shout or humiliate, or that you are afraid of what you might do, it is no longer information that just needs expressing better. It is a pattern that calls for work — and for responsibility towards the people around you. If anyone, including you, is putting others in danger, in Slovenia call the police on 113 or, in an emergency, 112.

When the environment itself is harmful. If you are systematically humiliated, excluded or intimidated at work, your anger is not a problem you need to regulate. It is a healthy response to an unhealthy environment. Better-expressed anger won’t be enough here. I described how to tell a difficult relationship from something more serious in Workplace bullying or just a difficult relationship? How to tell them apart and what you can do about each In cases like that it is also wise to turn to a trade union or legal help.

If you notice that anger at work is growing into something you don’t know how to handle, or that it keeps returning in the same patterns, it can be a good subject for therapy — and I also work with English-speaking clients. It often turns out that anger at a boss holds far more of a story than you would expect.

What to remember

• Anger at work is information — it says that a boundary, fairness or respect has been crossed.
• The same anger is often read differently in men and women; a stated reason helps others see it as a response to circumstances.
• The most damage is done not by expressed anger, but by both edges: silence and outburst.
• Unspoken anger goes to a third person, home, into the body or into resentment — the right address is the person who can change something.
• If anger is constant, crosses the line or is a response to a harmful environment, expressing it better is not enough — seek help.