When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred. — Thomas Jefferson.
Anger. A self-destructive tool, or an energy that can be channelled for greater positivity?
The point is that anger is a very strong emotion. Each of us, including the calmest, gets angry once in a while. Entrepreneurs are not an exception to this.
Startup & anger at work
Being a startup founder or senior member of the core team is not easy at all. Running a startup is difficult and stressful. Those folks in charge not only ideate and create the venture runway, but also take decisions on even the minutest of aspects of their work. In this journey, there are boundless pressures and disappointments alike. Anger is a common expression or emotion in a startup.
The essence here is, how do you manage your anger?
Let’s look at some of the issues on the flipside: if you get angry easily and quickly, you stand the risk of being labelled a bad manager by your team. They would start either avoiding you, or appeasing you (and not being worried about the objective of the tasks you spell for them).
An even greater challenge is when you are a person who bottled up your anger and emotions. There is a chance that such a pressure cooker scenario of all pent-up emotions could explode with a trigger of one bad incident. An incident that could make you regret for a long time.
“All it takes is one bad anger moment to create a lifelong regret.”
Founders, anger, stress
Founders and startup core teams live their high-pressurise lives. Their passion towards what they are trying to establish as a venture adds up to a higher expectation from every team member they work with. That could end up with having undue expectation set from their teams. And the challenge is to maintain calm when those expectations are not met, or the standards expected as behaviour or outcomes are not met.
Anger as a negative emotion adds up to one’s stress. It not only affects your mental, emotional, and physical well-being, but also the venture as a whole. A stressful workplace could lead to undue fear of the specific individual(s), disagreements amongst team members, and demotivation. The worst outcome is onset of anxiety, burnouts, or just the sheer inability to make right decisions when necessary.
As someone on an entrepreneurial journey, do you observe any of the following?
The temptation to check emails every now and then.
The need to be a perfectionist.
Irritation when your team does not deliver perfection, as you define it
Anger when things don’t go your way and feeling that your team is not giving it a 100 percent for the projects you initiate
Do you feel that you should replace many of your team members with newer, and more efficient folks?First, don’t fret. It is okay to be angry once in a while.
Calmly analyse and understand what aspects of daily work life, you can control.
What you cannot control or even influence, should not unduly worry you. For, simply, you can’t do anything about it. Accept that reality.
Not everything is urgent.
Learn to prioritise.
For example, not every WhatsApp message or email is urgent. You can reply after sometime.
Start by accepting things you can’t control. It would take that weight off your shoulders. Use that spare positive energies for constructive work at your work.
If you have a temptation to write nasty or hurtful (to the recipient) messages as a reaction to various incidents, resist it. Channelise it in writing a personal diary to yourself.
Start by separating what you can control from what you can’t, as it is a way to lift some of that weight off your shoulders.
The first question you have to ask yourself when confronting your own feelings is “Why am I so angry?” The question may seem simple on the surface, but dig a bit deeper, and it becomes clear that it is often layered and complex. The long term anger management solution starts with understanding self.
– The author, Srinath Sridharan is a Corporate Adviser and Independent Markets Commentator. For other articles in the Coach Soch series, click here. First Published: Jun 18, 2022 3:35 PM IST
