How to Handle Someone Else’s Anger

Whether it’s in your personal life or in your work environment, handling someone’s anger can be extremely difficult. That’s why knowing how to diffuse someone who is angry or upset is an invaluable skill, and never is this more relevant than in the workplace.

Here are our tips to handling others’ anger in a healthy and productive way!

Keep Calm

This is possibly the hardest thing to do when someone is angry, whether their emotions are justified or not. It’s also the most important! Confronting someone who is angry can be frustrating – or even frightening – but regardless of how you’re feeling on the inside, you want to keep as calm as possible on the outside. Presenting a calm face to someone feeling upset (compared to getting angry yourself, which can quickly escalate a situation) can help encourage them to de-escalate.

Acknowledge their Emotions

While staying calm, you don’t want to dismiss, disregard, or seem indifferent to the emotions being presented. Whether their anger is directed at you or someone else, it’s important to recognize it. Take a moment to truly figure out where this anger is coming from, and decide how to respond from there. Is the person’s anger justified? Is it an outburst that has been caused by several different – possibly unrelated – issues that need to be resolved? Is it redirected anger from a personal failing, or perhaps misplaced blame?

Remember: you want to acknowledge the upset party’s emotions and show that you understand the issue from their perspective. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with them, and it also doesn’t mean that you should use their anger as an opportunity to vent your own aggression (at them or a third party). Just step into their shoes and take the time to truly listen to them.

Try the Feel, Felt, Found technique: “I hear that you feel like this, I have felt that way before too, and I’ve found _______ can be a good solution. Want to work together on this?” This technique creates more rapport and common ground between you and the person who is angry.

Work Through the Issue

Oftentimes, having an honest, listening ear is all someone needs to start to calm down. From there, you can work on resolving whatever underlying issue caused the anger in the first place. It doesn’t have to be a discussion that happens right away – but typically, if someone is to the point of having angry outbursts, a discussion should probably happen at some point.

Set some time aside, get any involved parties to the table, and make sure that everyone understands that this isn’t going to be a meeting for venting feelings, accusing anyone, attacking anyone, or otherwise giving in to knee-jerk emotions. If you set some ground rules beforehand and state plainly the actions you will take if boundaries are crossed, then you can begin resolving the problems productively. However, if the other parties do not agree to your terms, offer no hard feelings, discontinue and let them know the grounds on which you can reconvene.

The key to this type of meeting will be to work through the issues that are causing the anger – in a calm, controlled manner, and as objectively as possible. You’re simply meeting to develop a game plan for discussing any issues or problems that need to be addressed.

Know When to Back Off

Sometimes a situation is just too hot to handle – and that’s alright! Your safety, and the safety of those around you, should be your top priority when dealing with anyone who is extremely upset. This is why setting ground rules is so vital. If you feel that someone’s emotions are simply too volatile to handle at that moment, it is perfectly acceptable to discontinue. Again, let the person know you are disengaging (without insulting or accusing them – remember, the goal is to not escalate the situation), and that you would be more than happy to return to the topic once things have cooled down.

We are naturally very emotional creatures, and usually our instinct is to respond to emotional outbursts with emotions of our own. There are times when people aren’t ready to talk. If possible, create a workplace with open-door policies and allow people to express themselves constructively when they are ready. Having a plan of action for when you’re forced to deal with someone else’s anger can save everyone a lot of stress.